Best economy & capitalism Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

Source: Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition

“The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.”

May Two Different Facts Force Social Process Roles Economy Capitalism Increase Historical Branches Productive Labour Progressive Manifest Diverse Propositions National Economy

Author:Vladimir Lenin

“To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political parties. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.”

Source: Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property

“Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets.”

Faces Individual Memories Perfect Vision Economy Mass Capitalism Rational Unemployment Economist Faded Great Depression

Author:Paul Krugman

“At the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it's a kind of capitalism that's totally self-defeating because it's so narrow. It's a winner-take-all capitalism that's not sustaining.”

“When the press writes scare stories about the global labor supply draining jobs from rich to poor places, the story is usually presented as a "race to the bottom" simply in terms of wages. Capitalism supposedly looks for labor wherever labor is cheapest. This story is half wrong. A kind of cultural selection is also at work, so that jobs leave high-wage countries like the United States and Germany, but migrate to low-wage economies with skilled, sometimes overqualified workers.”

Source: The Culture of the New Capitalism

“The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.”

Source: Essay on Marxian Economics

“The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.”

Should Wells Political Social Economy Capitalism Seeds Critique Political Economy Invocation Dissection

Author:David Harvey

“Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin.”

Men World Way Long Realizing Economy Objects Essentials Capitalism Profit Productions Features Capitalist New Ways Maximum Profitable Margins World Economy Profit Margin

Book:The Capitalist World-Economy

Source: The Capitalist World-Economy

“We're subject to the same forces of capitalism that have built the entire American economy. Strong returns induce more capital flow, which creates more competitors, and you have to evolve and get better, or you die.”

Dies Strong Force Economy Subjects Return Capitalism Built Flow Evolve Get Better Competitors American Economy

Author:Kenneth C. Griffin

“One of the glaring failures of capitalism is the continuing widespread existence of poverty - often extreme poverty. Even in the advanced economies, many millions of people endure terrible economic and social deprivation, despite the incredible wealth all around them.”

People Social Wealth Existence Poverty Millions Economy Economic Terrible Capitalism Endure Incredibles Extremes Despite Continuing Deprivation Extreme Poverty

Book:Economics for everyone: a short guide to the economics of capitalism

Source: Economics for everyone: a short guide to the economics of capitalism

“The only factor that poses a genuine challenge to the current order is the willingness of human beings to reject the injustice and irrationality of this economy, and stand up for something better. Capitalism will not fall-rather, it must be pushed.”

Humans Order Fall Challenges Human Beings Economy Capitalism Injustice Currents Genuine Factors Rejects Willingness Something Better Irrationality

Author:Jim Stanford

“One growing threat to the stability of the U.S. economy, and therefore to its capability to continue to direct the global order, paradoxically emerges from its success in establishing capitalism around the world.”

World Order Economy Growing Capitalism Direct Threat Around The World Stability Capability

Author:Herbert Schiller

“There cannot exist in the future an economy which is still mercantile but which isn't capitalist anymore. Before capitalism there were economies which were partially mercantile, but capitalism is the last of this genre.”

Stills Lasts Economy Capitalism Genre Capitalist

Author:Amadeo Bordiga

“Today, you have 20 percent of the world controlling 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product; you've got a $30 trillion (US) world economy, and $24 trillion of it is in the developed countries... These inequities can't exist. So if you are talking about systemic breakdown, I think you have to look in terms of social breakdown.”

Ifs Thinking World Looks Country Today Social Term Talking Economy Products Percent Capitalism Gross Breakdown World Economy Developed Country Gross Domestic Product

Author:James Wolfensohn

“Radicals, on the other hand, want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. They feel that this minority control of production facilities is injurious to the large masses of people not only because of economic monopolies but because the political power inherent in this form of centralized economy does not augur for an ever expanding democratic way of life.”

“But though Usury is in itself immoral, and justly condemned by every ethical code, its chief and worst defect in the particular case we are now examining, the growth of Capitalism and its increasing proletariat, is the centralization of irresponsible control over the lives of men: the putting power over the proletariat into the hands of a few who can direct the loans of currency and credit without which that proletariat could not be fed and clothed and maintained in work.”

Source: The Crisis Of Civilization

“Capitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.”

Wells Long Certain Politics Principles Economy Rights Economic Capitalism Function Bases Property Remembered Liberalism Contracts Sane Recalls Exaggeration Misuse Economic Freedom

Author:Hilaire Belloc

“... But as a Godless greed pursued its career from excess to excess, it provoked a sort of twin hostile brother, equally Godless, born in the same atmosphere of utter disregard for the foundational virtues of humility and charity. This hostile twin brother of Capitalism was destined to be called Communism, and is today setting out to murder its elder.”

“Let us then repeat and firmly fix this main point: the evil, the root evil, of that to which the term Capitalism has come to be applied, is neither its functioning for profit nor its dependence upon legally protected private property; but the presence of a Proletariat, that is of men possessing political freedom, but dispossessed of economic freedom, and existing in such large numbers in any community as to determine the tone of all that community.”

Source: The Crisis Of Civilization

“Wherever the Industrial system has reached its second generation it is threatened by two mortal perils. The first is the demand by an organized proletariat for sustenance without relation to the product of its labor; a demand which threatens the very existence of PROFIT (on the necessary presumption of which Capitalism reposes). The second, and immediately graver danger is that of a revolt for the confiscation of the means of production.”

“Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century.”

Politics Economy Conditions Century Capitalism Aspect Universal Liberalism Protest

Book:Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556

Source: Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556

“One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind.”

