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Economics Quotes

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Economics Quotes

“Government, on their part, are much disposed to favor the establishment of these large companies, and to give them privileges to the detriment of their rivals, and of the public, with the expectation of receiving from them loans, either gratuitous or at a low rate which these never refuse. It is thus that the one sells its protection and the other buys it; and this is already a very great evil.”

“Political economy regards the proletarian like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.”

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”

“Republicans don't have to accept evolution, economics, climatology, or human sexuality, but I just watched a week of their national convention, and I need them to admit the historical existence of George W. Bush. If your party can run the nation for eight years and then have a national convention and not invite Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, or Tom DeLay, you're not a political movement, you're the witness protection program.”

“By government giveaway programs, individuals are often hurt far more than they are helped. The recipients of these programs become dependent on the government and their dignity is destroyed. Is it compassionate to enslave more and more people by making them a part of the government dependency cycle? I think compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need it. Helping people to become self-sufficient is much more compassionate than drugging them with the narcotic of welfare.”

“Market forces have no intrinsically moral direction, which is why, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ethics should precede economics. But it doesn't have to. . . . We know this because we've seen the results of capitalism without conscience: the pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; the endangerment of workers; and the sale of dangerous products - from cars to toys to drugs. All in pursuit of ever-greater profits.”

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.”

“The only truly new ideas [the right] has come up with in the last twenty years are (1) supply side economics, which is a way of redistributing the wealth upward toward those who already have more than they know what to do with, and (2) creationism, which is a parallel idea for redistributing ignorance out from its fundamentalist strongholds to those who know more than they need to.”

“Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks - drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.”

“There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else. ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool.”

“I look in a right of property - on the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separate and selfish use and enjoyments, the produce of their own industry, with power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most agreeable to themselves, as essential to the welfare and even to the continued existence of society.”

“Modern prophets say that our economics have failed us. No! It is not our economics which have failed; it is man who has failed-man who has forgotten God. Hence no manner of economic or political readjustment can possibly save our civilization; we can be saved only by a renovation of the inner man, only by a purging of our hearts and souls; for only by seeking first the Kingdom of God and His Justice will all these other things be added unto us.”

“In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.”

“The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be 'materialistic' and 'greedy' to want to keep what you have earned. But it is 'idealistic' to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.”