Economics

"We are going to have to live more economically than we do. And we can do that and, I believe we will do it more happily, not less happily. And that the excesses the capitalist system has brought us, have got to be curbed somehow."

"Socialism is not the invention of an individual. It is essentially the outcome of economic and social conditions. The evils that Capitalism brings differ in intensity in different countries, but, the root cause of the trouble once discerned, the remedy is seen to be the same by thoughtful men and women. The cause is the private ownership of the means of life; the remedy is public ownership."

"The economic impact of the UBI together with the three tax changes in the US would be roughly as follows. First, bank deposits from UBI would increase significantly. Experience says that low-income beneficiaries would first pay off their high-cost credit card loans and student loans (though maybe not all at once). Money left over after that would be spent on household goods and services... Private debt would fall, but overall the government debt might increase equally, perhaps by US$500 billion per annum... UBI would actually cut some existing government costs, both for targeted welfare services that would become redundant, and even for prisons and police. Higher personal incomes available to spend on goods and services would also generate more tax revenues for the government. It is unclear how much would be added to the current intake, probably less than the net cost of the UBI. But the net deficit at the end of the day might be quite small or even non-existent. A viable democratic social system must not allow a "winner takes all" approach... It is time to consider another way of getting money into the system, without funneling it directly through the banks to the wealthy...."

"We live in a contradiction, a brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian – where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone – is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we’re lucky that we don’t live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc."

"Trump would have us believe that these are our only two choices: We can either have smash-and-grab capitalism, where so many hands in the cookie jar has resulted in so many government scandals, and where the top 1 percent have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, or we can have what’s happening in Venezuela, where the economy has collapsed and humanitarian and political crises have ensued."

"'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need."

"The executive director of the World Food Program is calling for the world’s billionaires to step up and help his organization fight hunger... David Beasley said he was supportive of capitalism but added that capitalism without a heart is a disaster. He said that the COVID-19 pandemic and the related government-mandated shutdowns to slow the spread of the virus caused over 100 million people to be on the brink of starvation worldwide... “I need an additional $6 billion this year to reach the 41 million ... that are knocking on famine’s door,” Beasley continued... He specifically mentioned Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and said that he needed just 10% of the $64 billion Bezos’s wealth grew by last year to fund the food program"

"The other story of capitalism, just as easily told, focuses on exploitation, violence, and unfathomable misery – it highlights desperate factory workers, brutalized plantation slaves, starving farmers in once self-sufficient countrysides, expropriated Native peoples, and all the victims of colonialism, war and displacement. Capitalism's forward march then becomes a story of satanic mills, the transportation of millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas, the vast theft of land and raw materials during colonialism, and a rapacious system's unprecedented assault on our natural environment. In this story, capitalism is an insatiable demon on a planet-threatening trajectory with staggering social costs."

"A religion may be discerned in capitalism—that is to say, capitalism serves essentially to allay the same anxieties, torments, and disturbances to which the so-called religions offered answers."

"Capitalism is presumably the first case of a blaming, rather than a repenting cult. ... An enormous feeling of guilt not itself knowing how to repent, grasps at the cult, not in order to repent for this guilt, but to make it universal, to hammer it into consciousness and finally and above all to include God himself in this guilt."

"The whole economic system of Capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications. ... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship of Mammon has become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised “mammonism” is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions. Economic materialism formulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream."

"But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary."

"The termination of the and the collapse of the Soviet Union followed in the wake of centuries of capital-driven globalization. Neoliberal capitalism has become the new paradigm of permanent growth. The implications of the neoliberal stage of capitalist marketization are enormous, as capitalism universalizes its rule, throws off "superfluous" and "injurious" constraints on "free trade," and increasingly realizes the goal of purity of function and purpose through the autonomization of the economy from society, so that the social is the economic. Over the last few decades, notes, "A neoliberal consensus has swept over the advanced capitalist world and has replaced the social-democratic consensus of the early post-war period." Not only have "" been negated in the global triumph of capitalism, so too have social democracies and the bulk of institutional networks designed to protect individuals from the ravages of privatization and the relinquishment of responsibilities to people in need to case them into barbaric barrenness of the "survival-of-the-fittest.""

"In the aftermath of 10,000 years of incessant growth and endless wars that humanity waged upon itself, other species, and the earth, we now live amidst unsustainable global capitalism and a system of growth that is driving natural systems to an irreversible tipping point."

"Washington's violent anticommunist crusade destroyed a number of alternative possibilities for world development. The fell apart partly because of its own internal failures. But it was also crushed. These countries were trying to do something very, very difficult. It doesn't help when the most powerful government in history is trying to stop you. It's hard to say how they might have reshaped the world if they were truly free to experiment and build something different. Maybe, the countries of the developing world would have been able to come together and insist on changing the rules of global capitalism. Perhaps many of these countries would not be capitalist at all."

"Capitalism is a mode of socio-economic organization in which a class of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial institutions provide the capital with which businesses produce goods and services and employ workers. In return the capitalist extracts profits from the goods created. Capitalism is frequently seen as the embodiment of the market economy, and hence may result in the optimum distribution of scarce resources, with a resulting improvement for all; this optimism is countered by pointing to the opportunity for exploitation inherent in the system."

"There was a time when people of the rich nations of the world regarded poverty as a "natural condition" for those living in the poor nations of the world. ... Today we have largely been stripped of this pseudo-innocence. We know that the poor are so poor because the rich are so rich, that the causes of poverty can be traced to deliberate decisions and deliberate economic and political policies designed to benefit the rich and powerful. We know that poverty and unemployment are not just accidents of history but deliberate, even indispensable, components of capitalism as an economic system."

"He's Sen Joe Manchin) beholden to his donors. He’s beholden to dark money... to special interests. And by “dark money,” we mean big donors that cannot be tracked or traced. And special interests have been heavily involved... The pharmaceutical lobby has spent more money lobbying this year than it ever has in its history — hundreds of millions of dollars. Senator... Manchin... has raised more money this year than he ever has in his career. So has Senator Sinema, by the way... we’re not talking about senators who are responding to the needs of their people... Senator Manchin is not talking about the people of West Virginia or the people of America; he’s talking — he’s responding to big special interests and his donors... this is a senator who believes that this is OK, that this is business as usual and there’s no problem at all with his family benefiting from investments in and payments from the pharmaceutical lobby... Unfortunately, he is not the only one. Many of my colleagues in the House and the Senate think it’s OK for big money to continue to control how Congress behaves. You know, this is capitalism."

"Many of my colleagues are capitalists, and they celebrate this, and they are completely OK with this. You know, they’re OK with Citizens United. They’re OK with corporations being designated as people and money being designated as free speech. This is the problem with Washington... And as we build back better in an equitable way and work together to save our democracy, we have to look special interests and big money directly in the face and deal with it and change how we do business in Washington. We cannot have a democracy with this level of inequality and this behavior happening in Washington. We just had an insurrection on January 6th, partly because we have a system that allowed someone like Donald Trump to get to the White House in the first place. And now we have 20 million, at least, people radicalized across the country, ready to fight for, you know, their liberties and freedoms as white nationalists. So, this is all connected and correlated, and Manchin is representative of all of that, as well as an old patriarchy that doesn’t want to support women getting back to work, particularly women of color, doesn’t want to support paid leave, doesn’t want to support universal child care and all the things that would benefit historically marginalized and disenfranchised people."

"The United States is the Darwinist capital of the capitalist world. A head afraid is a head haunted. A head haunted is a head hunted. Run for your life. Run from the guillotine to a head hunter who saves your head and raises your salary — so you’ll be caught in the red of the fish-market buying gadgets to distract your fragile imagination that is cut in the red market of blood—running and escaping — running again — changing your resume to update the fear you feel of being unemployed tomorrow — in the streets — and from there to welfare — and from there to begging."

"One of the most prevalent ideological mantras of Western capitalism is that the market should rule. But as the latest health and economic crises demonstrate, capitalists soon forget their worship of the market when times get tough. They scream for government money, and plenty of it. It turns out that “the market” is fine when it comes to whipping workers to accept lower wages, but when it comes to lower profits, the market can go hang."

"But there’s another angle to this. Capitalists preach “the market” for the working class – stand on your own two feet, don’t rely on the government – but themselves sponge off the public big time. Just look at the billions in subsidies and tax concessions the fossil fuel companies, huge enterprises for the most part, extract from state and federal governments in Australia. The vehicle manufacturers raked in hundreds of millions a year from the for decades until deciding it wasn’t enough and went overseas. This is why big companies and industry groups hire armies of former politicians to lobby on their behalf in the offices of premiers and prime ministers – there’s money in government coffers and they want it. And while the capitalists talk about “the market” setting wages for workers, in reality, they don’t really allow the market to do the job. They use the whole apparatus of state repression, the industrial tribunals, the police, the courts to suppress workers’ rights to organise to pursue their demands. But when a crisis hits all the bullshit about the market is thrown to the winds. And that is just what we are seeing now. Faced with the collapse of the capitalist economy, for the second time in a dozen years, with massive bankruptcies on the table and the stock market plunging by more than 30 percent and more to come, fervent advocates of the free market are now embracing government intervention to save their skins."

"Workers every day face their own personal crises – lack of money to pay the rent or the possibility of defaulting on their mortgage because the boss didn’t call them in for work this week, overdue utility bills that must be paid or risk being cut off, expenses for children’s education that fall due, the fear of redundancy. These are crises that are experienced personally but are really a collective crisis of everyday life for working class people. But when we ask for governments to respond, we are told that addressing these things collectively is not possible, and that this is just the way things are. But when the capitalist system goes into crisis, governments act promptly. It turns out that political decisions about the economy are possible and it is wholly possible for governments to tell the markets to go jump. [...] So, in an economic emergency, few of the usual rules apply. Governments can marshal the resources and can threaten the narrow interests of private businesses. Hardcore libertarians despise these measures as rampant socialism. From their perspective, they’re right: the very existence of such programs is condemnation of the free market capitalist model that they promote. But they are best seen only as another approach to the management of the capitalist economy. The fact that governments across the are now prepared to spend trillions of dollar to save the from collapse only confirms that the world economy cannot be left safely in the hands of “the market”. And, the situation clearly confirms that when the capitalist class and governments deem it necessary to save their system, lots of measures they once denounced as “unaffordable”, not permitted by the condition of “the economy”, are actually affordable and permitted. Governments can act when required. The ideological justifications of yesterday are revealed as threadbare. But nor are government interventions of this nature geared towards the interests of the working class, only the interests of the bosses."

"Like cancer, capitalism grows until it murders the host body. During this pandemic shutdown, it’s not getting the growth it needs and parts of it are becoming benign...For years...we’ve been lost in the frenetic pace of lives based on non-events, never pausing to reassess or recess. The spastic motion of avoidance filled the ether — afraid if we stop to truly think about it, we may find our scant few years of consciousness are pissed away as slaves at often meaningless jobs. They, the pustulant corporate owners, suck away our lives...And now, with life on holiday, we see almost none of it was essential... As our planet disintegrates under the weight of consumption and greed, most people are trapped in extreme poverty. And that’s how the system of capitalism is designed. Slightly altering capitalism will not change this reality... If we take away the false promises of capitalism and just say to people, “Private luxury is only for a few humans. You will never have it and won’t even have the chance at getting it” – if we admit that – then the entire justification for capitalism evaporates... The pandemic shutdown has shown us the problem. It has revealed what the world looks like without as much pollution, without the chaos and roar of mostly meaningless “work” performed by the exploited, using materials stolen from the abused, for the benefit of the pampered and oblivious. Another world is possible, and we’ve just gotten a glimpse of it."

"Let’s cut to the chase — and I’m sorry if the next statement upsets you — but in order to stop climate change and create a sustainable world, it requires the end of capitalism. I know I’m not “allowed” to say that. Saying such a thing would be heresy on one of the corporate media dog-and-pony bullshit infotainment hours. If I spoke that unholy fact on CNN or Fox News or CBS or NPR, a tranquilizer dart would immediately hit me in the neck, and they’d cut to a commercial while my lifeless body was dragged off. But let’s take our intellectual honesty out for a spin, shall we? As Guardian columnist George Monbiot said, “Capitalism has three innate characteristics that drive us towards destruction… firstly, that it generates and relies upon perpetual growth.” Endless growth on a planet with finite resources. Such a thing is physically impossible, no more scientifically feasible than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touching his toes. The reason we’re now in the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression is because capitalism requires nonstop growth, much like cancer. Also, like cancer, it grows until it murders the host body. And during this pandemic shutdown, it’s not getting the growth it screams out for. During this brief respite, many parts of capitalism are benign."

"Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because "that’s not how the free market works"—implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations."

"Is it the right of this, our generation, in its selfish materialism, to destroy these things because we are blinded by the dollar sign? Beauty-and all the values the derive from beauty-are not measured and evaluated in terms of the dollar."

"Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the moral, nor the ethics, nor the will to solve the problems of poverty."

"Capitalism is a system based on blind, destructive and tyrannical laws imposed on the human species."

"Capitalism produces beasts, socialism produces men."

"It is really impressive what a filthy system capitalism is, that can't guarantee its own people employment, nor health, nor adequate education; that cannot prevent youth from being corrupted by drugs, gamble, and all kind of vices."

"Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation, of the kind of misery and inequality that destroys social values. If you really look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ - who I think was the first socialist - only socialism can really create a genuine society."

"Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can not be transcended through capitalism itself; it must be done through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I’m also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington."

"The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself."

"Covid-19 has revealed glaring failures and monstrous brutalities in the current capitalist system. It represents both a crisis and an opportunity. Contests for controlling the narratives around the meaning of this pandemic will be the terrain of struggle for either a new, more humane common sense and society or a return to the status quo ante. The outcome of those contests is uncertain; everything depends on the actions that people take into their hands."

"I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one."

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

"The French Revolution qualitatively transformed all aspects of human culture, including science, for better or worse. The institutional ideological changes wrought in French science by the Revolution and its aftermath shaped the subsequent course of modern science everywhere. The essential underlying factor, as the Hessen thesis maintains, was the victory of capitalism, which the Revolution consolidated. The new social order spread to Europe and the rest of the world, everywhere subordinating the further development of science to capitalist interests."

"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system."

"I just don’t trust any of it. Every time I read something about how there’s been another ridiculous climb of the Dow Jones, there’s a part of me that goes, “This can’t be good.” None of this is real money. You know what I mean? It’s not like there’s actually more of anything. It’s just ideas. When people are getting richer and richer but they’re not actually producing anything, it can’t end well."

"Advertising is an important characteristic of modern capitalism and a contributory factor in the establishment and maintenance of monopoly positions."

"Whereas Marx identified the essential condition of capitalism as one of enforced servitude (wage slavery), the Frankfurt School alluded to something even more insidious: a willingness in people to inscribe themselves within the very system that oppresses them; to defer to the widespread mythology of those who have 'made it': the rags-to-riches millionaire, the lottery winner, the pop/sports idols and so on. Contemporary subjectivity is thus one of perverse collaboration. ... Late capitalism is a kind of Stockholm syndrome writ large: a skewed and rather desperate faith in our own socio-economic betrayal."

"Our society is excessively individualistic. Markets reduce everything to a question of individual calculation and selfishness. We have become obsessed with money and acquisition at the expense of our social relationships and our own human fulfillment. Capitalism spreads a plague of materialism, which undermines our contentedness, leaving many of us isolated and lonely. Unless we can rediscover the art of sharing, our society will fragment altogether, making trust impossible. Unless we can recover the values associated with friendship and altruism, we will descend into a state of nihilistic ennui."

"Racism is integrally linked to capitalism... it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place... The Industrial Revolution, which pivoted around the production of capital, was enabled by slave labor in the U.S... we have a long way to go before we can begin to talk about an economic system that is not based on exploitation and on the super-exploitation of Black people, Latinx people and other racialized populations... We now have the conceptual means to engage in discussions, popular discussions, about capitalism... The notion of the requires us to understand the globalization of capitalism. consciousness helps us to understand the predicament of immigrants, who are barred from the U.S. by the wall that has been created by the current occupant. These conditions have been created by global capitalism. And I think this is a period during which we need to begin that process of popular education, which will allow people to understand the interconnections of racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism."

"Capitalism is not necessarily more immoral than previous social systems with regard to cruelty to humans and the gratuitous destruction of nature. As a mode of production and a social system, however, capitalism requires people to be destructive of the environment. Three destructive aspects of the capitalist system stand out when we view this system in relation to the extinction crisis: 1) capitalism tends to degrade the conditions of its own production; 2) it must expand ceaselessly in order to survive; 3) it generates a chaotic world system, which in turn intensifies the extinction crisis."

"Capitalism is clearly and undeniably failing. It’s directly responsible for the climate catastrophe and everybody knows it."

"The capitalist system confronts the world with problems that capitalism is unable to solve: mass inequality, climate change, and war. Capitalism can't solve these problems because capitalism causes them."

"The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of civilization. The time has come to regenerate society — we are on the eve of universal change."

"Ignorance alone stands in the way of Socialist success. The capitalist parties understand this and use their resources to prevent the workers from seeing the light. Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery. Capitalist parties stand for Slavery and Night. The Socialist Party is the herald of Freedom and Light."

"Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse."

"During slavery, "Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon," writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his 2012 book, "Flush Times and Fever Dreams." That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us the , the and the . It is the culture that has produced and undignified working conditions. If today America promotes a particular kind of low-road capitalism — a capitalism of poverty wages, and ; a winner-take-all capitalism of stunning disparities not only permitting but awarding financial rule-bending; a racist capitalism that ignores the fact that slavery didn’t just deny black freedom but built white fortunes, originating the black-white wealth gap that annually grows wider — one reason is that American capitalism was founded on the lowest road there is."

"The eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders made over $10 billion last week when their stock holdings skyrocketed after the discovery of the new Omicron variant. This comes as global public health advocates warn the world will keep seeing more coronavirus variants unless wealthy nations and vaccine manufacturers do more to address vaccine inequity. “The companies that make the most are doing the least to share their technology,” says Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now U.K., which is documenting Big Pharma’s profits. “The priority is making enormous amounts of money for some of the richest people in the world.”"

"The new coronavirus variant Omicron is spreading across the world at an unprecedented rate. The World Health Organization warns cases of the heavily mutated variant have been confirmed in 77 countries, and likely many others that have yet to detect it. With international infections climbing, the Biden administration is facing renewed demands to follow through on his now seven-month-old pledge to ensure companies waive intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines and share them with the world. Now a group of vaccine experts has just released a list of over a hundred companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the potential to produce mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19. They say it’s one of the most viable solutions to fight vaccine inequity around the world and combat the spread of coronavirus variants, including Omicron."

"These vaccines were created through public money — nearly $500 million of German public money from taxpayers to BioNTech, nearly a billion dollars in money from U.S. taxpayers through the government to Moderna, several billions of dollars after that in exchange for buying back vaccines at high prices. So these are very much the people’s vaccines. It’s just that they are private property.... when the Moderna CEO says, “Oh, anyone can make the Moderna vaccine,” he’s being a bit disingenuous... It’s not really possible to do that. The way vaccines work and the way regulation around vaccines work is that they need to be made with authorization and a license. Moderna and Pfizer or BioNTech... need to authorize companies to make their vaccine... to share an instruction manual as to how to do it... The problem is... it loosens Moderna and Pfizer and BioNTech’s stranglehold on these vaccines... It undercuts the massive tens of billions of dollars of profit and revenue that they can earn off selling to poor countries in the next couple of years, once they’re done with rich countries... which is why we’re asking the U.S. and German governments instead to say, “Look, in the face of this intransigence, it’s time to use emergency laws... that you can use, that you have the moral and legal power to put into effect, and end this pandemic for us and bring us out of this incredible cycle of hell."

"The major capitalist countries faced a stark choice: deepen socialistic reform, public ownership and initiative, and invest in the still growing Third World to expand demand so as to keep growth going or, as the neoliberals in their think tanks bankrolled by capital and some politicians already converted to the new creed recommended, lift postwar restrictions on capital, now blamed for the growth slowdown, at home and campaign to lift them abroad. The former favoured working people the world over while the latter favoured capital and its comprador allies in the Third World. Capital won. Though union density and the political strength of the historic parties of labour and the left were at historic highs, the left was intellectually too weak to present viable alternatives. Over the post-war decades, non-Communist working class parties and organisations in the major capitalist countries ‘had no economic policy of their own’ and had focused only on ‘improving the condi- tions of their working-class constituencies’ through reliance ‘on a strong wealth- creating capitalist economy to finance their aims’ (Hobsbawm 1994, 272)."

"While the balance of class power remains heavily tilted in favour of capital in its homelands, the balance of international power is tilting markedly away from capitalism, driving all outside the charmed circle of the United States, Europe, Japan and the settler colonies bit by bit, with advances and reverses, steadily away from the major capitalist countries and probably, from capitalism. This process began with the Russian Revolution and, after the reverses of the 1990s, resumed in the new century as an alliance of countries seeking to assert their economic and security sovereignty—including Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and Iran—began forming with China as its economic centre. The pandemic and the war have accelerated these processes. The United States’ proxy war on Russia acts as a prism that refracts the key elements of the underlying unfolding of the geopolitical economy of capitalism and socialism. It constitutes a resumé of the state of the United states’-declining imperial project, of the balance between US capacities and the possibilities and constraints imposed by the world’s geopolitical economy."

"Hey Gorby, did you hear this quote ... "Communism is the most painful path between capitalism and capitalism.""

"As for the explanation that fascism is a last desperate attempt of capitalism to delay the socialist revolution, it simply is not true. It is not true that ‘big business’ promoted fascism. On the contrary, both in Italy and in Germany the proportion of fascist sympathizers and backers was smallest in the industrial and financial classes. It is equally untrue that ‘big business’ profits from fascism; of all the classes it probably suffers most from totalitarian economics and Wehrwirtschaft."

"[P]rofits are so completely subordinated in [[Nazi Germany|[Nazi] Germany]] and [[w:Fascist Italy|[Fascist] Italy]] to requirements of a militarily conceived national interest and of full employment that the maintenance of the profit principle is purely theoretical. Profits have lost their autonomy as an independent, not to say the supreme, goal of economic activity."

"We face a probable future of nuclear-armed states warring over a scarcity of resources; and that scarcity is largely the consequence of capitalism itself. For the first time in history, our prevailing form of life has the power not simply to breed racism and spread cultural cretinism, drive us into war or herd us into labour camps, but to wipe us from the planet. Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism. The traditional leftist slogan "Socialism or barbarism" was never more grimly apposite."

"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists"

"Under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labour – not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. ... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals..."

"Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo"

"The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the of individuals. ... This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career."

"The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product."

"The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers."

"The institution of Capitalist property, moreover, permits a minority of the population to control and to regulate access to, and the use of all socially produced wealth and natural resources. You have to pay for the land, water, and the fresh air to some giant utility company or real estate firm. This controlling group may be a separate economic class or the State itself, but in either case the institution of property leads to a set of social and economic relations, Capitalism, in which a small sector of society reaps enormous benefits and privileges at the expense of the laboring minority. The Capitalist economy is based, not upon fulfilling the needs of everyone, but on amassing profit for a few."

"Capital is money, but money as a process, which reproduces and increases its value. Capital arises only when the owner of the means of production finds workers on the market as sellers of their own labor power. Capitalism developed as the form of private property that shifted from the rural agricultural style to the urban, factory style of labor. Capitalism centralizes the instruments of production and brings individuals closely alongside of others in a disciplined work force. Capitalism is industrialized commodity production, which makes goods for profit, not for social needs. This is a special distinction of capital and capital alone. We may understand Capitalism and the basis of our observations, as Capital endowed with will and consciousness. That is, as those people who acquire capital, and function as an elite, moneyed class with enough national and political power to rule society. Further, that accumulated capital is money, and with money they control the means of production that is defined as the mills, mines, factories, land, water, energy and other natural resources, and the rich know that this is their property. They don’t need ideological pretensions, and are under no illusions about “.”"

