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David Cay Johnston
250 quotes
“I want to do things that are beyond the scope of the daily newspaper, as good as it is and as important as it is... beyond the scope of even a great newspaper like The New York Times.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the criticisms I've... gotten is "You're a reporter, what are you doing writing with a moral tone?" ...[Y]es, this is a book about political culture and morality. I cite , the Bible and as moral authorities in this book. ...Andrew Mellon says that people are more important than capital and people have to be thought of first, not capital... that's not our culture today. All throughout the Bible, the most frequently denounced evil is taking from the poor to give to the rich. The Bible tells us in both books that your society will come to ruin if you do this.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Balzac said 200 years ago that "behind every great fortune lies a crime," but we know how to create wealth now: the Industrial Revolution created wealth, the and our ability to manipulate cyberspace, and to develop concepts and structures in mathematics, and elsewhere. We can create real wealth. So, per say, being wealthy is now not the result of taking from those with less; and yet this historic problem has come roaring back... under the guise of conservatism.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hat were we promised in 1980 when Ronald Reagan asked his famous question, "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" ...I'm here asking the question, "Are you better off than you were in 1980?" He said we'll have less taxes. ...Taxes [and government spending] as a share of the economy are the same as they were back then. ...[W]hat we've gotten instead is all this government debt.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]ssuming that all the... interest on the federal debt is paid, just from the individual income tax, all the income taxes that you pay from January through the end of April, just go to pay interest on the national debt; and since 86% of federal tax revenues come from labor (and 14% from capital); that means that we explicitly have a policy now to tax labor [in order] to transfer [that revenue] to [privately held] capital.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So we didn't get less government... that we were promised. Next we were told we should have deregulation. There's no such thing as deregulation. Everything has rules. ...What we got were new regulations... written by and the railroads and the banks, and they eliminated [or reduced] consumer protections. They took away enforcement of the existing laws. They benefited this political donor class, who were pursuing their own self-interest.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't have any problem with people pursuing their own self-interest. It's just [that] there has not been a push-back from the rest of society, as we have seen unions, which helped push back, decline; and other areas where there was push-back, decline. The... churches were involved with this, and we've seen them decline.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So all of the things we were promised, most... haven't happened. There have been some good things. Airfares have fallen... There have been some benefits. It is not black and white, but my focus is on these areas where we now have massive transfers of wealth and income from those with less, to the politically connected few. Billions and billions of dollars being handed up the ladder.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A] lot of what I've been writing about in Free Lunch and... Perfectly Legal and the 13 years of stories I've been doing in The New York Times are about... a growing disconnect between our political and cultural mythology, and how the economy actually works. ...[A]ll societies have to operate from myths. You have to have a shorthand for your culture, but ours is getting disconnected from reality.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[The] only determinant of your economic life in 18th century France was how well you picked your parents. ...The functional equivalent of what would happen if we repealed the occurred, in that all capital and all land (and this was essentially an agrarian society) were tied up. Either the Church or trusts controlled so much that there was no movement...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As taxpayers we gave one of Warren Buffet's companies, in 2006, an interest-free loan of $665 million dollars, and he only has to pay half of it back 28 years from now. ...Imagine ...you bought a house in 1980 at the price in 1980. Up until now [2009] you haven't made any payments on the house, and this year you have to pay half in the... dollars you agreed to back then, no adjustment for inflation. Do you think that alone might make you a wealthy man?”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“, which did not pay taxes (I broke that story... about 7 or 8 years ago), owned ... and people paid close to $1 billion in their electric rates to cover its taxes. Money that never got to the government... by tax shelters and [through] other devices. When I wrote a story on this on the front page of The New York Times, the wrote a letter... they didn't say this wasn't true. They just said we're doing what the law allows.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he rules we've set in our society are redistributing incomes up. Our national myth is that we have this socialism policy that redistributes down. The reality of the data is that we are redistributing up, and... we don't have trickle-down economics... we have Amazon [river] up.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Except for a handful of people, Peter Gosselin at the Los Angeles Times who's done some big series, and a few other reporters here and there, now and then, why is it that this issue of income redistribution and government taking from the many and giving to the few is not being reported widely. You are not reading about it in many, many, many newspapers around the country. I would think it would be one of the major things.