Marshall Sanford: “I have been hearing a fair bit about taxes. I think that is going to be the subject of debate over this next week and…”

“I have been hearing a fair bit about taxes. I think that is going to be the subject of debate over this next week and the week after. When we talk about taxes, I think we are talking about something much more important than taxes alone. What we are really talking about is the American dream. It strikes me that there are two ways to get at the American dream. One is to let somebody keep more of what they are earning. The other way is to let somebody earn more on what they are earning. What do I mean by that? What I mean is, I heard a story here just last week about a woman by the name of Osceola McCarthy. My colleagues may have already heard this story, but Osceola McCarthy was a washerwoman down in the southern part of Mississippi. And she was in her late 70's. She goes to the nearby school. She had spent her life as a washerwoman, her entire lifetime washing people's clothes, never earned much money over the course of her lifetime. She goes to this nearby university and she said, I would like to help out. And they figure, well, she is going to give us a cloth doily or something. But instead of a cloth doily, she hands them $150,000. Everybody at the university cannot believe it. How in the world did this washerwoman come up with $150,000 for the university? What she said is, I just put a little bit away over a long period of time. In fact Einstein was once asked, what is the most powerful force in the universe. His reply was, compound interest.”