"Capitalism across the world still relies heavily on the idea of different categories of men’s work and women’s work, in which ‘women’s work’ (such as housework, child-rearing and emotional labour) is either poorly paid or not paid at all. In order for this categorization to function, it needs to rest on a clear idea of how to divide men and women. Capitalism also requires a certain level of unemployment to function. If there were enough work to go round, no worker would worry about losing their job, and all workers could demand higher wages and better conditions. The ever-present spectre of unemployment, on the other hand, enables employers to dictate conditions. Equally, in times of severe crisis this ‘reserve army’ of unemployed people can be called into employment as and when the economy requires it. This system of deliberate unemployment needs ways to mark who will work and who will be left unemployed. In our society this is principally achieved through race, class, gender and disability."

"Prostitutes are the inevitable product of a society that places ultimate importance on money, possessions, and competition."

"Less than two decades into the twenty-first century, it is evident that capitalism has failed as a social system. The world is mired in , , and the most extreme inequality in , accompanied by mass unemployment and , , poverty, hunger, wasted output and lives, and what at this point can only be called a planetary ecological “death spiral.” The , the greatest technological advance of our time, has rapidly mutated from a promise of free communication and liberated production into new means of surveillance, control, and displacement of the working population. The institutions of liberal democracy are at the point of collapse, while fascism, the rear guard of the capitalist system, is again on the march, along with patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and war."

"To say that capitalism is a failed system is not, of course, to suggest that its breakdown and disintegration is imminent. It does, however, mean that it has passed from being a historically necessary and creative system at its inception to being a historically unnecessary and destructive one in the present century."

"Indications of this failure of capitalism are everywhere. Stagnation of investment punctuated by bubbles of financial expansion, which then inevitably burst, now characterizes the so-called free market. Soaring inequality in and wealth has its counterpart in the declining material circumstances of a majority of the population. for most workers in the United States have barely budged in forty years despite steadily rising productivity. has increased, while work and safety protections on the job have been systematically jettisoned. Unemployment data has become more and more meaningless due to a new institutionalized underemployment in the form of contract labor in the gig economy. Unions have been reduced to mere shadows of their former glory as capitalism has asserted totalitarian control over workplaces. With the demise of Soviet-type societies, social democracy in Europe has perished in the new atmosphere of “liberated capitalism.” The capture of the produced by overexploited populations in the poorest regions of the world, via the instituted by multinational corporations, is leading to an unprecedented amassing of financial wealth at the center of the world economy and relative poverty in the periphery."

"While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules. Debt and the accumulation of interest also make it difficult for countries to realize the potential of their own economies and keep citizens from enjoying their real purchasing power. To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."

"I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that it has survived at all. (...) I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism."

"It is true that if you simply have market capitalism not embedded in a true democratic system, then you will get increasing inequality... And that is why every modern capitalist system has a welfare state and in Europe these welfare states consume 50 percent of GDP, redistribute it in fairer ways. I have always thought the European Union represented a truer embodiment of what I would regard as something like the end of history... The United States' model is a little bit more liberal and therefore we do less redistribution than, let's say, Holland or Sweden, but all modern states do that."

"Like the nuclear war that never came, the revival and eventual triumph of democratic capitalism was a surprising development that few people on either side of the ideological divide in 1945 would have foreseen. Circumstances during the first half of the 20th century had provided physical strength and political authority to dictatorships. Why should the second half have been different? The reasons had less to do with any fundamental shift in the means of production, as a Marxist historian might have argued, than with a striking shift in the attitude of the United States toward the international system. Despite having built the world's most powerful and diversified economy, Americans had shown remarkably little interest, prior to 1941, in how the rest of the world was governed. Repressive regimes elsewhere might be regrettable, but they could hardly harm the United States. Even involvement in World War I had failed to alter this attitude, as Wilson discovered to his embarrassment and chagrin. What did change it, immediately and irrevocably, was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That event shattered the illusion that distance ensured safety: that it did not matter who ran what on the other side of the ocean. The nation's security was now at risk, and because future aggressors with air and naval power could well follow the Japanese example, the problem was not likely to go away. There was little choice, then, but for the United States to assume global responsibilities. Those required winning the war against Japan and Germany—Hitler having declared war on the United States four days after Pearl Harbor—but they also meant planning a postwar world in which democracy and capitalism would be secure."

"The collapse of communism, then, opened the entire world to capitalist penetration, shrank the imaginative and ideological space in which opposition to capitalist thought and practices might incubate, and impelled those who remained leftists to redefine their radicalism in alternative terms, which turned out to be those that capitalist systems could more, rather than less, easily manage. This was the moment when neoliberalism in the United States went from being a political movement to a political order."

"Capitalism as a driving force for climate change must, at the very least, be interrogated, and already-existing Indigenous rights frameworks and language can help us do this."

"It is rotten and dismal that a world of so many hundred million people should be ruled by a single caste that has the power to lead millions to life or to death, indeed on a whim...This caste has spun its web over the entire earth; capitalism recognizes no national boundaries. ... Capitalism has learned nothing from recent events and wants to learn nothing, because it places its own interests ahead of those of the other millions. Can one blame those millions for standing up for their own interests, and only for those interests? Can one blame them for striving to forge an international community whose purpose is the struggle against corrupt capitalism? Can one condemn a large segment of the educated Stürmer youth for protesting against the greatest ability? Is it not an abomination that people with the most brilliant intellectual gifts should sink into poverty and disintegrate, while others dissipate, squander, and waste the money that could help them? … You say the old propertied class also worked hard for what it has. Granted, that may be true in many cases. But do you also know about the conditions under which workers were living during the period when capitalism “earned” its fortune?"

"Capitalism is the immoral distribution of capital … Germany will become free at that moment when the thirty millions on the left and the thirty millions on the right make common cause. Only one movement is capable of doing this: National Socialism, embodied in one Führer – Adolf Hitler."

"It would be better for us to go down with Bolshevism than live in eternal slavery under capitalism."

"We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation. . . .The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism."

""Capitalism," says Irving Kristol, "is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived." The reason it's so unromantic is that it doesn't tell people what to do and that can be very frustrating for intellectuals who want to tell people what to do."

"Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear."

"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings."

"Those of us now in isolation, in spite of our fear and frustrations, in spite of our grief ⁠— for those who have died or may die, for the life we once lived, for the future we once hoped for ⁠— there is also a sense we are cocooned, transforming, waiting, dreaming. [...] But when the Spring comes, as it must, when we emerge from hibernation, it might be a time of profound global struggle against both the drive to “return to normal” ⁠— the same normal that set the stage for this tragedy ⁠— and the “new normal” which might be even worse. Let us prepare as best we can, for we have a world to win. [...] I imagine that struggles to come will be defined by either the desperate drive to “return to normal,” or a great refusal of that normal. But this is no manichean melodrama. On the one hand, there will be those who seek to return us to the order of global revenge capitalism to which we had become accustomed: a nihilistic system of global accumulation that appears to be taking a needless, warrantless vengeance on so many of us, though without any one individual intending any particular malice, and one which breeds the worst kind of revenge politics."

"We should expect the demand that we return to the vindictive normal from the beneficiaries of that system ⁠— the wealthy, the political elite ⁠— who have everything to gain from business as usual. But we should also expect it from millions of those oppressed, exploited, and alienated by that system, whose lives have been reduced to slow death under it. After months of chaos, isolation and fear, the desire to return to normal, even if normal is an abusive system, may be extremely strong. The stage is set for this desire to be accompanied by a frantic . Will we want someone to blame, especially those of us who lose loved ones? Must there be blood, figurative or literal?: a baptism by fire so that the old order ⁠— which, of course, created the conditions of austerity and inequality that made this plague so devastating⁠ — can be reborn in purified form."

"Things will never be “normal” again: some of us, the privileged and wealthy, may be afforded the illusion, but this illusion is likely to be carried on the backs of the vast majority who will work harder, longer and for less, suffer greater risks and fewer rewards. The debts of the pandemic, literal and figurative, will have to be repaid. On the other hand ⁠— or maybe at the same time ⁠— we can also expect that, among the powerful and among the rest of us, there will be calls to reject the “return to normal,” but in order to embrace something even worse. It is likely that the chaos and deaths of the pandemic will be blamed on too much democracy, liberalism and empathy. Now that states are flexing their muscles and taking full command of society, there will be many who do not want the sleeve to be rolled back down. We may yet see, in this crisis, the use of repressive force on civilians ⁠— as it is already being used on migrants and incarcerated people ⁠— and I fear that it will be seen by many as justified, a to feed the Gods of fear."

"Against all these fateful outcomes there will be those among us who refuse to return to normal, or to embrace the “new normal,” those of us who know that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse.” Already, in the that the crisis has unleashed, we are seeing extraordinary measures emerge that reveal that much of the neoliberal regime’s claims to necessity and austerity were transparent lies. The God-like market has fallen, again. In different places a variety of measures are being introduced that would have been unimaginable even weeks ago. [...] We are discovering, against the upside-down capitalist value paradigm which has enriched the few at the expense of the many, whose labor is truly valuable: care, service, and frontline public sector workers. There has been a proliferation of grassroots radical demands for policies of care and solidarity not only as emergency measures, but in perpetuity. and capitalist are panicking, fearful that half a century of careful ideological work to convince us of the necessity of neoliberalism ⁠— the transformation of our very souls ⁠— will be dispelled in the coming weeks and months. The sweet taste of freedom ⁠— real, interdependent freedom, not the lonely freedom of the market ⁠— lingers on the palate like a long-forgotten memory, but quickly turns bitter when its nectar is withdrawn. If we do not defend these material and spiritual gains, capitalism will come for its revenge."

"The systems advocated by professed upholders of laissez-faire are in reality permeated with coercive restrictions of individual freedom. ... What is the government doing when it “protects a property right”? Passively, it is abstaining from interference with the owner when he deals with the thing owned; actively, it is forcing the non-owner to desist from handling it, unless the owner consents. Yet Mr. Carver would have it that the government is merely preventing the non-owner from using force against the owner. This explanation is obviously at variance with the facts—for the non-owner is forbidden to handle the owner's property even where his handling of it involves no violence or force whatever. ... In protecting property the government is doing something quite apart from merely keeping the peace. It is exerting coercion wherever that is necessary to protect each owner, not merely from violence, but also from peaceful infringement of his sole right to enjoy the thing owned."

"Capitalism is the greatest social technology ever invented for creating prosperity in human societies, if it is well managed, but capitalism, because of the fundamental multiplicative dynamics of complex systems, tends towards, inexorably, inequality, concentration and collapse. The work of democracies is to maximize the inclusion of the many in order to create prosperity, not to enable the few to accumulate money. Government does create prosperity and growth, by creating the conditions that allow both entrepreneurs and their customers to thrive. Balancing the power of capitalists like me and workers isn't bad for capitalism. It's essential to it. Programs like a reasonable minimum wage, affordable healthcare, paid sick leave, and the progressive taxation necessary to pay for the important infrastructure necessary for the middle class like education, R and D, these are indispensable tools shrewd capitalists should embrace to drive growth, because no one benefits from it like us."

"The problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it's getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks. So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. All highly prosperous capitalist democracies are characterized by massive investments in the middle class and the infrastructure that they depend on."

"I am a capitalist, and after a 30-year career in capitalism... I'm not just in the top one percent, I'm in the top .01 percent of all earners. Today, I have come to share the secrets of our success, because rich capitalists like me have never been richer... How do we manage to grab an ever-increasing share of the economic pie every year? ... here's the dirty secret. There was a time in which the economics profession worked in the public interest, but in the neoliberal era, today, they work only for big corporations and billionaires... We could choose to enact economic policies that raise taxes on the rich, regulate powerful corporations or raise wages for workers... But neoliberal economists would warn that all of these policies would be a terrible mistake, because raising taxes always kills economic growth, and any form of government regulation is inefficient, and raising wages always kills jobs. Well, as a consequence of that thinking, over the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world. And yet, as middle class families struggle to get by on wages that have not budged in about 40 years, neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization."

"Greed is not good. Being rapacious doesn't make you a capitalist, it makes you a sociopath. And in an economy as dependent upon cooperation at scale as ours, sociopathy is as bad for business as it is for society.... Neoliberal economic theory has sold itself to you as unchangeable natural law, when in fact it's social norms and constructed narratives based on pseudoscience. If we truly want a more equitable, more prosperous and more sustainable economy, if we want high-functioning democracies and civil society, we must have a new economics."

"Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed."

"The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pass almost unnoticed. So too with the capitalist. ... By capitalist, I mean the investor who puts his money into a concern and draws profits there from without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed."

"Imperialism, taking tribute from conquered races, the accumulation of great fortunes, the development of a population which owns no property, and is always in poverty. Land has gone out of cultivation and physical deterioration is an alarming fact. An so we Socialists say the system which is producing these results must not be allowed to continue. A system which has robbed religion of its saviour, destroyed handicraft, which awards the palm of success to the unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on the streets and upright men into mean-spirited time-servers, cannot continue. In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow. Socialism with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; socialism throbs with the life of the days that are to be. It has claimed its martyrs in the past, is claiming them now, will claim them still; but what then? Better to "rebel and die in the twenty worlds sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life.""

"[Harvey defined capitalism in terms of three features: it is growth-oriented] a steady state of growth is essential for the health of a capitalist economic system... growth in real values rests on the exploitation of living labor in production... [and it is] necessarily technologically and organizationally dynamic."

"Any sensible person right now would join an organisation."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”"

"Bill Clinton and his two treasury secretary enablers, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, instituted a system of unregulated capitalism that has resulted in financial anarchy. This anarchic form of capitalism, where everything, including human beings and the natural world, is a commodity to exploit until exhaustion or collapse, is justified by identity politics. It is sold as “enlightened liberalism” as opposed to the old pro-union class politics that saw the Democrats heed the voices of the working class. Financial anarchy and short-term plunder have destroyed long-term financial and political stability. It has also pushed the human species, along with most other species, closer and closer towards extinction."

"But the rise of capitalism also depended on something else. It needed labour. Lots of it, and cheap. solved this problem too. With subsistence economies destroyed and commons fenced off, people had no choice but to sell their labour for wages - not to earn a bit of extra income, as under the previous regime, nor to satisfy the demands of a lord, as under serfdom, but simply in order to survive. They became, in a word, proletarians."

"Capitalism rose on the back of organized violence, mass impoverishment, and the systematic destruction of self-sufficient subsistence economies. It did not put an end to serfdom; rather, it put an end to the progressive revolution that had ended serfdom. Indeed, by securing virtually total control over the means of production, and rendering peasants and workers dependent on them for survival, capitalists took the principles of serfdom to new extremes. People did not welcome this new system with open arms; on the contrary, they rebelled against it. The period 1500 to the 1800s, right into the Industrial Revolution, was among the bloodiest, most tumultuous times in world history."

"Capitalism relies on maintaining an artificial scarcity of essential goods and services (like housing, healthcare, transport, etc), through processes of enclosure and commodification. We know that enclosure enables monopolists to raise prices and maximize their profits (consider the rental market, the US healthcare system, or the British rail system). But it also has another effect. When essential goods are privatized and expensive, people need more income than they would otherwise require to access them. To get it they are compelled to increase their labour in capitalist markets, working to produce new things that may not be needed (with increased energy use, resource use, and ecological pressure) simply to access things that clearly are needed, and which are quite often already there."

"The rise of socialism in the East inspired socialist movements in the West (most famously in Germany, which came to the brink of a socialist revolution during the and of 1919–20). These revolutionary movements posed a real threat to capitalism in the core. Capitalism survived in part by crushing these movements—quite often violently, but also by making concessions to working-class demands, including wage improvements and some public services, although never conceding to the core demands for decommodification and economic democracy. Thus, the rise of the social democratic welfare state. Capital accumulation requires cheap labor, however, and these concessions would have brought capitalism in the core to its knees were it not for the fact that capitalists were able to obtain cheap labor instead in the periphery, through colonial and neocolonial forms of appropriation, which continue to this day."

"For capital, the primary purpose of production is not to meet specific human needs or to achieve social progress, much less to achieve any concrete ecological goals. Rather, the overriding objective is to maximize and accumulate profit. The result is that the capitalist world-system is characterized by perverse forms of production. Capital directs finance to highly profitable output, like sport utility vehicles, industrial meat, fast fashion, weapons, fossil fuels, and property speculation, while reproducing chronic shortages of necessary goods and services like public transit, public health care, nutritious food, renewable energy, and affordable housing. This dynamic occurs within national economies but also has clear imperialist dimensions. Land, labor, and productive capacities across the Global South are roped into supplying global commodity chains dominated by Northern firms—bananas for Chiquita, cotton for Zara, coffee for Starbucks, smartphones for Apple, and coltan for Tesla, all for the benefit of the core, all at artificially depressed prices—instead of producing food, housing, health care, education, and industrial goods to meet national needs. Capital accumulation in the core depends on draining labor and resources from the periphery."

"As the Marxist movement splintered and mutated into new forms, Left intellectuals and activists began to look for new ways to attack capitalism. Environmental issues, alongside women’s and minorities’ issues, came to be seen as a new weapon in the arsenal against capitalism."

"The enormous dynamic and creative, as well as destructive energy of capitalism... is written up with more praise and more respect by Marx and Engels in the 1848 Communist Manifesto than probably by anyone since. I don't think anyone has ever said so precisely and with such awed admiration how great capitalism is, how inventive, how innovative, how dynamic, how much force of creativity it unleashes."

"The use of the term 'capitalism' is itself a Marxist way of thinking. The idea that what we live under is an 'ism' conditions the belief that there is another 'ism' under which we can live. Whereas in fact capitalism is just a way of describing the economic system as it will invariably function in one form or another."

"It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment."

"Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world."

"There are no good aspects of monopoly capital, so no reservations need be recognized in its destruction. Monopoly capital is the enemy. It crushes the life force of all of the people. It must be completely destroyed, as quickly as possible, utterly, totally, ruthlessly, relentlessly destroyed."

"The essence of a U.S.A. totalitarian socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of a mass participatory society. We must rip away its mask. Then the debate can end, and we can enter a new phase of struggle based on the development of an armed revolutionary culture that will triumph."

"We are quite obviously faced with a need to organize some small defenses to the more flagrant abuses of the system now. ... While we await the precise moment when all of capitalism's victims will indignantly rise to destroy the system, we are being devoured. ... Some of us are going to have to take our courage in hand and build a hard revolutionary cadre for selective retaliatory violence."

"Most of the fascist functionaries live as unguarded as I do. I could slip a knife between Max Rafferty's ribs. The Agnews and Du Ponts, the Rockefellers and Morgans, all of the Getty, Hunt, and Hughes types who sneak around in armored cars and jets are just as reachable. ... Hell will be their reward."

"When you are poor you don’t have any social respect or social worth because everything is defined in terms of money and how much of it you have. This is what capitalism does. It turns all values into commercial values, even the value of life itself."

"Capitalism, which the ex-communist countries are beginning to experience, does not set out to eliminate poverty but, as far as possible, to make it bearable, to keep it, at the lowest cost, below the threshold where it would inevitably explode and threaten the well-being of the privileged."

"Gone is the communist scarecrow, so useful for relativising the phenomena of poverty in the West; liberal capitalism has lost its best alibi. From now on, the zones of poverty in the European Community and in North America, the overwhelming misery of underdeveloped countries, the social disarray of countries finally emerging from communism – all of these will be attributable to the only economic system still in place, which is unable to find a new lease of life."

"The failure of capitalism is still much better than the success of socialism."

"an assumption deeply integral to capitalism has been absorbed by all of us, since it is reflected in so much of what we see. I have called this the Scarcity Theory, not enough to go around: not enough love, not enough time, not enough appointments at the foodstamps office, not enough food stamps, not enough money, not enough seats on the subway. It's pervasive. We learn mistrust of each other, bone deep: everything is skin off somebody's nose."

"The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the War, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous - and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed."

"I worked at a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever the nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a communist."

"The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism."

"I understand that you have an economic system in America known as Capitalism. Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders. You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production that history has ever known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is the danger that you will misuse your Capitalism. I still contend that money can be the root of all evil. It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism. I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity."

"True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just.""

"I am conviced that capitalism has seen its best days in American, and not only in America, but in the entire world. It is a well known fact that no social institut can survive when it has outlived its usefullness. This, capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses."

"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. ... It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s."

"My claim is that we do not have a market economy, but a capitalist economy. Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy. Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonable equal in their buying and selling of economic power. It is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands, using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way. … This is not a market, and definitely not a democracy. The basic principle of democracy is "one person one vote" and in the capitalistic society, we have "one dollar one vote.""

"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy."

"Although liberal capitalism has generated many social, political, and environmental challenges, it has freed hundreds of millions from the widespread servility, entrenched cruelty, and capricious regimes that have dominated most of history. The material conditions of life have improved dramatically, not only in Europe and America, but throughout much of the world. In the five hundred years up to around 1700, economic output per capita was flat, which means that a person of median income in 1700 was no better off, economically speaking, than the average person in 1200. By the mid-1800s, particularly in the West, economic output had increased markedly; the growth accelerated after 1940 and spread to the rest of the world."

"No doubt, free enterprise is a harsh system; it demands real men. But socialism, which appeals to envious people craving for security and afraid to decide for themselves, impairs human dignity and crushes man utterly."

"For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not 'trade' but democratic governance."

"The Speech... “Let’s face it...it’s a dog-eat-dog world... Every man for himself. For all your ideas about making the world a better place, when it comes down to it, everyone’s just interested in their own skin. It’s a rat race. That’s the way all of nature works... The survival of the fittest... People like you want to change the world. But when you’ve had the experience I’ve had, you’ll know better. Our society is structured this way simply because that’s what works best... This type of conversation...channels the themes we hear every day from those in a position of authority — from talking heads on TV, from successful businesspeople, from teachers, from school textbooks... its ideas seep into our daily thoughts... They infuse much of what is accepted as indisputably true in most conversations that take place about world affairs. They are so pervasive that most of us never question them... In fact, every one of those building blocks is flawed. ...This worldview has accomplished a lot. It wrested intellectual control from the hidebound superstitions of traditional Christian theology, and laid the foundation for modern science — one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It has also been an underlying cause of the horrendous devastation suffered by non-European peoples and cultures, and boundless destruction of the natural world. And the fundamental flaws in its construction have now become so gaping that they threaten the very survival of our civilization—and much of the living Earth...Many people across the globe are realizing that there is something terribly wrong with the direction our world is headed."

"Like fish that don’t realize they’re swimming in water because it’s all they know, we tend to assume that our worldview simply describes the world the way it is—rather than recognizing it’s a constructed lens that shapes our thoughts and ideas into certain preconditioned patterns... The reason a worldview is so important is that it imbues virtually every aspect of the way people think, what they value, and how they act—without them even realizing it. Worldviews lead different cultures to respond to their reality in fundamentally different ways. If you believe that all living beings are family, you will treat them in a different way than if you think the natural world is a resource to be exploited. If you think other humans are inherently cooperative, you’ll approach a person differently than if you think that, ultimately, everyone is selfish and competitive. If you presume that technology can fix our biggest problems, you won’t feel the need to consider the underlying systems that caused those problems to arise in the first place."

"Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred."

"As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These “humanitarian parts” are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its “antirent and anticapital parts,” means to get rid of the poodle."

"So in the new exuberant aggressiveness of world capitalism we see what communists and their allies had held at bay."

"It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat, just what might happen to any poor man's son! I want every man to have the chance, and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he can better his condition. When he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system."

"The widespread assumption that big business and big government are fundamentally at odds, and that big business supports a free market, serves to maintain the ruling partnership in power. ... The establishment left disguises its government intervention on behalf of the rich as government intervention on behalf of the poor, while the right disguises its government intervention on behalf of the rich as an opposition to government intervention per se – and each side has an interest in maintaining the myth propagated by its nominal opponent. For those who are repelled by the realities of corporate capitalism are lured into becoming opponents of the free market and foot soldiers for the left wing of the ruling class, while those who are attracted by free-market ideals are lured into becoming defenders of corporate capitalism and foot soldiers for the right wing of the ruling class. Either way, the partnership as a whole has its power reinforced."

