Since the 1980s, the American business cycle has been based on financial and credit bubbles, and therefore on the enrichment, through the capital markets, of a very small number of people in a very few places. Truly we have become a 'trickle-down economy' - as we were not before. A rising tide may lift all boats, but recent business cycles have been more like waves, whereby certain sectors and areas ride the peaks before crashing to the shore. This is a sign, surely, not of the social evil of inequality per se but of the instability of bubble economies, closely associated with inequality of income, wealth, and power, for which we now pay a fearsome price.
James K. GalbraithRelated topics
business certain crashing credit cycle enrichment evil few inequality instability lift now number pay people power price ride rising shore sign small tide wealth 1980sRelated quotes
You can't have a government like this without an income tax, but we don't want a government like this. This is not the type of government that was designed by the founders of the country. This is not what was written in the Constitution. We've only had an income tax since 1913. But if you want a welfare state, and if you want to police the world and pay for the defense of Japan and Germany, give foreign aid to the Soviet Union. You not only need the income tax you need the Federal Reserve to print up the money when the deficit is accumulated. So we think that government should be smaller. If government is small, then you don't need the income tax.
Ron Paul
Not only is it possible to devise complete models of the economy on hypotheses other than rationality, but in fact virtually every practical theory of macroeconomics is partly so based. The price- and wage- rigidity elements of Keynesian theory are hard to fit into a rational framework, though some valiant efforts have been made. ... But if the Keynesian model is a natural target of criticism by the upholders of universal rationality, it must be added that monetarism is no better. I know of no serious derivation of the demand for money from a rational optimization. ... The use of rationality in these arguments is ritualistic, not essential.
Kenneth Arrow
Comrade Ho Chi Minh, in a genious way, combined the struggle for national independence with the struggle for the rights of the masses oppressed by the exploiters and the feudals. He saw that the path was to combine the patriotic feelings of peoples with the need of freedom from social exploitation. National liberation and social liberation were the two pillars on which his doctrine was based. Furthermore, he saw that underdeveloped countries, in those conditions because of capitalism, could make a leap in history, building their economy along the path of socialism, saving themselves from the sacrifices and the horrors of capitalism.
Fidel Castro
I grew up in a mostly Buddhist environment. My father, when very young, was the first American to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He now teaches Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University and is regarded as this country's foremost authority on Buddhism. When the Dalai Lama comes to America, it's my father who is his host. When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however. But Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them.
Uma Thurman
Whenever the rate of return on capital is significantly and durably higher than the growth rate of the economy, it is all but inevitable that inheritance (of fortunes accumulated in the past) predominates over saving (wealth accumulated in the present). ... The inequality r > g in one sense implies that the past tends to devour the future: wealth originating in the past automatically grows more rapidly, even without labor, than wealth stemming from work, which can be saved. Almost inevitably, this tends to give lasting disproportionate importance to inequalities created in the past, and therefore to inheritance.
Thomas Piketty
