Subsidies Quotes

• The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies.

  Michael Pollan

  Agriculture, Poverty, Obesity

  57 Copy quote

• Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun.

  Grover Norquist

  Cutting, Gun, Welfare

  51 Copy quote

• Government does the least good and the most harm through subsidies.

  James Cook

  Government, Doe, Harm

  14 Copy quote

• Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

  Ronald Reagan

  Freedom, Military, Moving

  Remarks to state chairs of National White House Conference on Small Business, 15 Aug. 1986

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• Subsidies are a shell game, not a net addition to national wealth.

  Thomas Sowell

  Games, Shells, Wealth

  17 Copy quote

• The ultimate objective of subsidies should be to empower the poor, to break the cycle of poverty, and become foot-soldiers in our war on poverty.

  Narendra Modi

  War, Feet, Empowering

  10 Copy quote

• Subsidies have changed the way the nation behaves.

  James Cook

  Way, Changed, Behave

  13 Copy quote

• Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.

  Mark Bittman

  Kings, Corn, Collaboration

  74 Copy quote

• Governmental subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation.

  Murray Rothbard

  Government, Coercion, Efficiency

  Murray N. Rothbard (2004). “Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar's Edition”, p.1256, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• China's idea of fair trade is government subsidies of its textile and apparel exports to the United States, currency manipulation, and forgiveness of loans by its government banks.

  Virginia Foxx

  Forgiveness, Government, Ideas

  18 Copy quote

• We often hear a lot about subsidies, because it's often the powerful talking about the poor; the poor don't have enough voice to question the privileges.

  Kofi Annan

  Powerful, Talking, Voice

  10 Copy quote

• Private charity discourages poverty while public subsidies encourage it.

  James Cook

  Charity, Poverty, Discouraging

  6 Copy quote

• The easy way to make money is to get special political privilege. From the beginning of time, business has cozied up to government and gotten restrictions on competition and subsidies and stuff.

  Charles Koch

  Government, Political, Competition

  16 Copy quote

• I don't mind payin' for the police and for streets and sanitation, or road work, bridges, trains, food subsidies and welfare. But I don't wanna pay for bombs to fight proxy wars in the middle of nowhere against enemies in the night.

  Lupe Fiasco

  War, Fighting, Night

  "Lupe Fiasco: 'I have the right to speak out'". Interview with Angus Batey, www.theguardian.com. Mach 3, 2011.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Successful, Government

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.45, Crown Business

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• When government taxes and regulates, what is seen are the visible effects of government contracts, grants, and subsidies. What is not seen are all of the property, business, and jobs that would have been created if citizens were left with the right to choose.

  John Pugsley

  Jobs, Government, Citizens

  John Pugsley (2007). “The Chairman's Corner: Essays on Liberty from the Sovereign Individual”, p.204, The Sovereign Society

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been around enough to realise that there are two things that once people have them, they don't want to give up, and it's extremely difficult to convince them to give up: one is privileges, and the other is subsidies.

  Kofi Annan

  Giving Up, Two, People

  6 Copy quote

• I don't owe my success to state subsidies but to a faithful public which has sustained me.

  Eric Rohmer

  Faithful, States

  "The French revolutionary". Interview with Tobias Grey, www.theguardian.com. September 2, 2001.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• There was an old Woman who lived in a shoe She had so many children Her government subsidy check came to $4,892.

  Sam Levenson

  Children, Shoes, Government

  Sam Levenson (2016). “You Don't Have to Be in Who's Who to Know What's What: The Choice Wit and Wisdom of Sam Levenson”, p.150, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our farmers and ranchers have never faced as many problems as they do today with drought, range fires, high gas prices and an ever tightening budget on agriculture subsidies.

  Michael McCaul

  Agriculture, Fire, Today

  55 Copy quote

• President Obama, through health care reform, strengthened Medicare. How did he do that? Well, he found savings by cutting subsidies to insurance companies, ensuring we were rooting out waste and fraud, and he used those savings to put it back into Medicare.

  Stephanie Cutter

  Cutting, President, Reform

  "State of the Union with Candy Crowley", www.cnn.com. August 19, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

  Thomas Sowell

  Loss, Income, Benefits

  17 Copy quote

• College has been oversold. It has been oversold to students who end up dropping out or graduating with degrees that don't help them very much in the job market. It also has been oversold to the taxpayers, who foot the bill for subsidies that do nothing to encourage innovation and economic growth.

  Alex Tabarrok

  Jobs, College, Feet

  7 Copy quote

• Obamacare's not imploding. The main goal of Obamacare was two-fold. One was to cover the uninsured, of which we've covered 20 million, the largest expansion in American history. The other was to fix broken insurance markets where insurers could deny people insurance just because they were sick or they had been sick. Those have been fixed, and for the vast majority of Americans, costs in those markets have come down, thanks to the subsidies made available under Obamacare.

  Jonathan Gruber

  Two, Obamacare, Broken

  Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

  78 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid somewhere. And if it isn't paid at the cash register, it's charged to the environment or to the public purse in the form of subsidies. And it's charged to your health.

  Michael Pollan

  Real, Cash, Purses

  "Fresh". Documentary, News, www.imdb.com. 2009.

  49 Copy quote

  Show source