"Under a capitalist economy such as that of the United States, employers profit by working their employees as hard as they can for as many hours as possible and for as little pay as they can get away with. Their goal is to exploit us. Our lives reflect that reality. Many of us don't enjoy our work. We don't get paid enough. We have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet if we have a job at all. Our bosses treat us like garbage and we don't feel like their is anything we can do about it. We face the threat that machines will replace us. Our jobs are moved overseas, where employers can generate even higher profits. Sometimes a job at Wal-Mart is the only option we have."

"Thus every Part was full of Vice,"

"Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits."

"[Capitalism is] a system of wage-labour and commodity production for sale, exchange, and profit, rather than for the immediate need of the producers."

"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."

"In bourgeois society... the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

"Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor; And lives more by the labor it sucks."

"The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits."

"Outside, perhaps, of the less than three booming decades that followed World War II, austerity has been the mainstay of capitalism. It has been true throughout history that where capitalism exists, crisis follows. Where austerity has proven wildly effective is in insulating capitalist hierarchies from harm during these moments of would-be social change."

"Despite claims of job creation, and the dominant message that business success helps all of us, the reality is that ultimately market gains, or profit, are contrary to the wellbeing of citizens — as one rises, the other decreases. Our current economic system is coercive, and this is the crucial political reality that mainstream economics hides. Even if we feel something is wrong when we get up in the morning to go to a job that means nothing to us, or when we struggle to find time to rest, such an instinctive realization is suffocated by the societal messages that this is the way it should be. The dissonance between our lived experience of daily economic life — that of alienation and struggle — and our acceptance of it, as if , is something constructed, predominantly by economic models that reinforce our surrender to an economic system that I call the "capital order". This term refers to, first, the concentration of decision making power in the hands of private investors; the second, the invisible subjugation of the majority, who are forced to work for someone else's profit."

"For decades, "experts" have been spreading this numbing story with academic theories spun from the elite circles of the most prestigious universities in the world. By hiding the true nature of the economic system, they atrophy our minds, blocking any possibility of transformative action. But it is possible to escape from capitalism."

"Most people have no alternative but to sell their ability to work for a wage and inevitably be paid less than the value they produce. This is the capital order, the backbone of our society that we do not criticize or even discuss. It is only through the lens of class that we can escape this trap and understand the functioning of our economic system and the policies implemented to govern it."

"The relationship of Israel with the Palestinian territories vividly illustrates how the capitalist wealth of developed nations is built on the subjugation of weaker economies. Some mechanisms of this subjugation appear impersonal, like the imposition of free market policies or fiscal austerity; others are overtly personal, like the colonial confiscation of land. Historically, the two have gone hand in hand. In the case of Israel, the inherent violence of capital accumulation has morphed into something extreme."

"“So what’s wrong with capitalism?” He sighs. For a minute I wonder if maybe he’s a capitalist. But then he says, “It’s not a fair system.” “That’s stupid,” I say. “Things aren’t fair. Only little kids expect things to be fair.”"

"So he starts by asking me what I know about capitalism. “People were rich and there was a lot of corruption and a lot of crime,” I say. “And now we have socialism and people are poor and there’s a lot of corruption and a lot of crime.” He laughs. Anything I say about politics makes him laugh."

"In the absence of Marxism, there is now no critique being carried out of the capitalist enterprise, and it'll peel your skin off and peddle it back to you. It is doing that. Capitalism in principle is not, I think, a bad thing, but it requires endlessly-exploitable natural resources. And since the exploration of space has been taken off the agenda, there is no endlessly-exploitable frontier. So capitalism is going to deal itself out of existence, but before it does that, you're gonna pay $50 for a latte, because inflation is going impoverish all of us before people get pissed off enough to realize that all of the last hundred years of economic progress was actually a shell game to create billionaires, while the great masses of people saw their standard of living eroded and destroyed. You don't have to take psilocybin to figure this stuff out."

"Capitalism has really been responsible for all the progress of the modern age. Better than any other system ever devised, it provides leisure for large numbers of superior men, and so fosters the arts and sciences. No other system ever heard of is so beneficial to invention. Its fundamental desire for gain may be far from glorious per se, but it at least furthers improvement in all the departments of life. We owe to it every innovation that makes life secure and comfortable. Unfortunately, like any other human institution (for example, Holy Church), capitalism tends to run amuck when it is not restrained, and democracy provides inadequate means of keeping it in order. There is never any surety that democracy will throw up leaders competent to discern the true dangers of capitalism and able to remedy them in a prudent and rational manner. Thus we have vacillated between letting it run wild and trying to ruin it. Both courses are hazardous and ineffective, and it is hard to say which is more so.”"

"It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest."

"Whereas many in the global and now movements focus on corporations as key, anarchists see these entities as only one piece of capitalism, and a piece that if removed, wouldn't destroy capitalism—bad as corporations may be. One can have capitalism without corporations. Capitalism's essence—ensuring that society is forged around compulsory social relations along with inequities in power and material conditions—would remain in place. And given capitalism's grow-or-die logic, small-scale capitalism would by definition unfold into a larger scale again. Or as contemporary networked and informational capitalistic structures indicate, allegedly localized capitalism can be a way to hide an increasing concentration of social control and injustice. Capitalism itself, in its totality, and because it strives toward totality, is the root problem. Anarchists, then, look to wholly undo the hegemony of capitalist economic structures and values, or the many components that mark capitalism as a system—from corporations, banks, and private property, to profit, bosses, and wage labor, to alienation and commodification."

"Capitalism has indicated that humans might be able to achieve a society—a world in which everyone has enough of what they need to sustain life. But despite grocery stores and dumpsters overflowing with food, billions of people go hungry; despite labor-saving technologies, most people work more for less; despite breakthroughs in health care, many die needlessly. Meanwhile, consumption has been transformed into a barometer of one's worth, a never-ending quest for happiness via commodity choices. And it's always premised on what one has to exchange for that abundance, or else it's denied."

"When first started to emerge in the early nineteenth century, its machinations were relatively visible. Take, for instance, the enclosures. Pasturelands that had been used in common for centuries to provide villages with their very sustenance were systematically fenced off—enclosed—in order to graze sheep, whose wool was needed for the burgeoning textile industry. Communal life was briskly thrust aside in favor of privatization, forcing people into harsh factories and crowded cities. , as it pushes past the fetters of even nation-states in its insatiable quest for growth, encloses life in a much more expansive yet generally invisible way: fences are replaced by consumer culture. We are raised in an almost totally commodified world where nothing comes for free, even futile attempts to remove oneself from the market economy. This commodification seeps into not only what we eat, wear, or do for fun but also into our language, relationships, and even our very biology and minds. We have lost not only our communities and public spaces but control over our own lives; we have lost the ability to define ourselves outside capitalism’s grip, and thus genuine meaning itself begins to dissolve."

"The German and the Russian systems of socialism have in common the fact that the government has full control of the means of production. It decides what shall be produced and how. It allots to each individual a share of consumer's goods for his consumption….The German pattern differs from the Russian one in that it (seemingly and nominally) maintains private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary prices, wages, and markets. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs but only shop managers (Betriebsführer)….The government, not the consumers, directs production. This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism. Some labels of capitalistic market economy are retained but they mean something entirely different from what they mean in a genuine market economy."

"The first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism."

"All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out."

"The gold standard was the world standard of the age of capitalism, increasing welfare, liberty, and democracy, both political and economic. In the eyes of the free traders its main eminence was precisely the fact that it was an international standard as required by international trade and the transactions of the international money and capital market. It was the medium of exchange by means of which Western industrialism and Western capital had borne Western civilization into the remotest parts of the earth's surface, everywhere destroying the fetters of age-old prejudices and superstitions, sowing the seeds of new life and new well-being, freeing minds and souls, and creating riches unheard of before."

"Pareto, Georges Sorel, Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini were right in denouncing democracy as a capitalist method. Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship."

"It's quite obvious that when the was still there, it was a bustle between capitalism and communism. Once communism was defeated, then capitalism could expand and show its true self. It's no longer constrained by the need to be nice, so that people will choose their so-called free-market system as opposed to the centrally planned system. So because of that, nowadays there is nothing to restrain capital, and capital is demanding that it should be able to go anywhere and do whatever it likes."

"Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity."

"Bail out the people, not the corporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers. Let’s not waste our second chance."

"It is time to say enough, and to rebel and keep rebelling against the innate evil of capitalism, that suffocates the majority and brutally enriches a few."

"Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy. I'm not even a big believer in democracy."

"If we want to save the planet earth, to save life and humanity, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system. Unless we put an end to the capitalist system, it is impossible to imagine that there will be equality and justice on this planet earth. This is why I believe that it is important to put an end to the exploitation of human beings and to the pillage of natural resources, to put an end to destructive wars for markets and raw materials, to the plundering of energy, particularly fossil fuels, to the excessive consumption of goods and to the accumulation of waste. The capitalist system only allows us to heap up waste. I would like to propose that the trillions of money earmarked for war should be channelled to make good the damage to the environment, to make reparations to the earth."

"The most obvious negative feature of capitalism is that it can produce private monopolies that restrict output and thereby harm consumers."

"Western society is relapsing at critical points into precivilized modes of thought, feeling, and action because it has acquiesced too easily in the dehumanization of society through capitalist exploitation."

"I have no doubt that the revolution will triumph. The people of the world will prevail, seize power, seize the means of production, wipe out racism, capitalism."

"The capitalist system was and is not a benevolent social force created to best serve the needs of humans through the "marketplace," contrary to the propagandizing that has inundated at least the citizens in the West for a century and a half and that continues in educational systems and mass media today. Indeed, it would be impossible for an egalitarian, beneficial political-economic system to emerge from thousands of years of hypermasculine, violent, oppressive, and war-torn reality. In truth, capitalism, which morphed from the highly oppressive systems of "economic development" of the Eurasian past, simply represents a more sophisticated form of social relations in which the accumulation of wealth continues to result from exploitation, predation and violence."

"What I really believe in, first and foremost, isn't capitalism or globalization. It isn't the systems or regulatory codes that achieve all we see around us in the way of prosperity, innovation, community, and culture. Those things are created by people. What I believe in is man's capacity for achieving great things, and the combined force that results from our interactions and exchanges. I plead for greater liberty and a more open world, not because I believe on system happens to be more efficient than another, but because those things provide a setting that unleashes individual creativity as no other system can. They spur the dynamism that has led to human, economic, scientific, and technical advances. Believing in capitalism does not mean believing in growth, the economy, or efficiency. Desirable as they may be, those are only the results. At its core, belief in capitalism is belief in mankind."

"Twenty years ago I wrote a book in defence of global capitalism. I never thought I would do that. Capitalism, I had thought, was all about greedy monopolists and mighty landlords. But then I began to study the world and realized that it was in the least market-based societies that such elites were protected from the free choice of citizens and therefore had the greatest power. Paradoxically, it was capitalism – in the form of free markets and voluntary agreements based on private ownership – that threatened the powerful. The argument for capitalism is not that capitalists always behave well – if that were the case, we could safely give them monopoly power – but that they often do not behave well unless they have to. And it is freedom of choice and competition that force their hands."

"In fact, Marx and Engels were right when they observed in that other manifesto, the communist one of 1848, that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined and, with infinitely improved communications and accessible goods, free markets had torn down feudal structures and national narrow-mindedness. Marx and Engels realized much better than socialists today that the free market is a formidable progressive force. (Unfortunately, they were not sufficiently dialectically minded to understand that communism was a reactionary counterforce that would bring societies back to a kind of electrified feudalism.) A century and a half later, global capitalism made it possible for ever more people to free themselves from lords and monopolies. The growth of markets gave them the opportunity to choose, to bargain and to say no for the first time. Free trade gave them cheaper goods, new technologies and access to consumers in other countries. It lifted millions and millions from hunger and poverty."

"In capitalism, your narrowest interests are advanced by cooperation. A genius system."

"Blake was not a politician, but there is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in a poem like "I wander through each charter'd street" than in three-quarters of Socialist literature."

"Capitalism is an art form."

"Every day in our neighborhood there were whole apartments, beds, bureaus, kitchen tables out on the street. We understood that this was because of capitalism, which didn't care that working people had no work and no money for rent."

"The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force."

"Just as in the 1930s, world capitalism, as it had existed until then, had reached a dead-end, and the need for it to be altered for the sake of preserving the system itself, was emphasised by many perceptive bourgeois thinkers, exactly in a similar manner contemporary world capitalism too has reached a dead-end and cannot continue as before. [...] Any change in capitalism, however, including a revival of the so-called "" of the post-War period, will entail a loosening of the hegemony of international finance capital and hence will face stiff opposition from it. The fact that the need for such change is clear to bourgeois thinkers, does not mean that finance capital will simply voluntarily make a sacrifice of the hegemony it currently enjoys. Indeed the history of the 1930s itself bears witness to this fact. [...] Boosting for overcoming mass unemployment finally got accepted as government policy only after the war when the weight of the working class in the advanced countries became much greater than before (of which the victory of the Labour Party in the British post-war elections and the vastly increased strength of the and Italy were obvious markers), and when the came right up to the very doorsteps of creating fears of a “communist takeover”. This conjuncture finally forced concessions from finance capital that had been unobtainable till then. Finance capital, in other words, does not voluntarily make concessions even when such concessions are seen by major pro-capitalist thinkers as being essential for the preservation of the system itself."

"It is real-life class struggle, informed no doubt by ideas, that ultimately determines which way the world will move. Hence even for altering contemporary capitalism in the direction of the so-called “welfare capitalism” of yore, it would be essential to have the working class fighting for such an agenda. But when it does so, and when international finance capital resists such an agenda, we would be in the thick of class struggle. Time alone will tell whether this struggle would remain merely at the level of achieving a revival of “welfare capitalism” or whether it would go beyond capitalism altogether towards a socialist alternative. Once class struggle, for changing the system in its present form, acquires momentum, its outcome would depend on praxis and may not necessarily remain bounded within the system itself."

"When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based."

"The moment that the Chinese scientists and doctors announced that the coronavirus could be transmitted between human beings on Jan. 20, 2020, the socialist governments went into action to monitor ports of entry and to test and trace key parts of the population. They set up task forces and procedures to immediately make sure that the infection would not go out of control amongst their people... in stark contrast to governments in the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India, and other capitalist states, where there has been a hallucinatory attitude towards the Chinese government and the WHO. There is no comparison between the stance of Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc and U.S. President Donald Trump: the former had a sober, science-based attitude, while the latter has consistently laughed off the coronavirus as a simple flu as recently as June 24."

"You don't need to be a statistician or an economist to be able to read the basic facts in the world today: the dominant classes and the corporations that they control extract surplus profits from the wealth produced by society, while billions of human beings who work to produce that wealth find themselves treated as if they are surplus humanity. This immense social divide, a widening gap across the class structure, can be observed in almost every single country in the world. This gap is not the result of any natural development, let alone of the magical phrase 'the Market'. This chasm across human society is produced and reproduced solely because of the civilizational system that privileges the private property of the few above the social needs of the many. That system is known as capitalism, a dynamic social process that - through inter-capitalist competition, through advancements in science and technology - has led to the vast increases in productivity but at the same time - because of private property - to immense social inequality. This double movement of capitalism, which generates enormous social wealth and enormous social inequality, both confounds humanity and provides immense potential for solutions to our great dilemmas - solutions that we call socialism."

"What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism's enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the 'practical,' but the only moral system in history."

"In America, we debate everything except Capitalism. If there's an institution in your society that' above criticism, you're giving it a free pass to indulge all of its weaknesses and darker tendencies."

"When I say capitalism, I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez faire capitalism, with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned."

"In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate."

"Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. All the other social groups — workers, farmers, professional men, scientists, soldiers — exist under dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction. But there is no such group as businessmen under a dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society — the symbol of America."

"Capitalism is organised crime, and we are all its victims."

"Goebbels saw the ultimate enemy as international capitalism, and those who held power in Germany as its lackey, betraying their nation for personal gain. These were the traditional targets of the Communists, of course, so the Nazis and the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany, were in direct competition for the same constituency, two rabid dogs fighting for one bone… And Goebbels, who has so recently been happy to describe himself as a ‘German Communist’ led the fight with all the intensity of a religious convert."

"Capitalism is a social system based on private ownership of the . It is characterized by the pursuit of material self-interest under freedom and it rests on a foundation of the cultural influence of reason. Based on its foundations and essential nature, capitalism is further characterized by saving and capital accumulation, exchange and money, financial self-interest and the profit motive, the freedoms of economic competition and economic inequality, the price system, economic progress, and a harmony of the material self-interests of all the individuals who participate in it."

"When socialist Cuba houses the homeless, feeds the hungry, cures cancer, and educates the entire population, that's "authoritarian", but when the capitalist US allows millions to suffer or die simply because they're poor, that's "freedom"? Freedom for who?"

"The peasants and workers of Europe (and eventually the inhabitants of the whole world) paid a huge price so that the capitalists could make their profits from the human labor that always lies behind the machines. That contradicts other facets of development, especially viewed from the standpoint of those who suffered and still suffer to make capitalist achievements possible. This latter group are the majority of mankind. To advance, they must overthrow capitalism; and that is why at the moment capitalism stands in the path of further human social development. To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded, just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time."

"Capitalism has proved incapable of transcending fundamental weaknesses such as underutilization of productive capacity, the persistence of a permanent sector of unemployed, and periodic related to the concept of “market”—which is concerned with people’s ability to pay rather than their need for commodities. Capitalism has created its own irrationalities such as a vicious white racism, the tremendous waste associated with advertising, and the irrationality of incredible poverty in the midst of wealth and wastage even inside the biggest capitalist economies, such as that of the United States of America. Above all, capitalism has intensified its own political contradictions in trying to subjugate nations and continents outside of Europe, so that workers and peasants in every part of the globe have become self-conscious and are determined to take their destiny into their own hands."

"Racism, violence, and brutality were the concomitants of the capitalist system when it extended itself abroad in the early centuries of international trade."

"The circumstances of African trade with Europe were unfavorable to creating a consistent African demand for technology relevant to development; and when that demand was raised it was ignored or rejected by the capitalists. After all, it would not have been in the interests of capitalism to develop Africa. [...] Capitalism introduced into Africa only such limited aspects of its material culture as were essential to more efficient exploitation, but the general tendency has been for capitalism to underdevelop Africa in technology."

"We must first decide what the meaning of the term 'capitalism' really is. Unfortunately, the term 'capitalism' was coined by its greatest and most famous enemy, Karl Marx. We really can't rely upon him for correct and subtle usage. And, in fact, what Marx and later writers have done is to lump together two extremely different and even contradictory concepts and actions under the same portmanteau term. These two contradictory concepts are what I would call 'free-market capitalism' on the one hand, and 'state capitalism' on the other. The difference between free-market capitalism and state capitalism is precisely the difference between, on the one hand, peaceful, voluntary exchange, and on the other, violent expropriation."

"Capitalism’s gratuitous wars and sanctioned greed have jeopardized the planet and filled it with refugees. Much of the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the government of the United States. Seventeen years after invading Afghanistan, after bombing it into the ‘stone age’ with the sole aim of toppling the Taliban, the US government is back in talks with the very same Taliban. In the interim it has destroyed Iraq, Libya and Syria. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives to war and sanctions, a whole region has descended into chaos, ancient cities—pounded into dust. Amidst the desolation and the rubble, a monstrosity called Daesh (ISIS) has been spawned. It has spread across the world, indiscriminately murdering ordinary people who had absolutely nothing to do with America’s wars. Over these last few years, given the wars it has waged, and the international treaties it has arbitrarily reneged on, the US Government perfectly fits its own definition of a rogue state."

"Well.. for so many years, people—let’s say in India—have been fighting this very idea of progress, of infinite growth, of this form of development which has resulted now in what we call jobless growth, what everybody knows to be the case. You have nine individuals who own the same amount of wealth as the bottom 500 million. This is what infinite growth has led to—infinite growth for some people. So this idea that you will never question your idea of progress, you will never question the comfort of the Global North. And by Global North—now and the elite South, and the downtrodden North, you know?...Years ago, I wrote an essay which ended by saying, “Can we leave the bauxite in the mountain?”...Can you look at the mountain and not just calculate its mineral worth? Can you understand that a mountain has much more than just the value of the minerals in it? And there is—it’s a civilizational issue, right? That for people who have lived there, have known that mountain, they know it sustains not just the people. It’s not just a question of who is getting displaced. But how does, for example, that bauxite mountain—which stores water and waters the plains all around it, which grows the food, which sustains a whole population—but it’s meant for a corporation that is given the mining contract. It’s just, how much does that bauxite cost? Can we store it and trade it on the futures market?"

"It is like what I said, that the elite of the world have all seceded into outer space, and they have a country up there, and they look down and say, “What is our water doing in their rivers, and what’s our timber doing in their forests?” So there is a psychotic refusal to understand that the survival of the species is connected to the survival of the planet, you know? Because this sort of progress is a kind of church now. It is not amenable to reason. So it is very difficult to know how any real conversation can happen... A month or two ago, the Supreme Court of India...said that two million indigenous people should be evicted from their forest homes... Because that forest needs to be preserved as a sanctuary. But when, for the last 25 years, people were fighting against projects which were decimating millions of hectares and acres of forest, nobody cared... And when you are talking about evicting two million of the poorest people, stripping them of everything they ever had, there is little outrage. Any sense of talk of equality or justice seems to just have the same effect that blasphemy has in religious societies. That is what capitalism has become—a form of religion that will brook no questioning."

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."

"I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation."

"We have to talk about democratic socialism as an alternative to unfettered capitalism, where the rich get richer and almost everybody else is getting poorer... the average worker in America is making, in inflation-accounted-for dollars, and despite a huge increase in technology and worker productivity, exactly the same amount of money that he or she made 43 years ago. That’s incomprehensible."

"There has been a massive transfer of wealth from the working class of this country to the top 1 percent. And at the end of the day.. the media doesn’t talk about it, the corporate media does not talk about it—nobody can defend three families in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of the American people. Or that 49 percent of all new income today goes to the top 1 percent. That is indefensible. That is outrageous. That is immoral. And I think the American people understand that has got to change..."

"Donald Trump himself, of course, is a major beneficiary of the massive amounts of corporate welfare. If you are the Trump family, you receive $885,000,000 worth of tax breaks and subsidies for your family’s housing empire that, among other things, was built on racial discrimination.… What Trump is about is socialism for the very rich. We are about socialism for working families. That’s the difference."

"It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elisabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."

"Capitalist civilization is rationalistic 'and anti-heroic.' The two go together of course. Success in industry and commerce requires a lot of stamina, yet industrial and commercial activity is essentially unheroic in the knight's sense — no flourishing of swords about it, not much physical prowess, no chance to gallop the armored horse into the enemy, preferably a heretic or heathen - and the ideology that glorifies the idea of fighting for fighting's sake and of victory for victory's sake understandably withers in the office among all the columns of figures. Therefore, owning assets that are apt to attract the robber or the tax gatherer and not sharing or even disliking warrior ideology that conflicts with its 'rational' utilitarianism, the industrial and commercial bourgeouis is fundamentally pacifist and inclined to insist on the moral application of the moral precepts of private life to international relations. It is true that, unlike most but like other features of capitalist civilization, pacifism and international morality have also been espoused in non-capitalist environments and by pre-capitalist agencies, in the Middle Ages of the Roman Church for instance. Modern pacifism and modern international morality are nonetheless products of capitalism."

"Capitalism does not merely mean that the housewife may influence production by her choice between peas and beans; or that the youngster may choose whether he wants to work in a factory or on a farm; or that plant managers have some voice in deciding what and how to produce: it means a scheme of values, an attitude toward life, a civilization—the civilization of inequality and of the family fortune."

"Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force. But even Capitalist cynicism will admit that however unconscionable we may be when our own interests are affected, we can be most indignantly virtuous at the expense of others."

"You have to choose (as a voter) between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold."

"If ... the tax scheme allows enormous intergenerational wealth transfers within families, some families will maintain considerable socioeconomic advantages over others, which allows them to provide better educations and better environments (both residential and familial) for their children, and their children's children. ... Even in a constitutional democracy in which each citizen has a publicly recognized claim to all the basic political and civil liberties, these socioeconomic inequalities would create an informal social hierarchy by birth: some would be born into great wealth and other social and political advantages while others would be born into poverty and its associated disadvantages. ... If, because a social scheme had the characteristics described above, the life prospects of some children were vastly inferior to those of others, it would be reasonable to regard these disadvantaged children as members of the lowest stratum in a descent-based social hierarchy. When such a hierarchy is, and has long been, marked by racial distinctions, equal citizenship, in any meaningful sense, does not obtain. In a society with an established democratic tradition, such a quasi-feudal order does not warrant the allegiance of its most disadvantaged members, especially when these persons are racially stigmatized. Indeed, the existence of such an order creates the suspicion that, despite the society's ostensible commitment to equal civil rights, white supremacy has simply taken a new form."

"I have repeatedly stressed that the rape of the Earth and rape of women are intimately linked - both metaphorically, in shaping world-views, and materially, in shaping women’s everyday lives... When we wrote Ecofeminism we raised the issue of reductionist, mechanistic science and the attitude of mastery over and conquest of nature as an expression of capitalist patriarchy. Today the contest between an ecological and feminist world-view and a worldview shaped by capitalist patriarchy is more intense than ever. This contest is particularly intense in the area of food. GMOs embody the vision of capitalist patriarchy."

"The national accounting systems which are used for calculating growth in terms of GDP are based on the assumption that if producers consume what they produce, they do not in fact produce at all, because they fall outside the production boundary. The production boundary is a political creation that, in its workings, excludes regenerative and renewable production cycles from the area of production. Hence all women who produce for their families, children, community and society are treated as ‘non-productive’ and ‘economically inactive’. When economies are confined to the marketplace, economic self-sufficiency is perceived as economic deficiency. The devaluation of women’s work, and of work done in subsistence economies of the South, is the natural outcome of a production boundary constructed by capitalist patriarchy. By restricting itself to the values of the market economy, as defined by capitalist patriarchy, the production boundary ignores economic value in the two vital economies which are necessary to ecological and human survival: nature’s economy and the sustenance economy. In these economies, economic value is a measure of how the Earth’s life and human life are protected. The currency is life-giving processes, not cash or the market price. Second, a model of capitalist patriarchy which excludes women’s work and wealth creation in the mind deepens the violence by displacing women from their livelihoods and alienating them from the natural resources on which their livelihoods depend -their land, their forests, their water, their seeds and biodiversity."

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

"Capitalism designates an economic system significantly characterized by the predominance of "capital." Capitalism and double entry bookkeeping are absolutely indissociable; their relationship to each other is that of form to content."

"Capitalism was born from the money loan. Money lending contains the root idea of capitalism. Turn to the pages of the Talmud and you will find that the Jews made an art of lending money. They were taught early to look for their chief happiness in the possession of money. They fathomed all the secrets that lay hid in money. They became Lords of Money and Lords of the World."

"Because the West has a property rights system, and property rights systems seem to be about ownership. What we're discovering more and more is that it's really the system that undergirds the system of values called capitalism. In other words, you have property rights in the West. In developing nations we do, too, but they're not legal. Once you legalize them and you have recordkeeping systems and you have tracking systems and you've got contracts and you're able to get all the information about somebody's ownership over an asset, all of a sudden you obtain enormous amounts of data that you do not have in developing nations. In the West, that is captured in the property system. If you are somebody that is honorable and pays their debts, which is what somebody would be interested in, that's going to be captured in your records, and your records are linked to your property records. All of these are property rights, [but we don't have them] organized in a central system … in Third World countries."

"Capitalism works not through coercion or conquest, but through the consent of the consumer."

"Capitalist enterprises buy components from others who have lower costs in producing those particular components, and sell their own output to whatever middlemen can most efficiently carry out its distribution."

"Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the claims of superior cunning—those are the sources to which titles may be traced. The original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen; not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers; blows were the current coin given in payment; and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could valid claims be thus constituted? Hardly. And if not, what becomes of the pretensions of all subsequent holders of estates so obtained? Does sale or bequest generate a right where it did not previously exist?"

"Marxism is the capitalism of the working class."

"Capitalism, in contrast, has existed for fewer than 300 years. If the entire history of ' was a 24-hour day, then capitalism has existed for two minutes."

"Economic systems come, and economic systems go. No economic system lasts forever. Capitalism is not likely to last forever, either."

"Like a trying to solve a corporate fraud, following the trail of money around the circle is a good way to understand what actually happens as capitalism unfolds."

"Competition-ruthless, unforgiving, to-the-death competition-is a crucial feature of capitalism."

"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."

"Grotesque sentiments such as the lust of business success or economic power of any kind, and indeed every purely self-regarding passion, from that of the social climber to that of the salvation-seeking ascetic, are experienced by the explorer with something of that shame which the child, emerging into adolescence, may feel toward the still-clinging fascination of his outgrown toys, or with such disgust as the youth may feel when he wakes from some unworthy sexual infatuation."

"Capitalism prospers in an environment with a peculiar combination of self-interested behavior - enough to induce individuals to look for profitable activities - and non-self-interested behavior, where one's word is one's honor, where social rather than economic sanctions suffice to enforce contracts."

"It is the fundamental wisdom of the capitalist system that it functions irrespective of the wisdom or the stupidity of the capitalists."

"Contrary to claims about extreme poverty being a natural human condition, it is reasonable to assume that human communities are in fact innately capable of producing enough to meet their own basic needs (i.e., for food, clothing, and shelter), with their own labour and with the resources available to them in their environment or through exchange. Barring natural disasters, people will generally succeed in this objective. The main exception is under conditions where people are cut off from land and commons, or where their labour, resources and productive capacities are appropriated by a ruling class or an external imperial power. This explains the prevalence of extreme poverty under capitalism."

"If a modern wage can purchase no more food than wages from 400 years ago, something has clearly gone wrong, even if there have been gains in medical care or information technology. ‘Welfare ratios’ bring our attention to a worker's ability to meet their most basic needs. If these basic capabilities deteriorated during the rise of capitalism, and if up to a billion people today have lower real incomes in terms of access to food than 16th-century labourers, it is reasonable to conclude that the world capitalist system as such has failed to deliver meaningful progress against extreme poverty."

"Capitalism does not lie some of the time, it lies all of the time."

"On Modern capitalism"

"I call it techno-feudalism. I don’t call it capitalism anymore. We need to distinguish what was going on before 2008 from what was going on after 2008. Amazon is not a market; it’s a fiefdom. And it’s a fiefdom that’s connected to other fiefdoms, like Facebook, through the cloud services of Amazon, which are much greater and bigger than Amazon.com. It’s like a much more technologically advanced form of feudalism. This is completely sustained by central bank money. So you have the combination of the king, the sovereign, the state, the central bank and the feudal lords, the techno-feudal lords. You can see that this system is constantly doubling-down on our extinction as a species. We had the pandemic and what did they do? More of the same. They give them more money. They give it to the same people. They gave some money to the people in furlough wages and so on, but that is only temporary. There’s been no real investment in human capital; in students, in cancelling debt. They’re not doing any of that. They have no problem plucking the money tree for themselves. Sometimes they spread some of the money they plucked from the money tree to the many, but in a limited and transient manner. And the stagnation of the capitalist system, the techno-feudalist system as I call it, gets more and more entrenched."

"Jeff Bezos is getting rich not because of the profits of Amazon, but because of the increase of the share price. You’ve heard that he made what, $60 billion since the beginning of the pandemic? That’s not because of the profits of Amazon... The actual profits are nothing like that. It’s maybe one billion altogether, but he made 60! From the share price."

"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."

"Socialism is the total opposite of capitalism/imperialism. It is the rejection of empire and white supremacy. Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit. Socialism means control of the productive forces for the good of the whole community instead of the few who live on hilltops and in mansions. Socialism means priorities based on human need instead of corporate greed. Socialism creates the conditions for a decent and creative quality of life for all."

"The disappearance of the heroic ideal is always accompanied by the growth of . There is a cause-and-effect relationship here, for the man of commerce is by the nature of things a relativist; his mind is constantly on the fluctuating values of the marketplace, and there is no surer way to fail than to dogmatize and moralize about things."

"In contrast to all other forms of domination, the economic domination of capital cannot, because of its 'impersonal character', be ethically regulated. ... The competitiveness, the market, the labour market, the monetary market, the commodity market, in one word 'objective' considerations, neither ethical nor anti-ethical, but simply non-ethical ... determine behaviour at the decisive points."

"It is above all the impersonal and economically rationalized (but for this very reason ethically irrational) character of purely commercial relationships that evokes the suspicion, never clearly expressed but all the more strongly felt, of ethical religions. For every purely personal relationship of man to man, of whatever sort and even including complete enslavement, may be subjected to ethical requirements and ethically regulated. This is true because the structures of these relationships depend upon the individual wills of the participants, leaving room in such relations for manifestations of the virtue of charity. But this is not the situation in the realm of economically rationalised relationships, where personal control is exercised in inverse ratio to the degree of rational differentiation of the economic structure."

"We will define a capitalistic economic action as one which rests on the expectation of profit by the utilization of opportunities for exchange, that is on (formally) peaceful chances of profit...Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of conscious, rational, capitalistic enterprise."

"Thus the capitalism of today, which has come to dominate economic life, educates and selects the economic subjects which it needs through a process of economic survival of the fittest. But here one can easily see the limits of the concept of selection as a means of historical explanation. In order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men."

"The people filled with the spirit of capitalism today tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church. The thought of the pious boredom of paradise has little attraction for their active natures; religion appears to them as a means of drawing people away from labor in this world. If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at all: “to provide for my children and grandchildren.” But more often and, since that motive is not peculiar to them, but was just as effective for the traditionalist, more correctly, simply: that business with its continuous work has become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motivation, but it at the same time expresses what is, seen from the viewpoint of personal happiness, so irrational about this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse."

"The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars."

"The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve."

"Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature."

"First, capitalists detain control of the means of production. Second, laborers are denied independent access to means of production and must sell their labor power to the capitalists. Third, the maximization of surplus produced by the laborers with the means of production owned by the capitalists entails "ceaseless accumulation accompanied by changes in the methods of production.""

"The desperate policies of panic-driven governments involve throwing huge amounts of money at the economies collapsed in response to the coronavirus threat. s create money and lend it at extremely low s to the major corporations and especially big banks "to get them through the crisis." Government treasuries borrow vast sums to get the collapsed economy back into what they imagine is "the normal, pre-virus economy." Capitalism's leaders are rushing into policy failures because of their ideological blinders."

"The problem of policies aimed to return the economy to what it was before the virus hit is this: Global capitalism, by 2019, was itself a major cause of the collapse in 2020. Capitalism's scars from the crashes of 2000 and 2008-2009 had not healed. Years of low interest rates had enabled corporations and governments to "solve" all their problems by borrowing limitlessly at almost zero interest rate cost. All the new money pumped into economies by s had indeed caused the feared inflation, but chiefly in stock markets whose prices consequently spiraled dangerously far away from underlying economic values and realities. Inequalities of and wealth reached historic highs. ​In short, capitalism had built up vulnerabilities to another crash that any number of possible triggers could unleash. The trigger this time was not the dot.com meltdown of 2000 or the sub-prime meltdown of 2008/9; it was a virus. And of course, mainstream ideology requires focusing on the trigger, not the vulnerability. Thus mainstream policies aim to reestablish pre-virus capitalism. Even if they succeed, that will return us to a capitalist system whose accumulated vulnerabilities will soon again collapse from yet another trigger."

"​In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focus criticism on capitalism and the vulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons. Viruses are part of nature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 in the United States and millions elsewhere. Recent viruses include , and Ebola. What matters to is each society's preparedness: stockpiled tests, masks, ventilators, hospital beds, trained personnel, etc., to manage dangerous viruses. In the U.S., such objects are produced by private capitalist enterprises whose goal is profit. It was not profitable to produce and stockpile such products, that was not and still is not being done. Nor did the U.S. government produce or stockpile those medical products. Top U.S. government personnel privilege private capitalism; it is their primary objective to protect and strengthen. The result is that neither private capitalism nor the U.S. government performed the most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain public health and safety. U.S. capitalism's response to the coronavirus pandemic continues to be what it has been since December 2019: too little, too late. It failed. It is the problem."

"The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today's economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others' lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health."

"The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people."

"A based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda."

"It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can't have capitalism without racism."

"It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely…."

"Universal Basic Income is not socialism. It's capitalism where income doesn't start at zero. Markets and businesses function much better when people have money to spend. If we can all participate in the market, then markets become much better for all of us. What's bad for markets is when consumers don't have money to spend. So this is very pro-growth, pro-market, and pro-consumer. It's the next form of capitalism. It's the tricke up economy."

"It took me a long time to understand why so much that surrounded me was too ugly to tolerate without protest. But eventually I learned the reason. I saw that the conduct of my fellow-men could not be otherwise than disappointing, in fact parasitical and corrupt, and that most of our troubles emanated from a cause which manifestly would grow worse so long as we put up with it. That cause was Capitalism. Man's natural self-interest become perverted and ruthless! The motivating principle of business (though not openly confessed), when summed up, meant: "Get yours; never mind the other fellow." I saw, too, that our law-makers and judges of the meaning of the law put property rights first and left human rights to shift for themselves."

"Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes."

"Let's take the case of slavery. While capitalism legitimizes itself as the economic system that implies and furthers personal freedom (as a condition of market exchange), it generated slavery on its own, as part of its own dynamics: although slavery became almost extinct at the end of the Middle Ages, it re-emerged in colonies from early modernity till the American Civil War. And one can risk the hypothesis that today, with the new epoch of global capitalism, a new era of slavery is also arising. Although there is no longer a direct legal category of enslaved persons, slavery acquires a multitude of new forms: millions of migrant workers in the Saudi peninsula (UAE, Qatar, etc.), who are deprived of elementary civil rights and freedoms and subjected to restricted mobility; the total control of millions of workers in Asian sweatshops, often consciously organized as concentration camps; the massive use of forced labor in the exploitation of natural resources in many Central African states (Congo, etc.). This new de facto apartheid, this systematic explosion of a number of different forms of contemporary slavery, is not a deplorable accident but a structural necessity of today's global capitalism."

"Let's discuss the world. To answer the question, "is globalisation possible without God", the simple answer is "yes". Globalisation is after all itself a code word, a mask, for not using the C-word, capitalism. Globalisation is basically the latest phase of expanding capitalism. This not something which is neutral, this is a capitalism that has its rules: it has its economic rules, it has its political rules, it has its cultural rules and it has its military rules. It is a system. At the heart of this system is the United States of America, the world's only existing empire today. The first time in the history of humanity that you have just had a single empire, so dominant, whose military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 15 countries put together, and whose military-industrial complex itself is the eleventh largest economic entity in the world. This is the reality we live in, and this is the reality which confronts us in different ways."

"It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity."

"On globalization’s parallel track, demarcated by markets rather than territorial boundaries, corporations and firms have displaced nation-states as the key players on the international scene. They more often use the political institutions created by nation-states to work their will than they are used by those states to enact sovereign political objectives. Even philanthropies such as the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Ford Foundation have become weighty actors in the international marketplace, boasting an economic clout that many nation-states cannot begin to exercise."

"The big question today is 'Will globalisation allow democracy to survive?' On one side we have the multinationals, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. I want to help to redress the balance on the other side."

"Thanks to globalization, new technologies and social networks, we know that what makes us laugh or saddens us, causes exactly the same reaction on the other side of the world."

"In order to work, free-trade systems must be frictionless and immune to interruption, forever. This means a program of intellectual property protection, zero tariffs, and cross-border traffic in everything, including migrants. This can be assured only in a system that is veto-proof and non-consultative—in short, undemocratic. That is why it is those who have benefited most from globalization who have been leading the counterattack against the democracy movements arising all over the West."

"Traditional nationalism cannot survive the fissioning of the atom. One world or none."

"The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." ... Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system—which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes."

"Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote...can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents, and is also subject to their influence (whether helpful or destabilizing). For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past."

"Recruits who sign up to die [in the Russo-Ukrainian war] shooting Soviet-era rifles at Russian battle tanks are not defending “world peace” or democracy or freedom or anything like that. They are sacrificing themselves to convenience some peripheral interests of western globalism, which is responsible for all manner of armed conflict around the world, and which could not be less interested in these quaint liberal abstractions. We are in the end stage of liberalism now, an end stage in which most liberal political forms have been set aside in favour of a naked if distributed autocracy."

"If you think in terms of people divided up into countries, you won't follow me. The idea of countries is going by the boards. Young people are getting wonderfully uprooted and they're too strong to get sucked into this 'country' crap."

"Is that never before in the history of the world have so many people been able to learn about so many other people’s lives, products and ideas."

"Today, no country can ever truly cut itself off from the global media or from external sources of information; trends that start in one corner of the world are rapidly replicated thousands of miles away... A country trying to opt out of the global economy by cutting itself off from external trade and capital flows will still have to deal with the fact that the expectations of its population are shaped by their awareness of living standards and cultural products emerging from the outside world."

"What the corporations fear most is that grassroots activists and independent journalists will utilize the same model that companies have used to grab power: globalization. Grassroots globalization."

"Thanks to the advances in mass media and means of transportation, the world seems to have become more visible and tangible. International communication has become easier than ever before. Today, the preservation of any kind of ″closed″ society is hardly possible. This calls for a radical review of approaches to the totality of the problems of international cooperation as a major element of universal security. The world economy is becoming a single organism, and no state, whatever its social system or economic status, can normally develop outside it. This places on the agenda the need to devise a fundamentally new machinery for the functioning of the world economy, a new structure of the international division of labor. At the same time, the growth of the world economy reveals the contradictions and limits inherent in traditional-type industrialization. Its further extension and intensification spell environmental catastrophe. But there are still many countries without sufficiently developed industries, and some have not yet moved beyond the pre-industrial stage. One of the major problems is whether the process of their economic growth will follow the old technological patterns or they can join in the search for environmentally clean production. And there is another problem: instead of diminishing, the gap between the developed and most of the developing countries is increasingly growing into a serious global threat. Hence the need to begin a search for a fundamentally new type of industrial progress - one that would meet the interests of all peoples and states."

"Globalization was exerting a dis-inflationary impact."

"'Globalization' is a horrible term, in the sense that it encompasses all kinds of things; it's used very widely and vaguely."

"Projects to stop the spread of AIDS have tried to establish protective boundaries … by requiring HIV tests in order to cross national boundaries. The boundaries of nation-states, however, are increasingly permeable by all kinds of flows. Nothing can bring back the hygienic shields of colonial boundaries. The age of globalization is the age of universal contagion."

"Simplifying a great deal, one could argue that postmodernist discourses appeal primarily to the winners in the processes of globalization and fundamentalist discourses to the losers."

"Globalization must be met with a counter-globalization, Empire with a counter-Empire."

"The problems and possibilities associated with the emergence of a global consumerist ethos is one with which scholars have only just begun to come to grips. For much of the past century, beginning with Thorstein Veblen’s investigation of conspicuous consumption in 1899, anxieties about commodity culture were treated as national or Western rather than global concerns. They have been explored in articles and books on a dizzying array of themes and topics, and from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Attempts to make analytic sense of the impact and significance of consumerism on modern cultures have been complicated from the outset by normative considerations – either of a moralizing character or by concerns about consumerism as a form of social control – as well as by the role played by consumerism in the rise of ‘mass’ societies. When these long-standing anxieties about consumption and consumerism are set against the space of the entire globe, coming to clear conclusions about its impact on global and local social relations is made even more difficult. The idea of consumerism as a form of social control, for example, blends easily into existing discourses of economic and cultural imperialism; what is described as ‘Americanism’ is often the threat of a consumer culture associated with US society. 7 Expressed more structurally, the addition of new global communication technologies and the increasing role of techno-scientific inquiry (labelled R&D) in the production of goods, have intersected with and altered practices of production and exchange, further multiplying the difficulties of accounting for consumption and consumerism in the world today."

"The processes associated with globalization have created hitherto unimaginable opportunities for cultural forms and practices to travel far beyond the indigenous sites and spaces in which they were first conceived and produced. While there have always been cultural movements and flows from one space to another, the intensity and extensity of contemporary intersections of the global and the local have forced scholars to look closely at the myriad ways in which culture is consumed – used up, made sense of, embraced, and explored. Examining this first sense of cultural ‘consumption’ takes up the difficult questions of cultural diversity and authenticity that have shaped much of the discussion around culture in/and globalization. For example, by looking at implications of the transformation of older cultural forms and the creation of new forms of global-local culture such as global literatures and world music, we can see the meaning and effects of social change on people’s identity and subjectivity."

"Nineteenth-century cosmopolitanism (rather than imperialism) framed another discourse on global culture and cultural consumption. Johann W. Von Goethe’s (1749–1832) discussion in the late 1820s on Weltliteratur or ‘world literature’(reproduced in this volume) 10 has become an important point of reference in many discussions of ‘world’ or ‘global culture’. His brief comments on world literature draw attention to the substantial literary and cultural interchanges already taking place in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These include translations of significant works, including Goethe’s own writings, into major European languages, and the existence of journals across the continent devoted to reviewing foreign works of literature. For Goethe, these literary exchanges do not bring about a homogenization of culture – a consistent worry whenever ‘culture’and the ‘global’ are placed in relation to one another. On the contrary, for him, Weltliteratur promises to create greater opportunities for mutual understanding and tolerance, with both spiritual and material benefits for all. Goethe points, ,to the importance of cultural borrowing and interchange to the vitality of cultural life – a point stressed by many theorists of globalization and culture today. The differences, however, are stark. The world literature that Goethe envisions remained tied to a system of nations, each of which expressed its specific national characteristics through its literature. He also expresses anxiety about the emergenceof a mass culture – the culture of the ‘crowd’ – which must be contained by the activity of ‘serious’ and ‘intellectual’ individuals around the world. In the concept of Weltliteratur are framed many of the problems and challenges in conceptualizing global culture: the role of national culture and its relationship to a universal, ‘world’ Introduction xiii Intro-Vol-3 culture; the status of elite versus mass cultures; and even the relationship of culture to economic and social institutions and structures."

"David Rowe argues that, contrary to what might have been expected, international sport does not contribute to a process of ‘comprehensive globalization’– by which he understands a process through which global forces dissipate local differences until the latter are all but lost. Widely-watched televised mega-sporting events, such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics, which are sponsored by global consumer brands (Adidas, Nike, McDonalds, Budweiser, etc.), might suggest that sport is ‘globalization’s most attentive handmaiden’. Rowe notes, however, that in these cases, the local cannot be so easily written out of the picture. In the case of sports, the nation remains an essential touchstone and symbolic register: even if everyone is watching the World Cup, they are usually cheering for their own national team. ‘Sport’s dependency on the nation’, Rowe argues, ‘always reinserts the restrictive framework of modernity into the fluid workings of post modernity. In doing so – in a highly emotional manner – sport operates as a perpetual reminder of the social limits to the reconfiguration of endlessly mutable identities and identifications’.."

