Monday, October 18, 2010
Coolidge, Economy in Government
This is what it sounds like when a President of The United Sates has REAL integrity. Something that is lacking in most of our politicians today.
Yes, I’m including Republicans in that statement too…
Total spending for the United States Government in 1924 was 7.5 Billion Dollars. Coolidge refered to it as a “stupendous sum” that was “difficult to comprehend.” I wonder what he would have to say about 1.3 Trillion dollars?
From Forbes by Amity Shlaes, The Great Refrainer
Speaking of President Coolidge and his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon Amity said,
But their grandest feat involved tax rates. Coolidge and Mellon tightened and pulled multiple times, eventually getting the top rate down to 25%, a level that hasn’t been seen since. Mellon argued that lower rates could actually bring in greater revenues because they removed disincentives to work. Government, he said, should operate like a railroad, charging a price for freight that “the traffic will bear.”
Coolidge’s commitment to low taxes came from his concept of property rights. He viewed heavy taxation as the legalization of expropriation. “I want taxes to be less, that the people may have more,” he once said. In fact, Coolidge disapproved of any government intervention that eroded the bond of the contract.
Mellon argued that lower rates could actually bring in greater revenues because they removed disincentives to work.
overall he and his partner at Treasury traveled smoothly. The U.S. averaged real growth closer to 4% than 3%, even during years of deflation. The Administration’s budgets were in surplus. In 1927 Time magazine reported that Coolidge paid a call at the Mellon mansion in Pittsburgh and walked “near the smoky fork of the Allegheny & Monongahela Rivers.” Together the men looked at the spot on the Allegheny where George Washington fell off a raft into freezing waters. The pair understood that their policies had helped them steer past a few potential disasters.
Today our government has moved so far from Coolidge’s tenets that it’s difficult to imagine such policies being emulated. But it is precisely this remove that is creating a new and national fascination with the Great Windsurfer.
Maybe we need another Calvin Coolidge, Again?
Wake Up America!
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