http://nation.foxnews.com/peter-schiff/2011/09/20/ceo-blows-away-congressional-hearing-i-was-fined-hiring-too-many-people
Below are some of the greatest hits from Schiff's testimony:
- “Stimulus is a sedative”
- “Higher interests rates encourage savings”
- “Demand does NOT come from government spending. Inflation comes from government spending. Demand comes from supply. You can’t consume something that isn’t produced. We have to make things first.”“How do we increase the demand for labor? It’s simple; you bring down the cost of labor. Regulations substantially increase the cost of employing people and as a result, fewer people are employed.”
- “Infrastructure spending doesn’t stimulate the economy, it drains the economy of resources. Infrastructure only works in the long run . . . if it raises the productivity of the nation.”
- “You can always see the jobs that government creates what you don’t see are the jobs that they destroy to create those jobs. All the government can do is rearrange the resources. It doesn’t create any wealth. The problem is that the jobs or the wealth that gets destroyed is more productive than whatever the government replaces it with. On balance the country is poorer.”“It is much more conducive to tax people when they spend their wealth than when they accumulate it."
- "The problem is the damage that the government does to the economy is not limited to taxation. . . It’s what the government is spending that is damaging the economy. . . Deficit spending is more detrimental to the economy than taxation.”The only stimulus that will work is cut government spending.
- Spending on education: “The problem is we are spending and not educating. We don’t need any more spending on education; we are spending too much and the kids are not getting educated.”
- Henry Ford paid his workers the equivalent of $2,500 a week. No federal income taxes back then. No minimum wage, no payroll taxes. No unions. “We paid the highest wages in the world yet we produced the best quality, least expensive products. How was that possible? That was because we had the smallest government. We had minimal regulations, low taxes and if we want to recreate American industry, we have to recreate that environment we have to allow businesses to grow and prosper and we have to remove all the road blocks and impediments that Congress has placed in their paths.”