"However, it is not just ideas, representations, ideologies, and styles that are globalized: in other words, it is not just content that is globalized. The globalization of content is the obvious part of the process. It is easy to see when an element of content comes from elsewhere across the globe (cultural consumption in the first sense of the concept as discussed above). By comparison, except when there are obvious border-crossing clashes, it is strangely much harder to see when literary, artistic, and musical forms are globalized. Usually they emerge slowly, subtly and hegemonically. The literary form of the novel, for example – an extended prose fictional narrative, printed and bound, to be read privately – can now be found everywhere in the world, with its greatest moment of globalization coming in the nineteenth century. This was linked to a slow world-historical change in the dominant mode of communication as script gave way to print, and print-capitalism generalized the reach of the novel as a consumerable commodity. The same can be said for novel genres: romance, comedy, detective-fiction, magical realism, and so on. As content, magical realism, for example, was used as a means of resistance to globalization and imperialism; by contrast, as form the genre was itself part of a globalizing counter-response to realism in Latin America and Southeast Asia linked back to a magical realist visual art movement in Weimar German. More generally again, it was part of the globalized spread of a literary form called ‘the novel’. Music went through the same process, though later and more unevenly. At the level of musical form, different notation systems were slowly globalized across the world with the five-line staff system rising to partial dominance in the nineteenth century. In 1939, and then confirmed by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955, an international conference recommended a global standardization of pitch with the note A to be tuned to 440 Hz. This had parallels to the earlier process of globalizing time through agreement on the prime meridian,but it remains more contentious because of issues as basic as local histories of use and questions about what temperature at which the standard should be measured. The establishment of globalized genres of music – classical, rock-and-roll, jazz, samba, and so on – developed in the twentieth century, and music was distributed on changing media of recording that waxed and waned in their dominance. At the leading edge, commercially-produced tapes, records and compact discs as albums, gave way to self-burned CD compilations, and, most recently, to web-based music management programmes such as iTunes. Linked back to content, we are now long past the point where the simple fact of cultural influence or borrowing raises eyebrows. We are used to living in a world where ‘hip hop is mixed up with samba’, as the Los Angeles’ group the Black Eyed Peas sing in ‘Mas Que Nada’, their update of the song by Brazilian pianist Sergio Mendes. More than that, fashion in the forms of distribution has entered the global scene. Will-i-am, leader of the Black-Eyed Peas, has said that the group’s latest studio release on iTunes, The END (2009), is more a continuing ‘diary’ of music rather than an album of music. ‘There is no album any more.’ This is hyperbole for effect of course, just as it was for writers such as John Barth and Walter Benjamin in saying that ‘the novel is dead’, or Roland Barthes in analytically describing "the death of the author." The difference now is that those phrases are globally accessible at the touch of button through internet search engines such as google.com."

"The international system of the twenty-first century will be marked by a seeming contradiction: on the one hand, fragmentation; on the other, growing globalization. On the level of the relations among states, the new order will be more like the European state system of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than the rigid patterns of the Cold War. It will contain at least six major powers—the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Russia, and probably India—as well as a multiplicity of medium-sized and smaller countries. At the same time, international relations have become truly global for the first time. Communications are instantaneous; the world economy operates on all continents simultaneously. A whole set of issues has surfaced that can only be dealt with on a worldwide basis, such as nuclear proliferation, the environment, the population explosion, and economic interdependence. For America, reconciling differing values and very different historical experiences among countries of comparable significance will be a novel experience and a major departure from either the isolation of the last century or the de facto hegemony of the Cold War, in ways which this book seeks to illuminate. Equally, the other major players are facing difficulties in adjusting to the emerging world order."

"In a globalised world we have to compete in order to succeed. But according to present rules of competing, there are no distinct categories. The smallest and poorest nations must compete with the biggest and the richest nations. The smallest local businesses must compete with the multi-national giants. The technologically backward must compete with the technologically advanced. In the competition, rules and regulations are practically disallowed. The only rule is that there should be no rules, no rules about qualifying categories, no rules about the methods used by the competitors. But this is not completely true. While Governments may not restrict and protect, Governments must uphold the rights of the rich and the powerful to literally strangle the poor and the weak. It does not take a genius to see that the dice is loaded against the weak and the poor. They must rely on whatever little competitive advantage that they may have just to survive. But mostly they would lose the competition and they would go under. Perhaps this is not the kind of keynote speech that you'd expect at a forum entitled "Competition in the Globalised World - Becoming a World Class Player". But I believe in calling a spade a spade. The idea about globalisation is fine but the interpretation and the prescription for a globalised world need to be scrutinised closely."

"The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature."

"I think that we're inside that epoch that stretches from the atomic bomb blast over Hiroshima to the moment of the winter solstice of 2012."

"We have come to the end of our separateness.'"

""Globalism" is often the most self-interested and "nationalist" thing you can do. It has been a bonanza."

"Questioning global stereotypes on economic responses to globalisation, I argue that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalisation and the expansion of capital. [...] Although it would seem a simple proposition to suggest that working class people and their organisations affect the ways in which the landscapes of capitalism are made, until recently, there has been little work, even within economic geography, addressing this issue."

"Low labour cost, along with flexibility in labour use, has become a key source of competitive advantage for firms. As external competition intensifies, the domestic industry has come under great pressure to restructure itself, to become more competitive and to adopt flexible policies with regard to production and labour. With a view to increasing global competitiveness, investors are moving more towards countries that either have low labour costs, or are shifting to informal employment arrangements. These changes create an entirely different political-economic environment for workers around the world. Greater international mobility of capital relative to labour puts workers from a given location at an immediate disadvantage, both in terms of bargaining power with the owners of capital (whose threat to move gains greater credibility) and with respect to the State. Thus the removal of domestic entry barriers and movement of capital to areas of cheap labour have caused intensification of domestic competition in many developing countries— especially those with surplus labour supply and those where labour is a major factor of production. This has been accentuated by potential investors citing the lack of flexibility in hiring and laying off workers as a concern, while targeting a developing country in which to invest. [...] Optimism with regard to labour as an agency of social progress has been replaced by pessimism that sees little prospect of workers acting on their own behalf."

"These were the years of the Clinton boom and the gradual recovery of economic dynamism in Europe. They were the heyday of economic globalization and the weightless consumerism it afforded the Western middle classes in particular. The implications of this proved significant in the forging of at least three basic elements of the post-Cold War order: first, regarding the manner in which the world economy was “constructed” (primarily around international finance), the variant of financialized globalization it led to, and the leverage that afforded markets over states; secondly, regarding the timing and significance of the Cold War’s end, the lessons of which pushed the decade’s critical actors, social democrats, into a generational turn towards these newly liberalized markets as a less costly tool of distributional fairness; and thirdly, in terms of very real social tensions that reappeared across the Western democracies during the immediate post-Cold War years. With the world seeming to pick up speed all around, much of this went unnoticed—or at least it was not acted upon—at the time. For this was when the two Germanies were learning how to live as one nation again, and when the European Union was born at Maastricht. It was when the twentieth century seemed to deliver on so many of its technological promises—home computing and the Internet, GM food and cable television—and when it was possible to look at the world at large and, for the first time in people’s memory, not need to interpret events in terms of the struggle between communism and capitalism. It was the self-proclaimed era of being “post-” everything. And yet there was much that persisted too. Yugoslavia broke apart amid the violence in Bosnia; Eastern Europe struggled under the burden of its rapid conversion to a capitalist economy. International law took great strides forward but was written mostly by—and for—the powerful. Meanwhile, an oversized and underregulated financial market thrived beyond the oversight of national states, as did the black market and the oligarchs who profited from this."

"Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before."

"During the last century there has been a distinct diminution in the number of wars between the most civilized nations. International relations have become closer and the development of The Hague tribunal is not only a symptom of this growing closeness of relationship, but is a means by which the growth can be furthered. Our aim should be from time to time to take such steps as may be possible toward creating something like an organization of the civilized nations, because as the world becomes more highly organized the need for navies and armies will diminish."

"To whom, other than its shareholders, is an international corporation answerable? Often they don't anymore employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can almost instantly transfer production to somewhere else. If the tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? The extreme mobility of capital, and also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any other group except itself."

"Globalization is not in itself a folly: It has enriched the world scientifically and culturally and benefited many people economically as well."

"We, the people of the Earth, are one large family. The new epoch offers new challenges and new global problems, such as environmental catastrophes, exhaustion of resources, bloody conflicts and poverty."

"Globalization has its advantages. To be translated and read in several countries is immensely satisfying; after all a writer - this writer at least - is driven by the impulse to communicate. Conversely, globalization exposes one to wonderful writers from diverse cultures."

"Globalizing a bad thing makes it worse. But globalizing a good thing is usually good."

"For much of the world, globalization as it has been managed seems like a pact with the devil. A few people in the country become wealthier; GDP statistics, for what they are worth, look better, but ways of life and basic values are threatened. For some parts of the world the gains are even more tenuous, the costs more palpable. Closer integration into the global economy has brought greater volatility and insecurity, and more inequality. It has even threatened fundamental values. This is not how it has to be. We can make globalization work, not just for the rich and powerful but for all people, including those in the poorest countries. The task will be long and arduous, We have already waited far too long. the time to begin is now."

"As recently as 2005, Britain’s centrist prime minister Tony Blair could declare that to argue about globalization made as much sense as arguing about whether autumn should follow summer. By 2020, both globalization and the seasons were very much in question. The economy had morphed from being the answer to being the question. The obvious retort to “It’s the economy, stupid,” was “Whose economy?” or “Which economy?” or even “What’s the economy?” A series of deep crises beginning in Asia in the late 1990s and moving to the Atlantic financial system in 2008, the eurozone in 2010, and global commodity producers in 2014 had shaken confidence in market economics. All those crises had been overcome, but by government spending and central bank interventions that drove a coach and horses through firmly held precepts about “small government” and “independent” central banks. And who benefited? Whereas profits were private, losses were socialized. The crises had been brought on by speculation. The scale of the interventions necessary to stabilize them had been historic. Yet the wealth of the global elite continued to expand. Who could be surprised, it was now commonplace to ask, if surging inequality led to populist disruption? What many Brexit and Trump voters wanted was “their” national economy back."

"Hillary wants to surrender America to globalism. She wants a country without borders. She wants trade deals written for the benefit of foreign corporations. She wants a government that ignores the will of the people. She wants to sell out American security to the Clinton Foundation for a pile of cash. It is hard to tell where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins. ... Hillary Clinton has betrayed her duty to the people."

"The truth is plain to see - if you want freedom, take pride in your country; if you want democracy, hold onto your sovereignty, and if you want peace, love your nation. Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbours, and honour the differences that make each country special and unique."

"America is governed by Americans. We reject the ideology of globalism and we embrace the doctrine of patriotism."

"Globalization is part of modern reality. How you define it is where the conflict is. Some of us think that it's civilized to provide people with water by putting up public drinking fountains. Other people think that drinking fountains need to be eliminated so as not to undercut the market for $2.00 bottled water."

"Let's take the case of slavery. While capitalism legitimizes itself as the economic system that implies and furthers personal freedom (as a condition of market exchange), it generated slavery on its own, as part of its own dynamics: although slavery became almost extinct at the end of the Middle Ages, it re-emerged in colonies from early modernity till the American Civil War. And one can risk the hypothesis that today, with the new epoch of global capitalism, a new era of slavery is also arising. Although there is no longer a direct legal category of enslaved persons, slavery acquires a multitude of new forms: millions of migrant workers in the Saudi peninsula (UAE, Qatar, etc.), who are deprived of elementary civil rights and freedoms and subjected to restricted mobility; the total control of millions of workers in Asian sweatshops, often consciously organized as concentration camps; the massive use of forced labor in the exploitation of natural resources in many Central African states (Congo, etc.). This new de facto apartheid, this systematic explosion of a number of different forms of contemporary slavery, is not a deplorable accident but a structural necessity of today's global capitalism."

"Although "globalism" is a term often used to describe a coming golden age of economic and cultural borderlessness, persistent economic disparities as well as recent ethnic conflicts and other examples of extreme parochialism such as widespread anti-immigration rhetoric and legislation, all of which evince an astonishing resistance to changes in the traditional methods of societal organization, suggest that the modern world may face great upheaval and loss on its way to globalism. Nevertheless, other developments such as the movement toward the "Open Republic" are more encouraging. As people, businesses, and ideas become increasingly dispersed, the world's nations may come to better understand one another, and therefore be better able to coexist. At a minimum this commingling will profoundly affect the character of modern nations."

"Modern globalism is the highest form of imperialism. The onslaught of capital on workers’ rights is mounting fast. Imperialism is becoming more aggressive in the world and the threat of a new large-scale war is growing. The financial and economic crisis is worsening with each new wave being more grievous and painful. One side effect of the crisis is the groundswell of nationalist and separatist sentiments in contemporary Europe."

"In this struggle we are inspired by the example of those countries where staunch supporters of the socialist option are in power. They are China which has the world in awe of its spectacular successes in the economy and the social sphere. Cuba, which the US imperialism has vainly tried to strangle for six decades. The dynamically developing Vietnam. These countries challenge capitalist globalization, refuse to submit to their diktat and score successes on the socialist path. The experience of fraternal Byelorussia is highly instructive."

"The word competition itself is already dangerous; in it is expressed jealousy, in other words, a corrupt devotion. Therefore, it is best wherever possible to replace the concept of competition with that of perfectionment. 134."

"Unity, peace and security will come through the recognition — intelligently assessed—of the evils which have led to the present world situation, and then through the taking of those wise, compassionate and understanding steps which will lead to the establishing of right human relations, to the substitution of cooperation for the present competitive system, and by the education of the masses in every land as to the nature of true goodwill and its hitherto unused potency."

"What at this moment appears to prevent world unity... ? The answer is not hard to find and involves all nations: nationalism, capitalism, competition, blind stupid greed.The mass of men need arousing to see that good comes to all men alike and not just to a few privileged groups, and to learn also that "hatred ceases not by hatred but that hatred ceases by love"."

"The world economic council (or whatever body represents the resources of the world) must free itself from fraudulent politics, capitalistic influence and its devious scheming; it must set the resources of the earth free for the use of humanity. This will be a lengthy task but it will be possible when world need is better appreciated. An enlightened public opinion will make the decisions of the economic council practical and possible. Sharing and cooperation must be taught instead of greed and competition."

"Competition is merely the absence of oppression."

"Such a businessman has never become rich whose mouth was full of slander and his heart full of envy of success of the others, who could with great skill reveal the mistakes of his competitor. However that one has never been and will never be poor who serves his customers with words of cordial kindness and whose eyes can see rather the positive than the negative features of the competitor so that he could use them."

""The next of the great wastes was that from competition. The field of industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers wasted, in assailing one another, energies which, if expended in concerted effort, as to-day, would have enriched all. As for mercy or quarter in this warfare, there was absolutely no suggestion of it. To deliberately enter a field of business and destroy the enterprises of those who had occupied it previously, in order to plant one's own enterprise on their ruins, was an achievement which never failed to command popular admiration. Nor is there any stretch of fancy in comparing this sort of struggle with actual warfare, so far as concerns the mental agony and physical suffering which attended the struggle, and the misery which overwhelmed the defeated and those dependent on them. Now nothing about your age is, at first sight, more astounding to a man of modern times than the fact that men engaged in the same industry, instead of fraternizing as comrades and co-laborers to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer madness, a scene from bedlam."

"The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community."

"Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized, and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and rational basis for a society, we should still enforce it as economically expedient, seeing that until the disintegrating influence of self-seeking is suppressed no true concert of industry is possible.'"

"Wanting a haven for myself, I saw nothing that wasn’t laid claim to. Seeing nothing in the end but competition, I felt discontent. And then I saw an arrow here, so very hard to see, embedded in the heart. Overcome by this arrow you run in all directions. But simply on pulling it out you don’t run, you don’t sink."

"I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God's standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love."

"Thou shalt not covet, but tradition Approves all forms of competition."

"If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses — you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks."

"Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life — peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law."

"And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person's envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind."

"In previous ages a nation's life and culture could be protected to some extent by the growth of armies in national competition. Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster."

"You have reduced the number of wars—to earn all the bigger profits in peace, to intensify to the utmost the enmity between individuals, the ignominious war of competition!"

"The liberal economic system had done its best to universalise enmity, to transform mankind into a horde of ravenous beasts (for what else are competitors?)."

"Competition – that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital. ... The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way."

"Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter."

"Abolish competition and replace it with association."

"Since the by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the of goods."

"He who ignores a rival, does not get to eat everything up, like the bull which ignores the bull at its side. But he who acknowledges a contest can be the outright winner, like the bull which acknowledges the bull at its side."

"Prostitutes are the inevitable product of a society that places ultimate importance on money, possessions, and competition."

"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action … 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: — the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; … 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily..."

"Competition is dangerous, socially offensive, considered right and normal, because you are brought up to that value system. What kind of competition did Jesus have? What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!" And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!" You'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself."

"The dominant culture of the world teaches us that The Other is a threat, that our fellow human beings are a danger. We will all continue to be exiles in one form or another as long as we continue to accept the paradigm that the world is a racetrack or a battlefield."

"The world of antitrust is reminiscent of Alice’s Wonderland: everything seemingly is, yet apparently isn’t, simultaneously. It is a world in which competition is lauded as the basic axiom and guiding principle, yet "too much" competition is condemned as "cutthroat." It is a world in which actions designed to limit competition are branded as criminal when taken by businessmen, yet praised as "enlightened" when initiated by the government. It is a world in which the law is so vague that businessmen have no way of knowing whether specific actions will be declared illegal until they hear the judge’s verdict—after the fact."

"In fact, a growing number of academics and practitioners have concluded that neoliberal economic theory is dangerously wrong and that today's growing crises of rising inequality and growing political instability are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory. What we now know is that the economics that made me so rich isn't just wrong, it's backwards, because it turns out it isn't capital that creates economic growth, it's people; and it isn't self-interest that promotes the public good, it's reciprocity; and it isn't competition that produces our prosperity, it's cooperation. What we can now see is that an economics that is neither just nor inclusive can never sustain the high levels of social cooperation necessary to enable a modern society to thrive."

"Now, the old economics is correct, of course, that competition plays a crucial role in how markets work, but what it fails to see is that it is largely a competition between highly cooperative groups -- competition between firms, competition between networks of firms, competition between nations -- and anyone who has ever run a successful business knows that building a cooperative team by including the talents of everyone is almost always a better strategy than just a bunch of selfish jerks... So how do we leave neoliberalism behind and build a more sustainable, more prosperous and more equitable society? The new economics suggests just five rules of thumb..."

"Free competition is worth more to society than it costs."

"Capitalist-private property relations are the source of class inequalities, which is the primary factor in my being a member of a class that bears all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages. Under the influence of illegitimate-capitalist values, I was pursuing the alleviation of social-economic hardship through individual advancement. This is a wholly inadequate remedy to social problems because it doesn’t challenge the fundamental injustice of class-exploitation and class-oppression, which are responsible for creating the socio-economic ills in the first place. Unaware of my class interest, I was perpetuating my own oppression by engaging in competitive capitalist practices that ensure the smooth functioning of the system as the exploiting minority profits in more ways than one off the division and disunity engendered by competition, so prevalent amongst the exploited. Look around: competition, euphemistically called “individuality,” permeates and is systematically promoted to the masses of people while the corporate conglomerations and Fortune 500 are busy “merging and monopolizing.”"

"Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition — in having to put forth the best within you to match the deeds of risk-taking, hard-working competitors."

"The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition."

"In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if you stand still, they will swallow you."

"Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased. The competitive spirit is merely an additive process which is not learning at all. We want the child to learn and not merely add knowledge to himself like a machine. To help the child to learn basically and fundamentally he must cease to compete, with all its implications... Competitiveness is destructive not only in the classroom but right through life."

"Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm."

"The production of security should, in the interests of the consumers of this intangible commodity, remain subject to the law of free competition. ... No government should have the right to prevent another government from going into competition with it, or to require consumers of security to come exclusively to it for this commodity."

"Competition is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

"Whoever claims that economic competition represents "survival of the fittest" in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics."

"The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth."

"Success is whatever humiliation everyone has agreed to compete for."

"You must not envy each other. But of course it depends on each of you to develop your capabilities. And the only lawful competition between members of the group may be a competition in the best direction of striving and understanding of the thought for the General Good. Each one should understand that this capacity in each individual consciousness is the only indicator of progress and that the spirit stands on a corresponding step-not higher and not lower."

"To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of competition. … In science, being 'better' than others is of little practical value. Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is are abundant."

"Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off."

"A man with no friends, only live for revenge Live his life off the henge, cut, through a thousand men Blade swing with the force of a cyclone Cut crystal and bone, pistol and chrome Stand in my path, you're a dead man I cut the whole world in half for the Number One headband Quest of a lonely soul, on a lonely road."

"A person whose mind is distracted lives between the fangs of mental afflictions. ... They feel envy toward a superior, competitiveness with a peer, arrogance toward one who is inferior, conceit due to praise and anger due to reproach. When could there be any benefit from a fool?"

"In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect."

"Zero sum game implies winners and losers. If somebody wins, somebody gotta lose…. I don’t agree with that. Because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films help other good films. Different psychology. If you’re overly competitive, you say it is exclusionary, a zero sum game: I must win so he must lose. That’s not true. We can all win without forcing the other guy to lose."

"Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant."

"You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits."

"I have an idée fixe that I am completely obsessed with on the business side — which is that if you are starting a company, if you are the founder entrepreneur starting a company, you always want to aim for monopoly. ... And you want to always avoid competition. ... Hence competition is for losers. ... What makes a business valuable? ... A business creates X dollars of value and captures Y% of X. X and Y are independent variables."

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat."

"Our species will not survive another 100 years if we don’t move from a competitive to a cooperative mode of existence. “Me first” is an obsolete, unsustainable perspective."

"Oliver E. Williamson has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets. A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets."

"There can be only one."

"Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who, were it proved he lies, Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors’ eyes? Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult."

"Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition."

"It is better to buy than compete."

"Only one thing is impossible for God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

"Things have been going in the wrong direction -- more surveillance, more control of everything we do on the net and also stricter copyright laws -- that's the wrong course for Europe. We want to set a new one."

"Copyright law cases typically involve multifactorial analyses and lots of nuance. I would not assume that a commercial book publisher's use of "Seinfeld" quotes necessarily tells us anything about a non-commercial reference's use of quotations. Many people believe that copyright jurisprudence gives clear and obvious guidance about how one should use copyrighted materials in future cases. My experience has been, however, that this belief is mistaken."

"Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly [...] It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good."

"Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot [...] Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living."

"I was in the pub last night, and a guy asked me for a light for his cigarette. I suddenly realised that there was a demand here and money to be made, and so I agreed to light his cigarette for 10 pence, but I didn't actually give him a light, I sold him a license to burn his cigarette. My fire-license restricted him from giving the light to anybody else, after all, that fire was my property. He was drunk, and dismissing me as a loony, but accepted my fire (and by implication the licence which governed its use) anyway. Of course in a matter of minutes I noticed a friend of his asking him for a light and to my outrage he gave his cigarette to his friend and pirated my fire! I was furious, I started to make my way over to that side of the bar but to my added horror his friend then started to light other people's cigarettes left, right, and centre! Before long that whole side of the bar was enjoying MY fire without paying me anything. Enraged I went from person to person grabbing their cigarettes from their hands, throwing them to the ground, and stamping on them. Strangely the door staff exhibited no respect for my property rights as they threw me out the door."

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

"If creativity is the field, copyright is the fence"

"The corporations that hold these copyrights are media companies that also control most of the new media that comes out. Estimates vary, but it's said that 98 percent of all culture is unavailable right now because of copyrights. So the reason they hold the copyrights isn't because they want to get paid, it's because they don't want all the old stuff competing with the media stream that they control now."

"Mimi: Silencing you because I don’t like what you say is censorship. Silencing you because I can make more money that way is copyright. They’re totally different! Eunice: The profit motive makes it OK."

"In ten years I think the [copyright] laws are going to be worse and I also think they are going to be less relevant. I mean, already the difference between the laws and people's behaviour, It's like they're different planets. I'm not hopeful for the laws changing. A lot of other people are, so maybe we will have meaningful copyright reform. I doubt it. I don't think it matters. I think the tools are available for people to create and share culture and they're going to do that and they might be doing it illegally and at a certain point it's going to be more than the system can handle. I will say that if the power structure as it exists wants to continue they're going to have to reform because it's not sustainable. Copyright law as it is, it's just completely out of touch with human behaviour."