“The real causes of terrorism are not poverty and oppression per se, but rather the bankruptcy of materialist ideologies, like Neo-Conservatism, which promise much but deliver little. The central doctrine of Neo-Conservatism is "democratic capitalism." This is the ultimate oxymoron, because in practice the political pluralism that should underlie democracy cannot exist in a climate of economic plutocracy.”

“We preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe.”

Source: Left at the post

“The Church's teaching on ownership diverges radically from collectivism as proclaimed by Marxism and "rigid" capitalism. The primacy of the person over things joint ownership of the means of work.”

Mean Persons Politics Church Economy Teaching Capitalism Liberalism Ownership Marxism Joints Collectivism Primacy

Author:Pope John Paul II

“All this plan does is make everybody a capitalist. I know that the New York Stock Exchange says there are 25 million shareholders in the United States, but let me tell you something: about 15 million of those people could save their dividends for 10 years and maybe buy a new suit. That's not what I call capitalism.”

“The political objective of universal capitalism is maximum individual autonomy, the separation of political power wielded by the holders of public office from economic power held by citizens, and the broad diffusion of privately owned economic power.”

Source: Two-factor Theory: the Economics of Reality; how to Turn Eighty Million Workers Into Capitalists on Borrowed Money, and Other Proposals

“I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution.”

Source: General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money

“Capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity-thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.”

Source: A Martin Luther King Treasury

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.”

Children Country Wisdom Politics Wealth Economy Democracy Capitalism Democratic Socialism Liberalism Capitalist Distribution Democratic Socialism Distribution Of Wealth Social Democracy Capitalism And Socialism

Book:From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice

Source: From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice

“Bring on those tired, labor-plagued, competition-weary companies and ESOP will breathe new life into them. They will find ESOP better than Geritol. It will revitalize what is wrong with capitalism. It will increase productivity. It will improve labor relations. It will promote economic justice. It will save the economic system. It will make our form of government and our concept of freedom prevail over those who don't agree with us.”

“Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.”

“The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism - an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat.”

“Some representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, "No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company." Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies.”

“Monopolistic capitalism is to blame for this; it sunders the right to own property from responsibility that owning property involves. Those who own only a few stocks have no practical control of any industry. They vote by postcard proxy, but they have rarely even seen "their" company. The two elements which ought to be inextricably joined in any true conception of private property - ownership and responsibility - are separated. Those who own do not manage; those who manage; those who manage and work do not control or own.”

“Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms.”

“The essence of capitalism is expressed in two of its basic features: a) profit maximization and b) market competition. In their abstract formulations none of them was supposed to have anything conspiratorial against the poor. But in real life they turn out to be the "killers" of the poor - by making rich the richer and poor the poorer.”

Two Real Turns Politics Poor Economy Rich Capitalism Essence Competition Profit Real Life Features Abstract Liberalism Killers Profit Maximization

Author:Muhammad Yunus

“What vitiates entirely the socialists economic critique of capitalism is their failure to grasp the sovereignty of the consumers in the market economy.”

Economy Economic Capitalism Consumers Sovereignty Critique Market Economy

Author:Ludwig von Mises

“We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. ... We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe - and would benefit the vast majority - are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets.”

Giving Done Action Political Process Chance Economy Media Conflict Benefits Majors Capitalism Majority Climate Change Stuck Minorities Elites Catastrophe Threatening Outlets Emissions

Author:Naomi Klein

“There are some things in the world we can't change- gravity, entropy, the speed of light, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere.”

“A lot of Democrats have said that raising the minimum wage is both good economics and good politics. The nonpartisan CBO issued a report today saying that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would cost the economy about 500,000 jobs...Why should we trust Democrats on anything when they couldn't have foreseen that this would be the case?”

“We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy-the form of state suited to capitalism-and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities.”

Knows States Character Form Natural Economy Democracy Capitalism Inequality Communism Inevitable Abandon Hypothesis Monstrous Market Economy Parliamentary Parliamentary Democracy

Author:Alain Badiou

“Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.”

Mean Order Individual Results Economy Capitalism Determination Strive Equality Inequality Free Market Authoritarian Government

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“Capitalism lures us onward like the mechanical hare before the greyhounds, insisting that the economy is infinite and sharing therefore irrelevant. Just enough greyhounds catch a real hare now and then to keep the others running till they drop. In the past it was only the poor who lost this game; now it is the planet.”

Real Enough Running Past Games Lost Poor Economy Planets Capitalism Infinite Now And Then Irrelevant Lure Insisting Hares Greyhounds

Book:A Short History Of Progress

Source: A Short History Of Progress

“The politicians say 'we' can't afford a tax cut. Maybe we can't afford the politicians.”

Funny Politics Business Economy Cutting Politician Taxes Capitalism Taxation Tax Cuts Tax Day Taxes Funny

Author:Steve Forbes

“If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.”

Source: The Political Writings of John Adams

“A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different kinds of market economies.”

Kind Different Term Economy Capitalism Range Different Kinds Slippery Market Economy

Author:Naomi Klein

“Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the capitalist economy. If we ever do find a better system, I'll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist.”

Ifs Needs Humans Doe Care Jobs Perfect Economy Capitalism Meetings Health Care Welfare Thrive Capitalist Better Jobs Human Needs Basic Needs Health Care System Capitalist Economy

Author:Peter Singer

“Marx's theory that only capitalists benefit from capitalism and workers are exploited was completely wrong. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Workers earned more as economies grew.”

Has Beens Economy Theory Grew Benefits Capitalism Workers Capitalist Could Have Been

Author:Kenneth Rogoff

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