Laffer curve cited directly by Laffer. For example, in 1924, Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon wrote: "It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates". Exercising his understanding that "73% of nothing is nothing", he pushed for the reduction of the top income tax bracket from 73% to an eventual 24% (as well as tax breaks for lower brackets). Mellon was one of the wealthiest people in the United States, the third-highest income-tax payer in the mid-1920s, behind John
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs complete paragraph containing Marx's statement of the creed in the "Critique of the Gotha Program" is as follows: Although Marx is popularly thought of as the originator of the phrase, the slogan was common within the socialist movement. For example, it was used by August Becker in 1844 and Louis Blanc in 1851. The origin of this phrasing has also been attributed to the French utopian Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, who proposed in his 1755 "Code of Nature" "Sacred and Fundamental Laws that would tear out the roots of vice and of all the evils of a society", including: A similar phrase