"When you shut down neurons to prevent them from transmitting signals, we call that "brain damage." Copyright is brain damage. It's brain damage in the great mind, and it's brain damage in the individual mind."

"Defendant used a robot with mechanical features and not, for example, a manikin molded to Plaintiff’s precise features. The robot at issue was not Plaintiff’s “likeness” within the meaning of section 3344."

"Dissent. (J. Kozinski) Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as under protecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it’s supposed to nurture."

"Discussion. In this case, the Court abandoned the strict common law rules of appropriation. The viewer of the ad could clearly see that it was an attempt to convey Plaintiff on the set of Wheel of Fortune. Defendant hoped to profit from Plaintiff’s fame without paying her for it. Because Plaintiff did not consent to such appropriation, Defendant is liable."

"If vices were profitable, the virtuous man would be the sinner."

"O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain"

"There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money."

"The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable."

"Market signals were clear: There’s no profit in preventing a future catastrophe."

"We may add that focus on maximizing profits is also "not always consistent" with the hope for "the survival of humanity," to borrow the phrase of a leaked memo from , [the U.S.’s] largest bank, warning that "the survival of humanity" is at risk on our current course, including the bank's own investments in fossil fuels. Thus, canceled a profitable sustainable energy project because there’s more profit to be made in destroying life on Earth. ExxonMobil refrained from doing so, because [it] had never opened such a project in the first place, having made more rational calculations of profitability. And rightly so, according to neoliberal doctrine. As Milton Friedman and other neoliberal luminaries have instructed us, the task of corporate managers is to maximize profits. Any deviation from this moral obligation would shatter the foundations of "civilized life.""

"The promise of every product and service is a better life. Profits are the prize for delivering on the promise."

"… actions whose motives he cannot understand—that is, actions not prompted by the hope of profit."

"He is like all the rest: a slave to profit, a master only to his bent for negotiating the best deal."

"What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it."

"The thing we must do intensely is be human together. People are more important than things. We must get together. The best thing humans can have going for them is each other. We have each other. We must reject everything which humiliates us. Humans are not objects of consumption. We must develop an absolute priority of humans ahead of profit — any humans ahead of any profit. Then we will survive. … Together."

"Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. It's profits are to the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic."

"For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his soul?"

"I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered."

"For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic … often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based."

"I don't think that corporations are these big bogeymen that a lot of people paint them to be. … A corporation is a group of people, and if you want to come together for profit or nonprofit, that's your business—whatever you want to do."

"It is no longer economy aiming at individual profit, but economy concerned with collective interest."

"The love of gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul, when once applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has it."

"When a firm makes a profit this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied."

"Such is the fate of everyone who goes in search of profit; it takes away the life of its owners."

"For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall"

"When by habit a man cometh to have a bargaining soul, its wings are cut, so that it can never soar. It bindeth reason an apprentice to gain, and instead of a director, maketh it a drudge."

"Cui prodest scelus, is fecit."

"Whoever has a keen eye for profits, is blind in relation to his craft."

"Spend time on excellence, and love the right, And don’t let shameful profit master you."

"In aristocracies, it is not precisely work that is scorned, but work with a view to profit. Work is glorious when ambition or virtue alone makes one undertake it. … The idea of gain remains distinct from that of work. No matter that they are joined in fact. … In democratic societies, these two ideas are, on the contrary, always visibly united."

"Private property … has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is."

"The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet millions of American families have had to set up crowdfunding sites to try to raise money for their loved ones’ medical bills. Millions more can buy unleaded gasoline for their car, but they can’t get unleaded water in their homes. Almost half of America’s workers—whether in or , California or —work for less than a . And as school buildings in poor communities crumble for lack of investment, America’s billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than the poorest half of households. This moral crisis is coming to a head as the coronavirus pandemic lays bare America’s deep injustices. … The underlying disease, in other words, is poverty, which was killing nearly 700 of us every day in the world’s wealthiest country, long before anyone had heard of COVID-19. The moral crisis of poverty amid vast wealth is inseparable from the injustice of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and our militarized war economy. It is only a minority rule sustained by voter suppression and gerrymandering that subverts the will of the people. To redeem the soul of America—and survive a pandemic—we must have a moral fusion movement that cuts across race, gender, class, and cultural divides."

"Decades after Depression-era reforms, Wall Street fought successfully to deregulate the , paving the way for the 2008 financial crash that caused millions to lose their homes and livelihoods. And the ultra-rich and big corporations have also managed to dominate our campaign finance system, making it easier for them to buy off politicians who commit to rigging the rules against the poor and the environment, and to suppress voting rights, making it harder for the poor to fight back. … Key to these rollbacks: controlling the narrative about who is poor in America and the world. It is in the interest of the greedy and the powerful to perpetuate myths of deservedness—that they deserve their wealth and power because they are smarter and work harder, while the poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy and intellectually inferior. It’s also in their interest to perpetuate the myth that the poverty problem has largely been solved and so we needn’t worry about the rich getting richer—even while our real is full of gaping holes. This myth has been reinforced by our deeply flawed official measurements of poverty and economic hardship. The way the U.S. government counts who is poor and who is not, frankly, is a sixty-year-old mess that doesn’t tell us what we need to know. It’s an inflation-adjusted measure of the cost of a basket of food in 1955 relative to household income, adjusted for family size—and it’s still the way we today."

"Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy."

"If wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks."

"The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics is not the claim that if the rich get richer, everyone is better off. It is the claim made by those who oppose any increase in the minimum wage that if the poor get richer, that will be bad for the economy. This is nonsense. So can we please dispense with this rhetoric that says that rich guys like me and my plutocrat friends made our country?"

"Many economists would have you believe that their field is an objective science. I disagree, and I think that it is equally a tool that humans use to enforce and encode our social and moral preferences and prejudices about status and power, which is why plutocrats like me have always needed to find persuasive stories to tell everyone else about why our relative positions are morally righteous and good for everyone, like: we are indispensable, the job creators, and you are not; like, tax cuts for us create growth, but investments in you will balloon our debt and bankrupt our great country; that we matter; that you don't. For thousands of years, these stories were called divine right. Today, we have trickle-down economics. How obviously, transparently self-serving all of this is. We plutocrats need to see that the United States of America made us, not the other way around; that a thriving middle class is the source of prosperity in capitalist economies, not a consequence of it."

"We’ve been saturated with cultural images and a kind of cultural deification of wealth and those who have wealth. They present people of immense wealth as somehow leaders, oracles even. We don’t grasp internally what an oligarchic class is finally about, or how venal and morally bankrupt they are. We need to recover the language of class warfare to grasp what is happening to us. And we need to shatter this that somehow if, as Obama says, we work hard enough and study hard enough, we can be one of them."

"The whole notion of the free market, laissez-faire capitalism, globalization; is a very thin rationale for unmitigated greed by a tiny oligarchic elite. And they have made sure that that ideology is taught in universities across the country. And people, especially economists, who deviate from that ideology have been pushed aside, and become pariahs. And yet the driving ethos of that ideology is really to justify the hoarding of immense amounts of wealth by a very tiny percentage of the upper ruling class."

"The American President and his Plutocratic clique have mocked us as the Have-nots — that is true, but the Have-nots will see to it that they are not robbed of the little they have."

"Woe to those who make unjust laws,"

"I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"The conflict is not really between royalty and democracy. It is between both and plutocracy, which, having destroyed the royal power by frank force under democratic pretexts, has bought and swallowed democracy."

"The stark reality is that we have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people. This threatens to make us a democracy in name only."

"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich–that is the democracy of capitalist society."

"Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control — a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else."

"Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly "bang the drum on plutonomy." … over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. … This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet. … Like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy. Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs. … Democracy only works when we claim it as our own."

"The movement, imagining itself the mediator of Christ's salvation in a catastrophic age, is really an additional evidence of the decay in which we stand. Its religion manages to combine bourgeois complacency with Christian contrition in a manner which makes the former dominant. Its morality is a religious expression of a decadent individualism. Far from offering us a way out of our difficulties it adds to the general confusion. This is not the gospel's message of judgement and hope to the world. It is bourgeois optimism, individualism and expressing itself in the guise of religion. No wonder the rather jittery plutocrats of our day open their spacious summer homes to its message!"

"What would happen if someone were to choose the captains of ships by their wealth, refusing to entrust the ship to a poor person even if he was a better captain?"

"Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored."

"We [Americans] have no aristocracy of blood, and having therefore as a natural, and indeed as an inevitable thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the display of wealth has here to take the place and perform the office of the heraldic display in monarchical countries. By a transition readily understood, and which might have been as readily foreseen, we have been brought to merge in simple show our notions of taste itself."

"When the rich and the poor have justice meted to them in our courts with an uneven hand, and the fact is made plain and comprehensible, it is felt to be an outrage and a betrayal of the spirit of our institutions."

"The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."

"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy."

"I fear that we may be on the verge of becoming an oligarchic form of society where a handful of s control not just the economy, but the political life of this country. And that’s just something we’re going to have wrestle with."

"If by "democracy" we mean the form which the Third Estate as such wishes to impart to public life as a whole, it must be concluded that democracy and plutocracy are the same thing under the two aspects of wish and actuality, theory and practice, knowing and doing. It is the tragic comedy of the world‑improvers' and freedom‑teachers' desperate fight against money that they are ipso facto assisting money to be effective. Respect for the big number—expressed in the principles of equality for all, natural rights, and universal suffrage—is just as much a class‑ideal of the unclassed as freedom of public opinion (and more particularly freedom of the press) is so. These are ideals, but in actuality the freedom of public opinion involves the preparation of public opinion, which costs money; and the freedom of the press brings with it the question of possession of the press, which again is a matter of money; and with the franchise comes electioneering, in which he who pays the piper calls the tune. The representatives of the ideas look at one side only, while the representatives of money operate with the other. The concepts of Liberalism and Socialism are set in effective motion only by money. … There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money—and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact."

"The UK government’s overseas development bank has bowed to calls to end fossil fuel financing abroad by promising to invest only in companies that align with the Paris climate agreement. The CDC Group revealed its new climate strategy, which will end support for the most polluting fossil fuel projects, including the production of oil and coal, and channel almost a third of its spending towards climate finance. The publicly owned investor, which supports job-creating sectors in Africa and south Asia, will end financing for coal mining, and oil and gas production, as well as new or existing power plants and refineries that use coal or heavy oil. The UK government is under growing pressure to end its support for overseas fossil fuel projects after campaigners revealed that more than £3bn in public money was used to support polluting projects abroad since the Paris climate agreement was signed..."

"The decision to curb support follows an exodus of major institutional investors from the coal industry in recent years, including Goldman Sachs and Blackrock. Investors are wary of supporting industries that contribute to the climate crisis, and may risk the financial stability of their funds. Norway’s $1.19tn (£950bn) sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, has decided to reduce its exposure to oil and gas investments too."

"The UK’s biggest pension fund, the government-backed National Employment Savings Trust (Nest) scheme with nine million members, is to begin divesting from fossil fuels in what climate campaigners have hailed as a landmark move for the industry. The fund will ban investments in any companies involved in coal mining, oil from tar sands and arctic drilling. But the move puts Nest – a public corporation of the Department for Work and Pensions – potentially at odds with the current pensions minister, Guy Opperman, who earlier this month condemned divestment as “counter productive”. Nest, which handles much of the pensions of workers saving under the government’s “auto enrolment” scheme, will shift £5.5bn into “climate aware” investments as it anticipates a green economic recovery from coronavirus."

"The ban will mean that some of the world’s biggest mining companies, such as BHP, can never be part of Nest’s share holdings, as long they derive profits from digging coal. It said it will sell its final holdings in BHP by 3 August. Nest will also seek to reduce its carbon-intensive holdings, such as with the traditional oil giants, while investing more money in renewable energy infrastructure. The fund’s chief investment officer, Mark Fawcett, said Nest was sending a strong and clear message about the seriousness of climate change."

"SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?"

"The owners of savings not finding, in adequate quantities, their usual kind of investments, rush into anything that promises speciously, and when they find that these specious investments can be disposed of at a high profit, they rush into them more and more. The first taste is for high interest, but that taste soon becomes secondary. There is a second appetite for large gains to be made by selling the principal which is to yield the interest. So long as such sales can be effected the mania continues; when it ceases to be possible to effect them, ruin begins."

"The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands."

"Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.” If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases."

"... there are three connected realities that cause investing success to breed failure. First, a good record quickly attracts a torrent of money. Second, huge sums invariably act as an anchor on investment performance: What is easy with millions, struggles with billions (sob!). Third, most managers will nevertheless seek new money because of their personal equation – namely, the more funds they have under management, the more their fees."

"With all the clever brains in America it would be great to see more investment and focus on this essential research!"

"Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. … An investment in libraries is an investment in our children's future."

"The city’s mayor signed a bill to eliminate the controversial investments by 2025. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has signed into law an ordinance to divest the city from the fossil fuel, tobacco, and private prison industries by the end of 2025. The ordinance prohibits using public funds to invest in the stocks, securities, or other obligations of any company that derives more than 15% of its revenue from those industries. Under the new law, fossil fuel investments are defined as investments in any company that derives more than 15% of its revenue from the combustion, distribution, extraction, manufacture, or sale of fossil fuels, including coal, oil and gas, or fossil fuel products. It also includes electric distribution companies with corporate affiliates that derive revenue from fossil fuels."

"Boston is among an increasing number of municipalities, universities, and private foundations that have announced plans to divest from fossil fuels. In late October, ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP26, Auckland, New Zealand; Copenhagen, Denmark; Glasgow, Scotland; Paris; Rio de Janeiro; and Seattle announced commitments to divest from fossil fuel companies and increase investments to make cities more sustainable. Also last month, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott signed a bill that requires the city’s three pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Those are in addition to divestment commitments made last year by Berlin; Bristol, England; Cape Town, South Africa; Durban, South Africa; London; Los Angeles; Milan; New Orleans; New York City; Oslo; Norway; Pittsburgh; and Vancouver, Canada. “Cities are at the forefront of tackling the climate emergency and there is real momentum to move investments away from fossil fuels and toward climate solutions,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is chair-elect of C40 Cities, a network of mayors working to confront climate change, said in a statement. “I will continue to encourage more cities to join the movement, and urge national governments and private finance institutions to mobilize more finance to invest directly in cities to support a green and fair recovery.”"

"Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike."

"To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks."

"The investment banks should either choose to be regulated as banks or should arrange to conduct their affairs to not require the stop-gap support of the Federal Reserve."

"The College’s endowment will no longer be directly invested in fossil fuels and the Dartmouth Investment Office intends to allow its remaining public holdings in the sector to expire, according to an Oct. 8 announcement. Although this release marks the College’s first formal announcement of its divestment plan, the DIO banned fossil fuel holdings in 2020. The College’s divestment approach results from two decisions made over a four-year span: a 2017 decision that barred the endowment from making any “new investments in private fossil fuel extraction, exploration and production funds” and a decision in early 2020 “for [the College’s] direct public portfolio to no longer hold investments in fossil fuel companies,” according to the announcement. The move comes after Harvard University announced a similar divestment strategy in September, after the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report outlined the disastrous effects of continued climate inaction, after the student body presidents of the eight Ivy League schools called on the League to divest in April and after years of activism from Divest Dartmouth... According to the statement, “evidence that correlates the production of fossil fuels with the warming of the atmosphere is convincing and widely accepted.”"

"A movement to divest from fossil fuel is gaining support among foundations as activists push for funding to be shifted away from coal, oil and natural gas. The call from activists to the charitable world is simple: Ditch fossil fuels and direct your investments into climate-friendly companies and funds. The worldwide divestment campaign has sought commitments from universities, corporations and other entities. Now, two of the biggest names in philanthropy — the Ford and MacArthur foundations — are reorienting their investments away from fossil fuels, a move that leaders of the divestment movement hope will prove to be a tipping point for the charitable world.... “We’re calling on governments and corporations to act on climate aggressively and commensurate with the science,” said Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund and a leader in Divest-Invest Philanthropy, which is pushing the philanthropic community to dump its fossil fuel investments.... The MacArthur Foundation, an $8 billion organization known for its “genius grants,” pledged two years ago to halt new investments in oil and gas. It went further in September, saying it would switch to U.S. index funds that exclude fossil fuel companies. And it's aiming to change its global index funds to do the same within a year."

"Together, these bylaws prohibit any future fossil fuel investments from entering the endowment....As the terms of these partnerships approach their legally-contracted conclusions… the [investment] managers will move through the sale processes of those assets... In the past few years... the College has found that the investment in sustainable energy companies provides great returns and also allows the College to support new technology developments and make a huge difference.... Our investment team’s analysis indicated that there is a continued growing global shift in demand towards renewable and clean energy,... What we’ve noticed is that investments in energy transitions are now comparable or better than the investment opportunities in fossil fuel companies...Our investment team’s analysis indicated that there is a continued growing global shift in demand towards renewable and clean energy... What we’ve noticed is that investments in energy transitions are now comparable or better than the investment opportunities in fossil fuel companies."

"The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pass almost unnoticed. So too with the capitalist. ... By capitalist, I mean the investor who puts his money into a concern and draws profits there from without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed."

"Investment of capital, to yield its fruit in the future, must be based on expectations, of opportunities in the future. When I put this to Hayek, he told me that this was indeed the direction in which he had been thinking. Hayek gave me a copy of a paper on 'intertemporal equilibrium', which he had written some years before his arrival in London; the conditions for a perfect foresight equilibrium were there set out in a very sophisticated manner."

"The capitalists of a country which manages to capture foreign markets from other countries are able to increase their profits at the expense of the capitalists of the other countries. Similarly, a colonial metropolis may achieve an export surplus through investment in its dependencies."

"Senator Menendez seems to think that tax increases create jobs and investment. I believe that private businesses create jobs, and that investment will flow to states with good economic climates and good governance, especially in a globalized economy."

"As this State's income rises, so does the income of Michigan. As the income of Michigan rises, so does the income of the United States. A rising tide lifts all the boats and as Arkansas becomes more prosperous so does the United States and as this section declines so does the United States. So I regard this as an investment by the people of the United States in the United States."

"Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole."

"The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future."

"All successful investment involves trying to get into something where it's worth more than you're paying. That's what successful investing is."

"The intention of the US found its feature through a clear formulation in the Agreement for the IBRD. The “purposes of the Bank” were defined as follows: “To promote private foreign investment by means of guarantees or participations in loans and other investments made by private investors; and when private capital is not available on reasonable terms, to supplement private investments by providing, on suitable conditions, finance for productive purposes out of its own capital, funds raised by it and its other resources”"

"The Vatican urged Catholics on Thursday to disinvest from the armaments and fossil fuel industries and to closely monitor companies in sectors such as mining to check if they are damaging the environment. The calls were contained in a 225-page manual for church leaders and workers to mark the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical “Laudato Si” (Praised Be) on the need to protect nature, life and defenseless people. The compendium suggests practical steps to achieve the goals of the encyclical, which strongly supported agreements to contain global warming and warned against the dangers of climate change. The manual’s section on finance said people “could favor positive changes ... by excluding from their investments companies that do not satisfy certain parameters.” It listed these as respect for human rights, bans on child labor and protection of the environment... Last month, more that 40 faith organizations from around the world, more than half of them Catholic, pledged to divest from fossil fuel companies. The document urges Catholics to defend the rights of local populations to have a say in whether their lands can be used for oil or mineral extraction and the right to take strong stands against companies that cause environmental disasters or over-exploit natural resources such as forests."

"It is the rate of investment which governs the rate of saving, and not vice versa."

"… If you want more work and investment, you hold a sale on economic activity by cutting tax rates, thereby reducing the cost of productive activity and increasing the prospect of after-tax returns on work and investment.""

"With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company."

"It can be argued that the U.S. brokerage and investment banking industry has transformed the modern American stock market into nothing more than a mechanism for transferring wealth from shareholders to management."

"Mutual funds are an overrated investment heavily promoted by Wall Street."

"The principles of investment are involved in activities that do not pass through the marketplace, and are not normally thought of as economic. Putting things away after you use them is an investment of time in the present to reduce the time required to find them in the future. Explaining yourself to others can be a time-consuming, and even unpleasant, activity but it is engaged in as an investment to prevent greater unhappiness in the future from misunderstandings."

"Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control)."

"I wonder if those who advocate generosity for its rewards notice the inconsistency, or if what they call generosity is an attractive investment strategy."

"What fools call “wasting time” is most often the best investment."

"The writer, who as an engineer has spent most of his life in factories, is inclined to look at the basis for investment from a technological point of view... Consider … the class of industrial investments only... The situation is one of entrepreneurs and boards of directors considering, from time to time, various ’possibilities of investment’, such as extra lathes or looms, an extension to a factory, a venture in some completely new product, and so on. It is helpful to think of these ’opportunities for investment’ as existing, in a given situation, in great number and variety, whether they are at that moment under active consideration or not. When any such possibility is considered it is assessed in respect of ’expected profitability’. One may conveniently think of all possibilities of investment as ’quanta’ that can be placed in a schedule of small ranges of expected profitability according to these assessments. The placement of a given ’opportunity for investment’ on this schedule has some ’margin of uncertainty’ (a curious analogy with the case of the quanta of physics)."

"On October 27, University of Toronto (UofT) President Meric Gertler announced the university’s commitment to divest from fossil fuel companies within its endowment fund of $4 billion, citing findings from the United Nations and the World Health Organization on the impending climate crisis which “now demands bold actions that have both substantive and symbolic impact.” This divestment includes a pledge to divest from all direct investments in fossil fuel companies within the next 12 months... This decision follows those of many other universities across Canada and the United States in the past few years, including Concordia University in 2019 and Harvard University this past September....As of 2021, approximately 220 postsecondary institutions have divested from the fossil fuel industry. UofT’s decision was motivated by its perceived role as a leading academic institution to meet the “urgent challenge” of the climate crisis and its responsibility for the detrimental effects that will “disproportionately fall on students and generations of future students and children around the world.”"

"I came up with Detroit. (Sorry, sports fans.) Vast stretches of the city are already uninhabited, crumbling. The central temples, yes, are still in use — the temples for sports, conventions and ritualistic music concerts — but for how much longer? Will the beautiful deco buildings erected as working shrines by what were once the largest companies in the world (GM, Ford) soon be abandoned? They’re already surrounded by a no man’s wasteland; it seems only a matter of time. And then how long before people wander into that zone and ask themselves, “Who built this incredible building?"

"Most of you are afraid of our neighborhood. But did you know? So are we. But we are here, you see, Not because we want to be."

"The construction of the Gowanus Parkway, laying a concrete slab on top of lively, bustling Third Avenue, buried the avenue in shadow, and when the parkway was completed, the avenue was cast forever into darkness and gloom, and its bustle and life were forever gone."

"We [The banks] determine who will succeed and who will fail."

"It was people, not architects, who made slums."

"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, not from a want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."

"We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe that it is a part of sovereignty, and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than we could afford to delegate to private individuals the power to make penal statutes or levy taxes…Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of government, and that the banks ought to go out of the governing business… When we have restored the money of the Constitution, all other reform will be possible, but until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished."

"Experience, more prevalent than all the logic in the world, has fully convinced us all, that it (paper money issued directly by government) has been, and is now of the greatest advantages to the country."

"After President Jackson vetoed Congress’ re-charter the 2nd Bank of the US and paid-off the national debt, President Van Buren was confident the goal of defending the US from a privately-owned central bank was won: "The practice of funding the public debt…has long been discontinued…A National Bank has become a completely ‘obsolete idea’ among us, as thoroughly condemned in public opinion as a national debt.""

