Economy Quotes - page 96
![[N]othing is easier to attain than full employment... All we would have to do, for instance, would be to continue a war-economy at no more, perhaps, than half its present level. Or we could adopt some sort of state socialism, under which the surplus resources... would be employed on non-economic projects, it makes... little difference what twentieth century equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids... so long as we do not use the surplus labor to produce ordinary economic goods. ...But we refuse to accept the kind of society to which either [a permanent war economy or state socialism] would lead. We demand more than a stable society, we demand a good society. Specifically, we demand of our economic system... that it produce goods... that add to the wealth... and... that these goods be produced... under... the free enterprise system. (Peter Drucker)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/68/peter-drucker-add-attain-1005368.webp)
We have a great deal to be proud of as Georgians. Our history, our heritage, our state's great natural beauty. But, nothing should make us prouder than the way Georgia has led the South by focusing on the things that unite us instead of dwelling on those that divide us. While the government of Arkansas used the armed forces of the state to prevent nine black students from enrolling at Little Rock's Central High School, while the Governor of Alabama stood defiantly in a schoolhouse door, Georgia quietly concentrated on growing our economy, on the goals that bring us together rather than those that can tear us apart. And, in the process, Georgia established itself as the leader of the New South.
Roy Barnes
The model for us rich guys should be Henry Ford. When Ford famously introduced the $5 day, which was twice the prevailing wage at the time, he didn't just increase the productivity of his factories, he converted exploited autoworkers who were poor into a thriving middle class who could now afford to buy the products that they made. Ford intuited what we now know is true, that an economy is best understood as an ecosystem and characterized by the same kinds of feedback loops you find in a natural ecosystem, a feedback loop between customers and businesses. Raising wages increases demand, which increases hiring, which in turn increases wages and demand and profits, and that virtuous cycle of increasing prosperity is precisely what is missing from today's economic...
Henry Ford
Each time, the taxpayer is called on to bail out those who created the crisis, increasingly the major financial institutions. In a capitalist economy, you wouldn't do that. In a capitalist system, that would wipe out the investors who made risky investments. But the rich and powerful, they don't want a capitalist system. They want to be able to run to the "nanny state” as soon as they're in trouble, and get bailed out by the taxpayer. They're given a government insurance policy, which means that no matter how often you risk everything, if you get in trouble, the public will bail you out because you're too big to fail - and it's just repeating over and over again.
Noam Chomsky
We've been living through about 45 years of a particular socio-economic political system, what's called neoliberalism... The so-called free trade agreements or radically protectionist that we're seeing that right now in front of our eyes, we see virtual monopoly on drugs. What we've really had for the 45 years is what so many economists have called a bail out economy. So it's one side of class war, markets for the poor, protection for the rich.
Noam Chomsky
POLITICAL economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.
Adam Smith
Partisans of the free market invoke Adam Smith in order to lend the authority of his name to the case they themselves want to make: for the complete removal of the state from economic enterprise; for the economic sovereignty of the market; and for leaving all questions of production and distribution to the magic of the invisible hand... But...the reason Adam Smith wanted an end to government intervention in the market was that in his time (in contrast to today) it was only thanks to state intervention that what he called "the mean rapacity, the monopolising spirit of merchants and manufacturers" was able to dominate the economy, to the great detriment of the society as a whole.
Adam Smith
In generating the first ever systematic account of the market mechanism in commercial society, Smith's political economy drew not only on his critical reflections of the unsytematic nature of earlier economic writing, but equally on his didactic revisions of earlier natural law and natural jurisprudence traditions as well as the empirically suggestive but unsystematic historical inductive method of tracing the progress of civil society previously introduced by thinkers such as the great Montesquieu. These revisions can be linked directly to Smith's political thinking. It may be questioned whether Adam Smith can be said to have developed a political theory. Certainly, it has been and yet remains a subject of debate. Unquestionably, however, Smith isolated important political concerns and made political conceptual contributions which he linked systematically to his theory of commercial society and the conduct of the market.
Adam Smith
The cosy world we were told would go on for ever, where full employment would be guaranteed by a stroke of the Chancellor's pen, cutting taxes, deficit spending – that cosy world is gone. Yesterday, delegates pointed to the first sorry fruits: a high rate of unemployment. ... When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument - as we do - and when we reject also superficial remedies, as socialists must, then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly what is the cause of high unemployment. Quite simply and unequivocally, it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. There are no scapegoats. This is true in a mixed economy under a Labour Government as it is under capitalism or under communism. It is an absolute fact of life which no Government, be it left or right, can alter.
James Callaghan
Eventually, [...] [we] will have to contend with the problems of the Long Emergency: the end of industrial growth, falling standards of living, economic desperation, declining food production, and domestic political strife. A point will be reached when the great powers of the world no longer have the means to project their power any distance. Even nuclear weapons may become inoperable, considering how much their careful maintenance depends on other technological systems linked to our fossil fuel economy.
James Howard Kunstler
The idea of comparative advantage works when there is a complex local economy intact in the background of each trading partner's specialized item of production, with a variety of social roles and occupational niches to support the long-term project of community. But a locality geared to doing only one thing for export is... a slave system based on the extractive economics of mining. [...] One group had all the cheap labor, and another group had all the capital, and for a while, one group made all the things that the other group "consumed.” Thus, comparative advantage became, for a time, a con game strictly for the benefit of large corporations, which ended up enjoying all the advantages while the localities sucked up the costs.
James Howard Kunstler
American business is like no other in history. It is owned by millions, it employs millions more, it serves all 190 million of our people. The promise for their lives rests upon the performance of your enterprise. While some of you may not be interested in our success, I can assure you that we here in Washington are greatly interested in your success. I am glad I can say today that no businessmen anywhere have ever at any time enjoyed the measure of success that American businessmen are enjoying now. For 42 consecutive months, we have had the longest and the largest peacetime expansion of our economy on record. These years from 1961 through 1964 are going into the record books as the most prosperous years of our history. It is prosperity not just for businessmen--it is prosperity for all the people of this Nation.
Lyndon B. Johnson
These are not domestic concerns alone. For upon our achievement of greater vitality and strength here at home hang our fate and future in the world: our ability to sustain and supply the security of free men and nations, our ability to command their respect for our leadership, our ability to expand our trade without threat to our balance of payments, and our ability to adjust to the changing demands of cold war competition and challenge. We shall be judged more by what we do at home than by what we preach abroad. Nothing we could do to help the developing countries would help them half as much as a booming U.S. economy. And nothing our opponents could do to encourage their own ambitions would encourage them half as much as a chronic lagging U.S. economy. These domestic tasks do not divert energy from our security - they provide the very foundation for freedom's survival and success.
John F. Kennedy
