John Maynard Keynes Government Quotations

The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available,with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States.

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Gold is a relic from a time when government's were less trustworthy in these matters (currency debasement) than they are now.

...By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract,... governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century.

Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.

If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.