"The bankers will favor a course of special legislation to increase their power…They will never cease to ask for more, …so long as there is more that can be wrung from the toiling masses of the American People…The struggle with this money power has been going on from the beginning of the history of this country."

"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market....The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank."

"As you know, I am entirely sympathetic with the objectives of your Monetary Reform Act…You deserve a great deal of credit for carrying through so thoroughly on your own conception…I am impressed by your persistence and attention to detail."

"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties."

"I have no hesitation to say if they can re-charter the bank (2nd Bank of the US – a privately-owned central bank) with this hydra of corruption they will rule the nation and its charter will be perpetual and its corrupting influence destroy the liberty of our country. When I came into this administration…I had a majority of 75. since then it is now believed it (the bank) has bought over by loans, discounts, etc until…there were 2/3 for re-chartering it.”"

"This institution (privately-owned central banks) is one of the most deadly hostility against the principles of our Constitution…suppose a series of emergencies should occur…an institution like this…in a critical moment might overthrow the government."

"The treasury, lacking confidence in the country, delivered itself bound hand and foot to bold and bankrupt adventurers and bankers pretending to have money, whom it could have crushed at any moment…These jugglers were at the feet of government. For it was not, any confidence in their frothy bubbles, but the lack of all other money, which induced…people to take their paper…We are now without any common measure of value of property, and private fortunes are up or down at the will of the worst of our citizens…As little seems to be known of the principles of political economy as if nothing had ever been written or practiced on the subject."

"The supporters of Monetary Reform, of which I... am a more convinced adherent than before, as the most important and significant measure Great Britain can take to increase economic welfare, must expound their arguments more fully... before they can overwhelm the forces of old custom and general ignorance... [F]luctuations of trade and employment... the greatest and the most remediable of the economic diseases of modern society... are mainly diseases of our credit and banking system..."

"When our Federal Government, that has the exclusive power to create money, creates that money and then goes into the open market and borrows it and pays interest for the use of its own money, it occurs to me that that is going too far. I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money... The Constitution of the United States does not give the banks the power to create money. The Constitution says that Congress shall have the power to create money, but now, under our system, we will sell bonds to commercial banks and obtain credit from those banks. I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with this Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue. I make that statement after years of study."

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson — and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W.W. (Woodrow Wilson). The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis."

"Why then should we go into Wall Street, State Street, Chestnut Street, or any other street, begging for money? Their money (private bank’s) is not as secure as Government money…I am unwilling that this government should be left in the hands of any class of men, bankers or moneylenders, however respectable or patriotic they may be. The Government is much stronger than any of them."

"Advertising is an important characteristic of modern capitalism and a contributory factor in the establishment and maintenance of monopoly positions."

"The best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life."

"Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, it was not the existence of monopoly which caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it."

"Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American business is steadily being transferred, I am sorry to have to say, from local communities to a few large cities in which central managers decide the policies and the fate of the far-flung enterprises they control. Millions of people depend helplessly on their judgment. Through monopolistic mergers the people are losing power to direct their own economic welfare. When they lose the power to direct their economic welfare, they also lose the means to direct their political future."

"Monopoly is business at the end of its journey."

"The methods by which the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Fields, Rockefellers, Mackays, Floods, O'Briens, and the coal and iron and salt Pashas are heaping up enormous fortunes are methods, not of creation of wealth, but of the redistribution of the wealth of the masses into the pockets of monopolists."

"The most obvious negative feature of capitalism is that it can produce private monopolies that restrict output and thereby harm consumers."

"Mr. Wilson says of the trust plank in that platform that it "did not anywhere condemn monopoly except in words." Exactly of what else could a platform consist? Does Mr. Wilson expect us to use algebraic signs? This criticism is much as if he said the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence contained nothing but words."

"A cartel or trust confers various benefits on the entrepreneur - a saving in costs, a stronger position as against the workers - but none of these compares with this one advantage: a monopolistic price policy, possible to any considerable degree only behind an adequate protective tariff. Now the price that brings the maximum monopoly profit is generally far above the price that would be fixed by fluctuating competitive costs, and the volume that can be marketed at that maximum price is generally far below the output that would be technically and economically feasible. [...] Yet the trust must produce it - or approximately as much - otherwise the advantages of large-scale enterprise remain unexploited and unit costs are likely to be uneconomically high. [...] [The trust] extricates itself from this dilemma by producing the full output that is economically feasible, thus securing low costs, and offering in the protected domestic market only the quantity corresponding to the monopoly price - insofar as the tariff permits; while the rest is sold, or "dumped," abroad at a lower price."

"[...] the lies that people tell [...] the people who have monopolies pretend not to. [...] you don't want to get regulated by the government [...] So if the monopolists pretend not to have monopolies, the non-monopolists pretend to have monopolies. [...] If you are a non-monopolist, you will rhetorically describe your market as super-small [...] you are the only person in that market."

"Where there is usury, there are wars."

"No amount of money given in charity, nothing but the abandonment of this hateful trade, can atone for this great sin against God, Israel and Humanity."

"Since the Jews may not licitly keep those things which they have extorted from others through usury, the consequence is also that if you [rulers] receive these things from them, neither may you licitly keep them."

"It would be better if they [rulers] compelled the Jews to work for their living, as they do in parts of Italy, than that, living without occupation, they can grow rich only by usury (solis usuris ditentur)."

"Now what has been said about the Jews is also to be understood about Cahorsins, and anyone else depending upon the depravity of usury."

"There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of an modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural."

"If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people."

"He who lives by usury in this world shall not live in the world to come."

"Jewish usurers bleed the poor to death and grow fat on their substance, and I who live on alms, who feed on the bread of the poor, shall I then be mute before outraged charity? Dogs bark to protect those who feed them, and I, who am feed by the poor, shall I see them robbed of what belongs to them and keep silent?"

"To borrow upon Usury, bringeth on Beggary."

"To speak of a usurer at the table mars the wine."

"Usury laws that protected consumers against rapacious lenders existed until 1978. Now they are gone because of a Supreme Court decision. ...[O]ur government has set forth onerous new rules that reward those who prey on the poor. ...These lenders, or their fronts, can now charge rates and impose penalties that were illegal, even criminal, a generation ago."

"For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."

"Among the principal criticisms leveled against the merchants was the charge that their profit implied a mortgage on time, which was supposed to belong to God alone. For example, we have the following remarks of a lector-general of the Franciscan order in the fourteenth century concerning a disputed question: "Question: is a merchant entitled... to demand a greater payment from one who cannot settle his account immediately than from one who can? The answer argued for is no, because in doing so he would be selling time and would be committing usury by selling what does not belong to him." ...The whole of economic life at the dawn of commercial capitalism is here being called into question."

"I, who ne'er Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing, And that for others. Borrowing's much the same As begging; just as lending upon usury Is much the same as thieving."

"And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back."

"Usury lives in the pores of production, as it were, just as the gods of Epicurus lived in the space between the worlds."

"By means of the banking system the distribution of capital as a special business, a social function, is taken out of the hands of the private capitalists and usurers. But at the same time, banking and credit thus become the most potent means of driving capitalist production beyond its own limits, and one of the most effective vehicles of crises and swindle."

"Jewish usury was prohibited at common law, but no other."

"The true spirit of usury lies in taking an unjust and unreasonable advantage of their fellow creatures."

"Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored."

"Those who devour usury will not stand except as stand one whom the Evil one by his touch Hath driven to madness. That is because they say: "Trade is like usury," but Allah hath permitted trade and forbidden usury. Those who after receiving direction from their Lord, desist, shall be pardoned for the past; their case is for Allah (to judge); but those who repeat (The offence) are companions of the Fire: They will abide therein (for ever)."

"This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the worst. … And this is the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us … in the tale of the "Merchant of Venice"; in which the true and incorrupt merchant,—kind and free, beyond every other Shakespearian conception of men,—is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn."

"Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thy self alone, Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive: Then how when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit canst thou leave?"

"He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor."

"Since they [usurers] sell nothing other than the expectation of money, that is to say, time, they sell days and nights. But the day is the time of clarity, and the night the time of repose. It is, therefore, not just for them to receive eternal light and eternal rest."

"Frequently nowadays the use of highly sophisticated computers involves the 'selling' of time on them. In the Middle Ages this practice would have been severely frowned upon by the Church, for one of its main objections to the practice of usury was that it contravened natural law by 'selling time', and in its view time necessarily belongs to all creatures."

"Bartley: Why dost laugh, Frank? Ilford. To see that we and usurers live by the fall of young heirs, as swine by the dropping of acorns."

"Where is Christ, the King? In heaven, to be sure. Thither it behooves you, soldier of Christ, to direct your course. Forget all earthly delights. A soldier does not build a house; he does not aspire to possession of lands; he does not concern himself with devious, coin-purveying trade. … The soldier enjoys a sustenance provided by the king; he need not furnish his own, nor vex himself in this regard."

"COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E."

"Economists have, in fact, devoted a lot of effort to documenting how international differences in economic conditions change as national governments lower the barriers that limit trade across countries. Much of international trade theory attempts to imagine what happens when countries allow unrestricted flows of goods and capital across national boundaries. One common theme in these models, which has greatly influenced economic policy, is that the removal of restrictions on such flows increases global income and tends to equalize prices and wages across countries. Decades of experience with various trade liberalization policies, however, do not seem to have had as much of an impact on global income or on international wage inequality as the proponents of free trade would have expected."

"The ascetic Gotama … avoids watching dancing, singing, music and shows. He abstains from using garlands, perfumes, cosmetics, ornaments and adornments. … He refrains from running errands, from buying and selling."

"The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries."

"Britain and the US are not the homes of free trade; in fact, for a long time they were the most protectionist countries in the world. Not all countries have succeeded through protection and subsidies, but few have done so without them. For developing countries, free trade has a rarely been a matter of choice; it was often an imposition from outside, sometimes even through military power. Most of them did very poorly under free trade; they did much better when they used protection and subsidies. The best-performing economies have been those that opened up their economies selectively and gradually. Neo-liberal free-trade free-market policy claims to sacrifice equity for growth, but in fact it achieves neither; growth has slowed down in the past two and a half decades when markets were freed and borders opened."

"The importance of international trade for economic development cannot be overemphasized. But free trade is not the best path to economic development. Trade helps economic development only when the country employs a mixture of protection and open trade, constantly adjusting it according to its changing needs and capabilities. Trade is simply too important for economic development to be left to free trade economists."

"Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature."

"Trade is the mother of money."

"Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred."

"The first place he went into was the Royal Exchange, .... where men of all ages and all nations were assembled, with no other view than to barter for interest. ... David ... resolved to stay no longer in a place where riches were esteemed goodness, and deceit, low cunning, and giving up all things to the love of gain were thought wisdom."

"Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce."

"Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, And honour sinks where commerce long prevails."

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain."

"The spirit of trade cannot coexist with war, and sooner or later this spirit dominates every people. For among all those powers (or means) that belong to a nation, financial power may be the most reliable in forcing nations to pursue the noble cause of peace (though not from moral motives); and wherever in the world war threatens to break out, they will try to head it off through mediation, just as if they were permanently leagued for this purpose."

"The product of that city, now Far distant lands consume; The Indian wears around his brow The white webs of her loom. Her vessels sweep from East to West ; Her merchants are like kings ; While wonders in her walls attest The power that commerce brings."

"Countries as well as families benefit from the ability to trade with one another. Trade allows countries to specialize in what they do best and to enjoy a greater variety of goods and services. The Japanese, as well as the French and the Egyptians and the Brazilians, are as much our partners in the world economy as they are our competitors."

"It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it. And it may be said without exaggeration that the great extent and rapid increase of international trade, in being the principal guarantee of the peace of the world, is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas, the institutions, and the character of the human race."

"Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule that wherever manners are gentle there is commerce; and wherever there is commerce, manners are gentle. Let us not be astonished, then, if our manners are now less savage than formerly. Commerce has everywhere diffused a knowledge of the manners of all nations: these are compared one with another, and from this comparison arise the greatest advantages."

"[Commerce] is a pacific system, operating to cordialise mankind, by rendering Nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other … The invention of commerce … is the greatest approach toward universal civilization that has yet been made by any means not immediately flowing from moral principles."

"One of the common means by which one nation exploits another and one that is relevant to Africa’s external relations is exploitation through trade. When the terms of trade are set by one country in a manner entirely advantageous to itself, then the trade is usually detrimental to the trading partner. To be specific, one can take the export of agricultural produce from Africa and the import of manufactured goods into Africa from Europe, North America, and Japan. The big nations establish the price of the agricultural products and subject these prices to frequent reductions. At the same time the price of manufactured goods is also set by them, along with the s necessary for trade in the ships of those nations. The minerals of Africa also fall into the same category as agricultural produce as far as pricing is concerned. The whole import-export relationship between Africa and its trading partners is one of unequal exchange and of exploitation."

"What was called was nothing but the extension overseas of European interests. The strategy behind international trade and the production that supported it was firmly in European hands, and specifically in the hands of the sea-going nations from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. They owned and directed the great majority of the world’s sea-going vessels, and they controlled the financing of the trade between four continents. Africans had little clue as to the tri-continental links between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Europe had a monopoly of knowledge about the international exchange system seen as a whole, for was the only sector capable of viewing the system as a whole. Europeans used the superiority of their ships and cannon to gain control of all the world’s waterways, starting with the western Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast of North Africa. [...] Therefore, by control of the seas, Europe took the first steps towards transforming the several parts of Africa and Asia into economic satellites."

"Considerable evidence supports the argument that trading state globalization has emerged as a global norm and as a widely accepted basis of state grand strategy since World War II. Since the 1940s, successive rounds of the GATT (now the TWO) have resulted in consistently lower tariff rates that have helped stimulate world trade. From 1980 to 1998, the rate of growth in world trade ranged from 4.2% to 10.3%, and from 1990 to 1999 it grew at over three times the rate of global output (World Bank 1998; World Trade Organization 2000). Moreover, financial transactions, once and adjust of trade, have grown even faster and now tower over trade flows by a ratio of 50:1."

"Specialization and trade are the key to high living standards. By specializing, people can become highly productive in a very narrow field of expertise. People can then trade their specialized goods for others’ products, vastly increasing the range and quality of consumption and having the potential to raise everyone’s living standards."

"Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen."

"Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange Of all that human art or Nature yield; Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, And natural kindness hasten to supply From the full fountain of its boundless love, Forever stifled, drained and tainted now. Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring."

"Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally indeed neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."

"Free trade may have wide support among economists, but its support among the public at large is considerably less."

"If a state should pass laws forbidding its citizens to become wise and holy, it would be made a byword for all time. But this, in effect, is what our commercial, social, and political systems do. They compel the sacrifice of mental and moral power to money and dissipation."

"The more a religion is aware of its opposition in principle to economic rationalization as such, the more apt are the religion’s virtuosi to reject the world, especially its economic activities."

"The wide chasm separating the inevitabilities of economic life from the Christian ideal ... kept the most devout groups and all those with the most consistently developed ethics far from the life of trade."

"Empirical evidence tends to show that trade liberalisation may entail non-trivial adjustment costs for certain groups."

"This being an island, all imaginable encouragement ought to be given to trade."

"The great source of the flourishing state of this kingdom is its trade and commerce."

"The freedom of trade, like the liberty of the Press, is one thing; the abuse of that freedom, like the licentiousness of the Press, is another. God forbid that this Court should do anything that should interfere with the legal freedom of trade."

"It is essential, when persons in trade come into this Court, that they should remember that the administration of equity is founded on perfect truth, and that if persons attempt to mislead the public by stating that which is not true, this Court will restrain them upon a clear case being made out against them."

"Some confidence there must be between merchant and manufacturer. In matters exclusively within the province of the manufacturer the merchant relies on the manufacturer's skill, and he does so all the more readily when he has had the benefit of that skill before."

"An energetic tradesman naturally develops and extends his business. One business runs into another, and the line of demarcation is often indistinct and undefined. The linen draper of to-day in the course of a few years may come to be the proprietor of an establishment providing everything that man wants, or woman either, from the cradle to the grave."

"The English trader is generally too much occupied with his business to devote much time to the invention of new or fancy words, and he is not always gifted with that degree of fancy which is capable of coining new words. Besides the English public is not so ready, apparently, to buy articles passing under an entirely new name, which may give rise to a suspicion of adulteration."

"Chitty, J., In re Trade-Mark "Alpine" (1885), L. R. 29 C. D. 880."

"The word commission sounds sweet in a merchant's ear."

"What is one man's gain is another's loss."

"It must be remembered that all trade is and must be in a sense selfish; trade not being infinite, nay, the trade of a particular place or district being possibly very limited, what one man gains another loses. In the hand to hand war of commerce, as in the conflicts of public life, whether at the bar, in Parliament, in medicine, in engineering (I give examples only), men fight on without much thought of others, except a desire to excel or to defeat them. Very lofty minds, like Sir Philip Sidney with his cup of water, will not stoop to take an advantage, if they think another wants it more. Our age, in spite of high authority to the contrary, is not without its Sir Philip Sidneys; but these are counsels of perfection which it would be silly indeed to make the measure of the rough business of the world as pursued by ordinary men of business. The line is in words difficult to draw. . . ."

"Merchants know perfectly well what they mean when they express themselves, not in the language of lawyers, but in the language of courteous mercantile communication."

"The experience we have in Courts of justice leads us to know that persons who trade without due caution often find their hopes deceived: they find in the result that they have parted with goods for which they never can obtain the money."

"It is when merchants dispute about their own rules that they invoke the law."

"The great object of the law is to encourage commerce."

"It is admitted that there may be fair competition in trade, that two may offer to join and compete against a third. If so, what is the definition of fair competition? What is unfair that is neither forcible nor fraudulent."

"I should regret to find that the law was powerless to enforce the most elementary principles of commercial morality."

"A trader is trusted upon his character and visible commerce: that credit enables him to acquire wealth. If by secret liens a few might swallow up all, it would greatly damp that credit."

"Men lend their money to traders upon mortgages or consignments of goods, because they suspect their circumstances, and will not run the risque of their general credit."

"It is the privilege of a trader in a free country, in all matters not contrary to law, to regulate his own mode of carrying it on according to his own discretion and choice."

"Arbitrio domini res cestimari debet: The price of a thing ought to be fixed by its owner."

"The law merchant is a system of equity, founded on the rules of equity, and governed in all its parts by plain justice and good faith."

"There are many situations in life, and particularly in the commercial world, where a man cannot by any diligence inform himself of the degree of credit which ought to be given to the persons with whom he deals; in which cases he must apply to those whose sources of intelligence enable them to give that information. The law of prudence leads him to apply to them, and the law of morality ought to induce them to give the information required."

"An universal custom is a law, and I know no distinction between lex mercatoria and consuetudo mercaborum."

"Convenience is the basis of mercantile law."

"When a general usage has been judicially ascertained and established, it becomes a part of the law merchant, which Courts of justice are bound to know and recognise."

"Nothing can fall within the custom of trade but what concerns trade."

"The law merchant respects the religion of different people."

"Persons in trade had better be very cautious how they add a fictitious name to their firm, for the purpose of gaining credit."

"A proceeding may be perfectly legal and may yet be opposed to sound commercial principles."

"It has been uniformly laid down in this Court, as far back as we can remember, that good faith is the basis of all mercantile transactions."

"Prudent business men in their dealings incur risk."

"Most businesses require liberal dealing."

"I have always thought it highly injurious to the public that different rules should prevail in the different Courts on the same mercantile case. My opinion has been uniform on that subject. It sometimes indeed happens that in questions of real property Courts of law find themselves fettered with rules, from which they cannot depart, because they are fixed and established rules1; though equity may interpose, not to contradict, but to correct, the strict and rigid rules of law. But in mercantile questions no distinction ought to prevail. The mercantile law of this country is founded on principles of equity; and when once a rule is established in that Court as a rule of property, it ought to be adopted in a Court of law. For this reason Courts of law of late years have said that, even where the action is founded on a tort, they would discover some mode of defeating the plaintiff, unless his action were also founded on equity; and that though the property might on legal grounds be with the plaintiff, if there were any claim or charge by the defendant, they would not consider the retaining of the goods as a conversion."

"Paper currency, guarded by proper regulations and restrictions, is the life of commerce."

"Whether a transaction be fair or fraudulent is often a question of law: it is the judgment of law upon facts and intents."

"And if you mean to profit, learn to please."

"Share the advice betwixt you: if both gain, all The gift doth stretch itself as 'tis receiv'd, And is enough for both."

"Men that hazard all Do it in hope of fair advantages: A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross."

"No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect."

"As to pay, Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress that as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit from it."

"Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do."

"Little pains In a due hour employ'd great profit yields."

"Necesse est facere sumptum, qui quærit lucrum."

"Lucrum malum æquale dispendio."

"Hoc scitum'st periculum ex aliis facere, tibi quid ex usu sit."

"Hellenes ... think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good men a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend it, cannot always accomplish."

"And all to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeather'd two-legged thing, a son."

"What we have inherited from our fathers and mothers is not all that 'walks in us.' There are all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no tangibility, but they haunt us all the same and we can not get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. Ghosts must be all over the country, as thick as the sands of the sea."

"The privilege of executors is too great already. They ought to be properly informed when they bring actions."

"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."

"He lives to build, not boast, a generous race; No tenth transmitter of a foolish face."

"American families are in the process of passing along a $9 trillion legacy from one generation to the next. This is a lot of money, but it is distributed very unevenly.. ... Hand in hand with this money, I submit, what is really being handed down from generation to generation is the profound legacy of reproducing racial inequality. The legacy is difficult to discern because the language of family heritage hides it from our political consciousness."

"Mainstream sociological theory sees differences in jobs, skills, and education as the primary causes of inequality, and substantial wealth transfers embarrass this theory. The classical sociologist Emil Durkheim, for example, predicted that family inheritances would decline over time in favor of giving to charitable and nonprofit organizations, but studies examining actual bequests invalidate this predication. ... In 1989 charitable bequests constituted less than 10 percent of proceeds of estates valued at over $600,000 in the United States."

"He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind. And the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart."

"A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just."

"De male quæsitis vix gaudet tertius pæres, Nec habet eventus sordida præda bonos."

"Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

"Borrowing has a bad name, but you would be surprised how it helps in a pinch."

"I borrow to pay my honest debts and not to squander foolishly. What's more, I confine my borrowing to those who can well afford it. I don't go around sponging on widows and orphans unless they have plenty."

"He that would have a short Lent, let him borrow money to be repaid at Easter."

"Great collections of books are subject to certain accidents besides the damp, the worms, and the rats; one not less common is that of the borrowers, not to say a word of the purloiners."

"He who prefers to give Linus the half of what he wishes to borrow, rather than to lend him the whole, prefers to lose only the half."

"You give me back. Phœbus, my bond for four hundred thousand sesterces; lend me rather a hundred thousand more. Seek some one else to whom you may vaunt your empty present: what I cannot pay you, Phœbus, is my own."

"I have granted you much that you asked: and yet you never cease to ask of me. He who refuses nothing, Atticilla, will soon have nothing to refuse."

"The borrower is servant to the lender."

"Croyez que chose divine est prester; debvoir est vertu heroïcque."

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be: For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."

"What question can be here? Your own true heart Must needs advise you of the only part: That may be claim'd again which was but lent, And should be yielded with no discontent, Nor surely can we find herein a wrong, That it was left us to enjoy it long."

"Who goeth a borrowing Goeth a sorrowing. Few lend (but fools) Their working tools."

"I hold every man a debtor to his profession."

"DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver."

":As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet"

":Swims round and round his tank to find an outlet,"

":Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him,"

":Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him;"

":So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him,"

":Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him,"

":Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it,"

":And finds at last he might as well have paid it."

":::::::Barlow S. Vode"

"There is, of course, a gold mine or a buried treasure on every mortgaged homestead. Whether the farmer ever digs for it or not, it is there, haunting his daydreams when the burden of debt is most unbearable."

"Even though we issue lots of credit cards and everything, we’d say, probably, if I had one piece of advice to give to young people, you know, across the board, it would be just to don’t get in debt."

