If inflation is to be prevented without massive unemployment, there remains only teh control of demand, which, when required, must be primarily achieved by fiscal policy — by the federal budget, with effective emphasis on increases or decreases in taxation … When demand is exerting inflationary pressure, it is far better to restrict consumption through taxes than to cut back welfare spending for the needful and the poor. And better such fiscal restraint than monetary policy operating through murderous interest rates to restrict (primarily) investment spending, with consequent effect on industrial productivity …
– The Affluent Society (4th edition, 1984), p. ix)
… wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding. The poor man has always a precise view of his problem and his remedy: he hasn’t enough and he needs more. The rich man can assume or imagine a much greater variety of ills and he will be correspondingly less certain of their remedy. Also, until he learns to live with his wealth, he will have a well-observed tendency to put it to the wrong purposes or otherwise make himself foolish.
– The Affluent Society (40th Anniversary Edition, 1998, p i)