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I became a reporter in the 60s in California, one of the very first lessons I learned was, your supposed to be watchdogging the government.... looking out for the taxpayers. If the politicians want to spend more money, why? What's it for? Why am I going to give up more of my sustenance to the government? If the government needs it, let's hear the case for it. ...[N]ow we have city councils in big cities in the United States where no reporter goes for months at a time to the meetings; where the city budget doesn't get covered at all.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remember reading a story... in one of the biggest papers in the country about the county budget in the dominant area of marketing for that newspaper... It consisted of the 3 county commissioners... yelling at each other over the budget, and it had a single mention of the budget will be "x" dollars. It didn't tell me how much of my property taxes go up, are they spending more on the sheriff and less on schools or are they going to fix the potholes. None of the substance was there.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ne of the fundamental changes that's taken place is more and more coverage of controversies instead of issues.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have encountered I don't know how many people who have...written to me... about how we have the strongest economy in history. No we don't, and nobody who knows the numbers would say something like that, but you could easily get that impression... from watching just television news, and listening to the president repeatedly tell us what a strong economy we have, when it's just not true.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether you love or hate Ronald Reagan, he was a great leader. He really fundamentally changed America.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mr. Reagan came along and said, "Are you better off? ...Government is the problem," and persuaded people who were faced with problems... We had two oil shocks, '73 and '79, we had long lines at gas stations. There were a few cases where we had shootings of people in line at gas stations. ...We had inflation that was scaring people ...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think Mr. Reagan intended what happened. ...Mr. Reagan had a clearly defined set of values, but what we got was not conservative. What we got were radical changes that have... turned out to work to our detriment.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e live in a society where... presidents and candidates for president of both parties are always saying "God Bless America" and "This is the greatest ever" and they're not talking about the real facts of what's going on.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're subsidizing Tyco and through the burglar alarm subsidy... while starving our parks and recreation programs; and what do we get in the big cities because we've starved those programs? Youth gangs! There have always been gangs [but] not like we have today... and it's because of government policy.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fundamental affect that's taking place... is that government has changed from focusing on nurturing and developing a stable middle class, to these other policies.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This book is about the many ways that corporations extract from you... extra nickels—which add up to thousands of dollars. Many of the mechanisms require the government's cooperation; some... the result of seemingly disconnected sources; others are hidden in plain site. ...It's in the fine print.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider the changes in income... the first full year after the Great Depression and the Great Recession... The economic rebound was widely shared in 1934, with strong income gains for the vast majority and a slight drop at the top, while in 2010 the opposite took place as the vast majority lost ground and those at the top scored big gains.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The big banks, car makers, insurers and a host of Canadian, Chinese, European and Japanese companies all get to profit by pocketing the taxes withheld from American workers' paychecks.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“has a marketing deal with , and Verizon has joint marketing deals with , Cox and Time Warner. This is not competition but ization. The losers... are the consumers, who will pay higher prices for lower-quality service.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One of the sneakier tricks the telephone giants are pulling is to get state caps on prices lifted on the claim that they will not be raising prices, but lowering them. ...California regulators lifted the price caps... Some prices were raised as much as 600 percent...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[E]lectric and gas utilities in more than twenty states have... quietly obtained government approval to make customers pay in advance for new or upgraded facilities. It is as if... everyone has loaned them the money at zero percent interest.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since the corporate income tax began in 1909, Congress has imposed a penalty tax, currently 15 percent, on excess cash and near-cash... Without such, a corporation could... become a huge tax shelter, withdrawing resources from the economy instead of investing in new plant...equipment... jobs and paying dividends... But President Reagan signed a law that... so long as the money was owned by offshore subsidiaries, American companies could hold unlimited amounts of cash. ...[C]ompanies now siphon profits out of the United States under the guise of... tax deductible expenses...