Quotes of the day

The world now knows, or can know if it will, that every gallows built to destroy good men will hang the builder at last.--A.W. Tozer

Ever since we Gen-X/Yers began working, we've paid 12.4 percent of our earnings to Social Security,” he wrote. “In contrast, the Boomers will get a bargain. When they entered the workforce in the late 1960s, they paid only 6.5 percent of their earnings to Social Security. Only from 1990 on, when the Boomers had earned paychecks for a quarter-century, did they start paying 12.4 percent to Social Security, the same percentage we Gen-X/Yers have paid our whole lives. They've paid less of their earnings into Social Security than we Gen-X/Yers, yet they'll receive more in benefits than we will and we'll pick up the tab. The last two generations gave themselves some additional retirement benefits just before they left the workforce. The World War II generation gave itself annual COLA (cost-of-living allowance) raises in 1975, and the boomers gave themselves the prescription drug benefit earlier this decade.--Tom Fiery

Employers come to us about Gen Y, saying they're looking for a staff member but they don't want anyone in that 20s age bracket because they find they don't understand common courtesy in the workplace--Kristy-Lee Johnston

Seriously, if you can say something like, “Cigarettes are sinful because you’re abusing your body, which is the temple of God,” while enjoying a 57 layer burrito from Taco Bell, that would be pretty good.--Jon Acuff

But so many men in our culture live as if God will welcome them into heaven because they drafted a great fantasy team last year. The truth is, no man will ever wish for one more hour of SportsCenter on his death bed.--Sam Masteller

It is the dogma that is the drama--not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death--but the terrifying assertion that the same God Who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realise that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.--Dorothy Sayers

Why Raise the Cigarette Tax When You Can Just Tax Breathing?--Andrew Samwick

George Bush enacted a bunch of tax cuts, and did nothing to implement the spending control those tax cuts demanded. He shouldn't have done that, even if voters would have been, like, rilly rilly mad if he didn't give them free drugs. So, too, at some point, Obama has to take responsibility. Listening to his defenders reminds me of those people who sit around whining about how their Dad was really distant and critical . . . I mean, fine, you apparently had a rotten childhood, but Dad can't get come and get you off the couch and find you a girlfriend and a better job. Girls and employers get really creeped out if they try. ... Obama is the one who is president with the really humongous deficits. Deficits of the size Bush ran are basically sustainable indefinitely; deficits of the size that Obama is apparently planning to run, aren't. --Megan McArdle

Well, the big problem [with Obama's small business tax credit] is that there’s currently regular tax and there’s alternative minimum tax (AMT) and this reduction in gains [being proposed] doesn’t apply when you compute your AMT tax. So even though today there’s this 50 percent break, an individual with a really big winner that generates lots in gains winds up paying the same amount as if he’d paid the full capital gains rate because there’s no corresponding AMT break. Moreover, there haven’t been any conversations to change that.--Steven Franklin

The graduated income tax, a signal aim of the progressive movement, was meant to bring about more equality among citizens. To an extent it did that, but it also brought about a huge disparity in the uncommitted resources of the Federal against State and local governments. ... Anything that grows the size of the Federal government will grow the deficit of New York and other such states. Hence Political Economy 101—when you are in a hole stop digging.--Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan

‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support. Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.--John Boehner and Eric Cantor

Hi Mom!--Sarah Palin's note on her palm

Economists have no clothes.--James Buchanan

You have never seen a city as completely incompetent at dealing with snow as Washington DC. ... I understand that it doesn't necessarily make sense for DC to maintain plentiful snow moving equipment, when these types of heavy snowfalls only occur about once every seven years. But it seems to me we could try to maintain some psychological readiness. If this is how we react to a snow storm, what are we going to do when the Russkis invade?--Megan McArdle