Bruce Bartlett Quotes
Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do.
Quotes to Explore
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I just like to stay a little quiet and just do my own thing. If I win a little more, I think I'll get a little bit more attention.
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I love entertaining and doing Martha Stewart stuff.
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Just to be fighting for the belt, I was already happy. No pressure at all.
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There is no one true church.
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I really want to try soccer after I retire because I've watched football over the years and I think I could be a good contender.
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I can't ever seem to shake the feeling that when things are really good it essentially means that things are going to go really bad. When I feel calm and settled, there is always an underlying feeling of impending doom... I don't think that it's healthy.
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'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life.
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Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.
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Being creative and making money in the theater is very challenging.
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My last divorce was in '68. What made it come to a head was a promise. See, I had promised her that the next year I wouldn't work as much. But then I got in trouble with the IRS, and I had to continue working just as much to pay the government. So she said I lied, which is something I never did.
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I get up at sunrise. I'm a Buddhist, so I chant in the morning. My wife and I sit and have coffee together, but then it's list-making time. I have carpentry projects. We have roads we keep in repair. It's not back-breaking, but it's certainly aerobic and mildly strenuous.
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I've been caught in parachute pants. And on my high school yearbook, they used the wrong picture. They were supposed to use the picture of me with a nice suit on. They used me with my collar flipped up, in a fuchsia and white striped shirt. I blame Prince and Michael Jackson in the Eighties for that.
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If I hear one more tailgate in the moonlight, Daisy Dukes song, I wanna throw up.
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Our globalized, automated economy is full of magic - Everyday Low Prices and next-day delivery on that single Gatorade you one-clicked. But it is also full of loss - of jobs, of the dignity of steady work, of chances to rise.
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When I'm writing obviously I have all the nostalgia in the world, I have all the emotion in the world, but then when I actually perform, I need to just perform it, and that's it. I do retain like a little bit of it because I have to, I sing and perform the songs so I have to - it's a performance of the songs - but I just have to get the right balance.
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I don't mean to suggest that our hometown was perfect. We never thought it was, even then. Hope was segregated, like the rest of the South. It had its share of human frailty and vice. But kids were taught, growing up, to respect the dignity of each individual. There was a genuine sense of community in Hope, that crossed income lines and in many ways, race as well.
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Everyone else carries a backpack, but not Josh. He has a cool, beat-up messenger bag, covered with stickers protesting all kinds of things.
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They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong; it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A.
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Politicians get their power too late, and I think that he has inherited an impossible situation in which he is ill-equipped to deal.
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The ending has to fit. The ending has to matter, and make sense. I could care less about whether it's happy or sad or atomic. The ending is the place where you go, “Aha. Of course. That's right.”
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High tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.
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Up until 1986, the top marginal rate, the top statutory rate was 50 percent. Now it's 35 percent. And all the pressure is on to lower that even further. And this just doesn't make a great deal of sense. When people say, 'Oh, we can't raise taxes on the rich. They'll go on strike, they'll move to another country.' But within recent memory, it hasn't been that long ago that we had rates that were substantially higher. And these people did just fine. I just think that there's a disconnect between the facts of what taxes do and the sort of mythology of what they do.
