Thomas Sowell Income Quotations

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.

The left's obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high - or higher - incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel.

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all - inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.

Most of the people in the upper income brackets are not rich and do not have wealth sheltered offshore. They are typically working people who have finally reached their peak earning years after many years of far more modest incomes-and now see much of what they have worked for siphoned off by politicians, to the accompaniment of lofty rhetoric.

Most intellectuals outside the field of economics show remarkably little interest in learning even the basic fundamentals of economics. Yet they do not hesitate to make sweeping pronouncements about the economy in general, businesses in particular, and the many issues revolving around what is called 'income distribution'.

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.

The way the [welfare] programs are organized, poor people are only paid to do things that are counter-productive - such as breaking up their families, such as not earning above a certain level of income.

The income tax has spawned an intrusive bureaucracy, creating so much complexity and red tape that millions of ordinary citizens have to go get some accountant to fill out the forms for them - and then sign under penalty of perjury that it was done right. If you knew how to do it right, you wouldn't have to go to somebody else to have it done, would you?

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.