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The telecommunications companies wanted to build the most profitable electronic toll road possible. Their aim was, first, to spend as little as possible on technology, which... meant slow Internet service for many... Second... serve areas where lots of customers... would buy a monthly pass... sparsely populated areas were at best incidental to such plans. Third... set prices as high as the market would bear, even if it meant many... could never afford to access this electronic roadway.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lost... was the crucial fact that the federal government had established an underlying policy to make... services available to all at reasonable prices.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only real risk of competition arose when some local governments favored the idea of building a municipal telephone, cable television and Internet access system that would be faster and cheaper. The industry responded like sharks, determined to do in the opposition and protect their predatory position.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[L]egislatures have rewritten basic business laws, some whose principles date back thousands of years. Too often the goal has been to thwart competition, artificially inflate prices, hold down wages by decimating unions, reduce worker benefits and... restrict or bar access to the courts by those aggrieved.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Businesses have gotten policies adopted that have allowed some managers to run corporations as, effectively, criminal enterprises... ... those in control run the fraud.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[S]tate and local governments alone spend at least $70 billion a year of taxpayer's money to subsidize factories, office buildings [etc.]... $900 per year for a family of four.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[L]aws in nineteen states... let companies pocket the state income taxes withheld from their workers' paychecks for up to twenty-five years. ...In many of these subsidy programs, no jobs are created.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Legislatures passed these laws, presidents and governors signed them and the courts have endorsed them. In many cases they effectively gut state constitutional provisions and laws banning gifts to business.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[B]usiness has been regulated throughout history. ...[I]n the past four decades, we have forgotten the tried and tested (and therefore profoundly conservative) principles of business developed over thousands of years. ...[O]ur wealth... well being and... freedom are being diminished daily.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wyoming Corporate Services... for a fee, will create a company, set up a bank account, appoint officers and directors... provide a lawyer as a corporate director so the company can invoke attorney-client privilege... [and] make any required regulatory filings... without anyone being able to ascertain, without a court order, who is behind any corporation it creates.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If... immortal, amoral and greed-driven people walked the earth, we would have to rewrite our laws governing property. ...[O]ur new class of immortals could just keep accumulating wealth and power forever. In time they would probably own every... asset on earth worth having. ...[That] immortal being is the modern corporation.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unlike individuals, who must take responsibility for their conduct, corporations' legal responsibility... has benefited from limits to that responsibility established by law. The rationale... is that people who... build a business would not take the same risks if failure meant they would lose... their houses, cars... and everything else. ...[T]hey can go about their corporate business, creating enterprises and generating wealth.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[L]imiting liability... has also obscured a corporation's responsibility to function for the benefit of society. The greater good is an idea that is thousands of years old, but in the recent past corporations have been permitted to lose site of that... notion.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Workers may toil their entire lives, communities may tax themselves to create infrastructure a corporation needs, and vendors may invest their entire fortune to supply the corporation—but none of these parties, Friedman said, has significant legal rights or moral claims. [T]he idea... was not supported by the development of the law, the regulation of business and the advancement of civilization over thousands of years. But... Friedman's ahistorical thinking has come to dominate...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: citing a quote from Milton Friedman, in the last lines of "A Friedman doctrine—The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits" (Sep 13, 1970) The New York Times; alt; where Friedman partially repeats h…
“[C]lassical "corporations"... existed not for profit but in service of the state. ...A key tenet ...has changed since ancient times... If a business fails, the chief executive does not have to become a slave to the bank... Corporations... have inverted the Roman equation: ...the state serves them.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas insist that they are "originalists,"... interpreting our Constitution as a document fixed in time. No honest originalist could... have signed on to Citizens United, but intellectually corrupt justices who worship corporatism, disdain the poor and enjoy the perks of power...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Citizens United is to the expansion of corporate power what the big bang is to the beginning of existence...”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“America has been transformed from a land of growing economic plenty into a hollow shell.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In just a third of a century, the widespread liquidity that nourished the economy—reliable streams of cash going to workers and owners alike—has... dried up.”
David Cay Johnston (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source