For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes - including those for social security and unemployment compensation - and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes - principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution. Global warming pollution, indeed all pollution, is now described by economists as an "externality." This absurd label means, in essence: we don't need to keep track of this stuff so let's pretend it doesn't exist. And sure enough, when it's not recognized in the marketplace, it does make it much easier for government, business, and all the rest of us to pretend that it doesn't exist. But what we're pretending doesn't exist is the stuff that is destroying the habitability of the planet.
Al GoreRelated topics
absurd business compensation discouraging discourage easy elimination enough essence externality form fourteen government habitability hiring label last level need neutral now overall planet pollution pretending pretend remain replacement rest revenue security social stuff sure swap tax taxation track warming means marketplace words years global payroll co2 unemploymentRelated quotes
Planning is to be based on the democratic approach and method. There should, therefore, be definite place for voluntary effort...a substantial advance should be made towards solving the problems of unemployment. At the same a large increase is the supply of consumer goods should be secured through cottage and small scale industries...The Socialist pattern implies a large and growing public sector in the national economy...And economy based on the socialistic pattern does not preclude the existence of a private sector, particularly in agriculture and small scale industries...In the public and private sectors alike, the relations of workers to management should be such as would give to them a distinctive role and a share in the making of decisions affecting the enterprise...In any case, a series of measures will have to be adopted to eliminate speculative and unearned gains...Special attention will have to be given to the elimination of conspicuous consumption...
Gulzarilal Nanda
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt - and when I say corrupt, I'm talking about totally corrupt - political establishment [Obamacare] with a new government controlled by you, the American people. There is nothing the political establishment will not do. No lie that they won't tell to hold their prestige and power at your expense and that's what's been happening. The Washington establishment and the financial and media corporations that funded exist for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. As an example, just one single trade deal they'd like to pass involves trillions of dollars controlled by many countries, corporations, and lobbyists. For those who controlled the levels of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven't seen before.
Donald Trump
We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all the rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species. That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in the beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist... these Species were sometimes fertilised out of congeners, that is other Species of the same Genus, whence have arisen Varieties.
Carl Linnaeus
It is not to be inferred that it would be anything less than courting national disaster to leave our country barren of defense. Human nature is a very constant quality. While there is justification for hoping and believing that we are moving toward perfection, it would be idle and absurd to assume that we have already reached it. We can not disregard history. There have been and will be domestic disorders. There have been and will be tendencies of one nation to encroach on another. I believe in the maintenance of an Army and Navy, not for aggression but for defense. Security and order are our most valuable possessions. They are cheap at any price. But I am opposed to every kind of military aggrandizement and to all forms of competitive armament. The ideal would be for nations to become parties to mutual covenants limiting their military establishments, and making it obvious that they are not maintained to menace each other. This ideal should be made practical as fast as possible.
Calvin Coolidge
All racist and anti-semitic attacks must be stamped out. However, the reality is that the great bulk of racist attacks in Europe today are on black people, Asians and Muslims - and they are the primary targets of the extreme right. For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments - not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.
They are also fuelling anger and violence across the world. For a mayor of London not to speak out against such injustice would not only be wrong - but would also ignore the threat it poses to the security of all Londoners.
Ken Livingstone