"Chi vuole che la quaresima gli paia corta, si faccia debito per pagare a Pasqua."

"It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much."

"There are two things that bestow consequence; great possession, or great debts."

"I owe you one."

"Anticipated rents, and bills unpaid, Force many a shining youth into the shade, Not to redeem his time, but his estate, And play the fool, but at the cheaper rate."

"At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release. And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the LORD's release. Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release; Save when there shall be no poor among you; for the LORD shall greatly bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it: Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day. For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land."

"My other piece of advice, Copperfield", said Mr. Micawber, "you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and, in short, you are for ever floored. As I am!"

"Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime."

"Slight was the thing I bought, Small was the debt I thought, Poor was the loan at best— God! but the interest!"

"Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most."

"Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer."

"You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more."

"Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity."

"Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!"

"Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times."

"What is debt anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence.""

"In vain do they think themselves innocent who appropriate to their own use alone those goods which God gave in common; by not giving to others that which they themselves receive, they become homicides and murderers, inasmuch as in keeping for themselves those things which would alleviate the sufferings of the poor, we may say that every day they cause the death of as many persons as they might have fed and did not. When, therefore, we offer the means of living to the indigent, we do not give them anything of ours, but that which of right belongs to them. It is less a work of mercy which we perform than the payment of a debt."

"The imminent public facing poorer countries as a consequence of COVID-19 will be further deepened by an associated global economic downturn that is almost certain to exceed the scale of 2008. It is too early to predict the depth of this slump, but many leading s are expecting this to be the worst recession in living memory. [...] Closely connected to this are the measures put in place by governments and s since 2008, most notably the policies of and repeated cuts. These policies aimed at propping up s through massively increasing the supply of ultra-cheap money to financial markets. They meant a very significant growth in all forms of debt — corporate, government, and household. [...] We are entering an alarming situation where many poorer countries will face increasingly burdensome debt repayments while simultaneously attempting to manage an unprecedented public health crisis – all in the context of a very deep global recession."

"Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times."

"The debt was the most sacred obligation incurred during the war. It was by no means the largest in amount. We do not haggle with those who lent us money. We should not with those who gave health and blood and life. If doors are opened to fraud, contrive to close them. But don't deny the obligation, or scold at its performance."

"Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well. But when you get in debt you become a slave. Therefore I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man's surety. If your friend is in distress, aid him if you have the means to spare. If he fails to be able to return it, it is only so much lost."

"You must, to get through life well, practice industry with economy, never create a debt for anything that is not absolutely necessary, and if you make a promise to pay money at a day certain, be sure to comply with it. If you do not, you lay yourself liable to have your feelings injured and your reputation destroyed with the just imputation of violating your word."

"Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want."

"One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can't pay back."

"The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend."

"Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000."

"Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever."

"Kennedy understood, as did Lincoln, that by returning to the Constitution, which states that only Congress shall coin and regulate money, the soaring national debt could be reduced by not paying interest to the bankers of the Federal Reserve System, who print paper money, then loan it to the government at interest. He moved in this area on June 4, 1963, by signing Executive Order (EO) 11110 authorizing the Treasury Department to start printing and issuing silver certificates based on the remaining silver in the US Treasury and the Commodity Credit Corporation. JFK’s EO 11110 expanded the Treasury Department’s power to issue non-interest-bearing money from governmental reserves and edged out the US need to approach the Federal Reserve to print more interest-bearing Federal Reserve notes. EO 11110 therefore allowed for the issuance of $4,292,893,815 in silver-backed treasury bills, called United States notes."

"Forgive us out debts, as we forgive our debtors."

"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."

"Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored."

"Wars are made to make debt."

"The slender debt to Nature's quickly paid, Discharged, perchance with greater ease than made."

"Debtes et mensonges sont ordinairement ensemble ralliés."

"Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity. However, our culture teaches us to live for the now. “I want it!” we scream, and we can get it if we are willing to go into debt. Debt is a means to obtain the “I want its” before we can afford them."

"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."

"Leve aes alienum debitorem facit, grave inimicum."

"Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code."

"It's dynamite to spend future earnings. I have had a taste of it myself, and it's mighty bitter. A debt is a debt, whether it's margins or mortgages; and debts are all the same, no matter how you try to camouflage 'em. You never get much out of 'em except trouble. On the farm or in Wall Street, if you use the other fellow's money, it costs you a lot more than it's worth."

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan doth oft lose both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."

"He that dies pays all debts."

"Look, I have to start pay Don Lino protection, so everything you owe me, you owe him!"

"A house of debt is a house in whose interior no light shines."

"The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."

"'Tis good to be known, To have all of thy own. Who goeth a borrowing, Goeth a sorrowing."

"Debt leads to fragility. We've discovered since the Babylonians that debt has systemic consequences whereas equity doesn't. Let's say that you have two brothers. One of them borrowed and they both had predictions about the future—forecasts. One brother borrows. The other issues equity. The one who borrows will go bust if he makes a mistake. The one who issues equity will fluctuate but will be able to survive a forecast error."

"I have never, ever borrowed a penny. So I have zero credit record. No loans, no mortgage, nothing. Ever. When I had no money, I rented. I have an allergy to borrowing and a scorn for people who are in debt, and I don’t hide it. I follow the Romans’ attitude that debtors are not free people."

"We're in the danger zone right now"

"There is no practice more dangerous than that of borrowing money…for when money can be had in this way, repayment is seldom thought of in time…Exertions to raise it by dint of industry ceases. It comes easy and is spent freely and many things indulged in that would never be thought of, if to be purchased by the sweat of the brow. In the mean time, the debt is accumulating like a snowball in rolling."

"If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for three hundred and ten years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect."

"In fact, without any exaggeration, the current mechanism of money creation through credit is certainly the "cancer" that's irretrievably eroding market economies of private property."

"Any author who uses mathematics should always express in ordinary language the meaning of the assumptions he admits, as well as the significance of the results obtained. The more abstract his theory, the more imperative this obligation. In fact, mathematics are and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, mathematics do not constitute an end in itself, they are and can only be a means."

"A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!"

"Economics is on the side of humanity now."

"“That voter, in my judgment,” he claims, “will be more likely to vote his economic interests than he will anything else. And that is the voter that I think through a fairly slow but very steady process, will go Republican.” Because race no longer matters: “In my judgment Karl Marx [is right]… the real issues ultimately will be the economic issues.”"

"Most of the presidential candidates' economic packages involve 'tax breaks,' which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money."

"See, when the Government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of Taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs."

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

"Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist."

"How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave."

"ECONOMY, n. Purchasing the barrel of whiskey that you do not need for the price of the cow that you cannot afford."

"These guys believe that a 350 billion dollar tax cut will stimulate the economy, and they are full of shit. Because they don't know what stimulates the economy. The economy goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down, nobody knows why the fuck it happens. And I know this because I took economics, and I'd explain it to yea'... but I flunked that course. Not my fault. They taught it at 8 o'clock in the morning. And there is absolute nothing that you can learn out of one bloodshot eye. After I failed my second test, I grabbed my teacher by the front of the shirt and said 'Are you *trying* to keep this shit a secret?'"

"The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge."

"The dictionary defines "economics" as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." Here is another definition of economics which I think is more helpful in explaining how economics relates to software engineering."

"The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers—all walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off—rushing to escape bankruptcy—plotting to melt down the Statue of Liberty—to press more copper pennies—to breed more headless chickens—to put more feathers in their caps—medals, diplomas, stock certificates, honorary doctorates—eggs and eggs of headless chickens—multitaskers—system hackers—who never know where they’re heading--northward, backward, eastward, forward, and never homeward—(where is home)—home is in the head—(but the head is cut off)... Beheaded chickens, how do you breed chickens with their heads cut off? By teaching them how to bankrupt creativity.”"

"Most managements feel that, on the price of their shares, the higher the better — and that's an understandable feeling. But, the trouble is that the game isn't over at any time. We really feel — the fairer the better. Our goal is that every shareholder participates in the progress that Berkshire makes as a business during their holding period. We don't want one party getting wealthy off the other. We want them to share based on the gain in value of the business .. In economics the most important question ... — maybe important beyond economics, too — ... when ... somebody ... tells you something, the first question to ask yourself is, "And then what?" ... the stock going up is not an end of itself ... we really like the idea of the price tracking intrinsic value over time ..."

"Economics has long struggled with diversity. Only about a third of economics doctorates go to women, and the gender gap is wider at senior levels of the profession. Racial and ethnic minorities — particularly African-Americans and Latinos — are even more underrepresented. And notably, the gender gap in economics is wider than in other social sciences and, at least by some measures, traditionally male-dominated fields such as science and math. Certain subfields, like finance, have a particularly poor record of advancing women. A branch of the American Finance Association presented survey results in Atlanta that show barely 10 percent of tenured finance professors, and 16 percent of tenure-track faculty, are women. In economics as a whole, women accounted for about 23 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty in 2015."

"Emas non quod non opus est, sed quod necesse est. Quod non opus est, asse carum est."

"95 per cent of economics is common sense made complicated, and even for the remaining 5 per cent, the essential reasoning, if not all the technical details, can be explained in plain terms."

"The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent."

"Magnum vectigal est parsimonia."

"I just don’t trust any of it. Every time I read something about how there’s been another ridiculous climb of the Dow Jones, there’s a part of me that goes, “This can’t be good.” None of this is real money. You know what I mean? It’s not like there’s actually more of anything. It’s just ideas. When people are getting richer and richer but they’re not actually producing anything, it can’t end well."

"Deprive economics of the concept of welfare and what do you have? Nothing."

"In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics."

"Economism is the view that the economy is the most important part of society and that the other dimensions such as politics and education should serve it. Economism has become the ruling ideology, not because of claims of economists, but because of the decisions of political leaders, financiers, corporate leaders, and the general public."

"Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man; Communism is the exact opposite."

"Everybody wants to see the economy improve, but more importantly, everybody wants to feel that improvement in their day-to-day lives."

"Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse."

"So-called macroeconomics has never been real economics but rather an endless series of engineering-type models purporting to guide politicians in centrally planning an economy. In the bizarro world of macroeconomics all capital is the same, and all workers are the same, as one big lump, expressed as 'K' and 'L' in the models. Relative prices and their role in allocating resources in a market economy are mostly ignored, while 'economic aggregates' are said to influence 'the' price level. In macroeconomics it is taken as a given that markets are incapable of allocating resources in an acceptable way; that's why there is supposedly a need for macroeconomic central planning in the first place. No such 'failures' are assumed on the part of the macroeconomic central planners."

"With the proper understanding of the economic system, the workers will soon find means to end that system, and to raise on its ruins a development of society having for its goal the benefit of the whole, instead of a part, of the community."

"Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses."

"A penny saved is two pence clear, A pin a day's a groat a year."

"Many have been ruined by buying good Pennyworths."

"The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another."

"Until recently, economists have not been particularly carried away with concern over environmental problems caused by industrial development. ...[T]he few economists ...who have always sounded the alarm ...are somewhat out of the mainstram. These humanist concerns seem to have gone out of style after the age of classical economics. Even the conventional analytical models of contemporary economics seem to prefer to exclude these concepts by ignoring them entirely or by shunting them off into their own branch, called "economic externalities." ...In recent years concern over these ...externalities has grown. The environmentalists are beginning to be included in the mainstream. ...Attempts are even being made to extend the theoretical framework to include the changes in the environment caused by economic activity... The Materials Flow of the Economy... sees the human race living on a 'space ship earth' in which all the inputs and outputs, all the original resources and all the final wastes, must be accounted for. ...[W]hen the materials are returned in the form of smoke, sewage, garbage, junk, heat, noise, and a wide variety of noxious gases... the change is seldom for the better. ...[T]he less production that is needed to maintain an adequate level of affluence, the better. An efficient economy is one that gets big results with little effort. More industries, more mines, more businesses, more employment, and more consumer goods do not always mean more well-being... because all these also mean more destruction of our natural resources and despoilation of our surroundings."

"Cut my cote after my cloth."

"Presented with the prospect of its own eternity, capitalism-or anyway, financial capitalism-simply explodes. Because if there's no end to it, there's absolutely no reason not to generate credit-that is, future money-infinitely. Recent events would certainly seem to confirm this. The period leading up to 2008 was one in which many began to believe that capitalism really was going to be around forever; at the very least, no one seemed any longer to be able to imagine an alternative. The immediate effect was a series of increasingly reckless bubbles that brought the whole apparatus crashing down."

"I am a capitalist, and after a 30-year career in capitalism... I'm not just in the top one percent, I'm in the top .01 percent of all earners. Today, I have come to share the secrets of our success, because rich capitalists like me have never been richer... How do we manage to grab an ever-increasing share of the economic pie every year? ... here's the dirty secret. There was a time in which the economics profession worked in the public interest, but in the neoliberal era, today, they work only for big corporations and billionaires... We could choose to enact economic policies that raise taxes on the rich, regulate powerful corporations or raise wages for workers... But neoliberal economists would warn that all of these policies would be a terrible mistake, because raising taxes always kills economic growth, and any form of government regulation is inefficient, and raising wages always kills jobs. Well, as a consequence of that thinking, over the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world. And yet, as middle class families struggle to get by on wages that have not budged in about 40 years, neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization."

"The greatest grift in contemporary economic life is the neoliberal idea that the only purpose of the corporation and the only responsibility of executives is to enrich themselves and shareholders. The new economics must and can insist that the purpose of the corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders: customers, workers, community and shareholders alike."

"Greed is not good. Being rapacious doesn't make you a capitalist, it makes you a sociopath. And in an economy as dependent upon cooperation at scale as ours, sociopathy is as bad for business as it is for society.... Neoliberal economic theory has sold itself to you as unchangeable natural law, when in fact it's social norms and constructed narratives based on pseudoscience. If we truly want a more equitable, more prosperous and more sustainable economy, if we want high-functioning democracies and civil society, we must have a new economics."

"The calculations and models are every day a confirmation, beyond the academic libraries and government dossiers, of the utopia of political reaction."

"Economics is more disciplinary than any other discipline, and it has been ever since its origins."

"Economics is, in essence, the study of poverty."

"A reconsideration of the discussion in which I took an active part more than 40 years ago has left me with a rather depressing view of the somewhat shameful state of what has become an established part of economic science, the subject of ‘economic systems’. It appears to me that in this subject political attractiveness has been preserved by the flimsiest of arguments. The kindest thing one can say is that some well-meaning people have allowed themselves to be deceived by the vague and thoughtless language commonly used by specialists in the theory of these issues."

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate hut at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

"The whole notion of the free market, laissez-faire capitalism, globalization is a very thin rationale for unmitigated greed by a tiny oligarchic elite. And they have made sure that that ideology is taught in universities across the country. And people, especially economists, who deviate from that ideology have been pushed aside, and become pariahs. And yet the driving ethos of that ideology is really to justify the hoarding of immense amounts of wealth by a very tiny percentage of the upper ruling class."

"Give not Saint Peter so much, to leave Saint Paul nothing."

"Economy, in the estimation of common minds, often means the absence of all taste and comfort."

"Serviet eternum qui parvo nesciet uti."

"Here then we may learn the fallacy of the remark... that any particular state is weak, though fertile, populous, and well cultivated, merely because it wants money. It appears that the want of money can never injure any state within itself: For men and commodities are the real strength of any community. It is the simple manner of living which here hurts the public, by confining the gold and silver to few hands, and preventing its universal diffusion and circulation. On the contrary, industry and refinements of all kinds incorporate it with the whole state, however small its quantity may be: They digest it into every vein, so to speak; and make it enter into every transaction and contract."

"Without question, the causes, which produce on the one hand long hours and overemployment, result on the other hand in short periods of work, underemployment, or unemployment."

"If one's point of view is that of the anarchist, he is led inevitably to make his war upon individuals. The more sensitive and sincere he is, the more bitter and implacable becomes that war. If one's point of view is based on what is now called the economic interpretation of history, one is emancipated, in so far as that is possible for emotional beings, from all hatred of individuals, and one sees before him only the necessity of readjusting the economic basis of our common life in order to achieve a more nearly perfect social order."

"Over the years and against conventional wisdom, utopians sustained a vision of life beyond the market. … Georg Lukács set forth a theory of the “old and new culture” in which he argued that the socialist economy was not the goal; it was simply a precondition for humanity to advance to a new and humane culture. Most radicals do not understand that political power and economic reorganization is not the end-all, stated Lukács. The goal is not a new economic order, but freedom from an obsession with economics."

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

"Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world. It is compelled to be this, because, unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time. The object of a model is to segregate the semi-permanent or relatively constant factors from those which are transitory or fluctuating so as to develop a logical way of thinking about the latter, and of understanding the time sequences to which they give rise in particular cases. Good economists are scarce because the gift for using "vigilant observation" to choose good models, although it does not require a highly specialised intellectual technique, appears to be a very rare one."

"Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work-whereas economics represents how it actually does work. Economics is above all a science of measurement. It comprises an extraordinarily powerful and flexible set of tools that can reliably assess a thicket of information to determine the effect of any one factor, or even the whole effect. That’s what “the economy” is, after all: a thicket of information about jobs and real estate and banking and investment. But the tools of economics can be just as easily applied to subjects that are more-well, more “interesting”."

"Since the science of economics is primarily a set of tools, as opposed to a subject matter, then no subject, however offbeat, need be beyond its reach."

"Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing."

"I make the point to remind you, if reminder be necessary, that the study of economic growth is still in its infancy. Countries rise up and fall, and we are not in a position to predict which ones will do best or worst over the next twenty years. This is equally true of developed and developing countries. Economics is good at explaining what has happened over the past twenty years, but when we turn to predicting the future it tends to be an essay in ideology."

"Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated not by an all-powerful dictator but through the combined actions of millions of households and firms. Economists therefore study how people make decisions: how much they work, what they buy, how much they save, and how they invest their savings. Economists also study how people interact with one another. For instance, they examine how the multitude of buyers and sellers of a good together determine the price at which the good is sold and the quantity that is sold. Finally, economists analyze forces and trends that affect the economy as a whole, including the growth in average income, the fraction of the population that cannot find work, and the rate at which prices are rising."

"Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life; it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of wellbeing."

"I have not been able to lay my hands on any notes as to Mathematico-economics that would be of any use to you. I have very indistinct memories of what I used to think on the subject. I never read mathematics now: in fact I have even forgotten how to integrate a good many things. But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very well unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules—(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can’t succeed in (4), burn (3). This last I do often."

"Mit dem Jahr 1830 trat die ein für allemal entscheidende Krise ein. Die Bourgeoisie hatte in Frankreich und England politische Macht erobert. Von da an gewann der Klassenkampf, praktisch und theoretisch, mehr und mehr ausgesprochne und drohende Formen. Er läutete die Totenglocke der wissenschaftlichen bürgerlichen Ökonomie. Es handelte sich jetzt nicht mehr darum, ob dies oder jenes Theorem wahr sei, sondern ob es dem Kapital nützlich oder schädlich, bequem oder unbequem, ob polizeiwidrig oder nicht. An die Stelle uneigennütziger Forschung trat bezahlte Klopffechterei, an die Stelle unbefangner wissenschaftlicher Untersuchung das böse Gewissen und die schlechte Absicht der Apologetik."

"It is no coincidence that the novel and economics science were born at the same time."

"To have peace and not war, the drift toward a war economy, as facilitated by the moves and the demands of the sophisticated conservatives, must be stopped; to have peace without slump, the tactics and policies of the practical right must be overcome. The political and economic power of both must be broken. The power of these giants of main drift is both economically and politically anchored; both unions and an independent labor party are needed to struggle effective."

"Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime."

"Economics takes a while to learn, even if much of it is in a way quite simple. It is simple to be wrong as well as to be right, and it is none too easy to distinguish between them."

"Henry Ducard: Over the ages, our weapons have grown more sophisticated. With Gotham, we tried a new one - economics. But we underestimated certain of Gotham's citizens. Such as your parents. Gunned down by one of the very people they were trying to help. Create enough hunger, and everyone becomes a criminal."

"In an updated and expanded version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified five "global shocks" that will destabilise the world economy with increasing frequency in coming years. Rather than the traditional perils of conquest, war, famine and death, the OECD identifies viral pandemics, cyber attacks, financial crises, socio-economic unrest and geomagnetic storms as the five "global shocks" that will have to be endured."

"Even if the days of 1928 and early 1929 could be brought back again, the economic situation would be utterly indefensible on moral grounds. The greedy scramble for private gain and special privilege, the gambling spirit and the ruthless determination to gain wealth by means fair and foul, the callous indifference to how the other half lived or at most the throwing of a few crumbs of philanthropy, the bitter exploitation of the weak and the brutal suppression of the workers as they attempted to organize in defense of their minimum rights, the cruel assumption that there must always be a wide gulf between the rich and the poor, the willingness to send unnumbered victims to their doom on the battlefield in defense of vested interests—all these and countless other evils are inherent in the economic order which held sway in 1929. God forbid that we should have any desire to return to that living hell!"

"In three ways unemployment would be reduced. First... by greater equalization of purchasing power and consequent stimulus in the form of effective demand. Second, by utilizing the national credit and socialized industries for the creation of new industries and the extension of existing ones. ... Social ownership and operation of the basic industries, and especially socialized banking and credit, would greatly facilitate the task of shifting the masses of unemployed into productive channels. Third, if necessary, by shortening working hours and dividing the available work among all the people."

"The consolidation of financial and industrial power in the hands of a small section of the people leads inevitably to more and more intense congestion of money."

"Kyle Broflovski: Listen, this is all you need to know: the economy is not a supernatural all-knowing entity. The economy is just an idea, made up by people, thousands of years ago. The economy is not real. And yet, it is real."

"Kyle Broflovski: Faith is what makes an economy exist. Without faith, it is only plastic cards and paper money."

"Men did not make the earth. ... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

"To balance Fortune by a just expense, Join with Economy, Magnificence."

"By robbing Peter he paid Paul, he kept the moon from the wolves, and was ready to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall."

"The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth."

"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

"Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws – sacred, inviolable, unchangeable – cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings. Yes, when – not if – when we get the chance, the Federal Government will assume bold leadership in distress relief. For years Washington has alternated between putting its head in the sand and saying there is no large number of destitute people in our midst who need food and clothing, and then saying the States should take care of them, if there are. Instead of planning two and a half years ago to do what they are now trying to do, they kept putting it off from day to day, week to week, and month to month, until the conscience of America demanded action."

"The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory … was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward … through the ranks."

"Too often in recent history liberal governments have been wrecked on rocks of loose fiscal policy."

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

"Let us begin with a definition of economics. Over the last half-century, the study of economics has expanded to include a vast range of topics. Here are some of the major subjects that are covered in this book:"

"The field of economics is not exempt from the consequences of chaos and complexity. Marketplaces are indeterminate; value is subjective; and outcomes are subject to interpretation. Economic forecasting is just as nebulous, being based on the probability of statistical information that may or may not be accurate."

"Economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable goods and services and distribute them among different individuals"

"I remember how happy I felt when I graduated from Berkeley many years ago. But I thought the graduation speeches were long. I will economize on words. Economics is organized common sense. Here is a short list of valuable lessons that our beautiful subject teaches.1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible. 2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs. 3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do. 4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended. 5. There are tradeoffs between equality and efficiency. 6. In an equilibrium of a game or an economy, people are satisfied with their choices. That is why it is difficult for well-meaning outsiders to change things for better or worse. 7. In the future, you too will respond to incentives. That is why there are some promises that you’d like to make but can’t. No one will believe those promises because they know that later it will not be in your interest to deliver. The lesson here is this: before you make a promise, think about whether you will want to keep it if and when your circumstances change. This is how you earn a reputation. 8. Governments and voters respond to incentives too. That is why governments sometimes default on loans and other promises that they have made. 9. It is feasible for one generation to shift costs to subsequent ones. That is what national government debts and the U.S. social security system do (but not the social security system of Singapore). 10. When a government spends, its citizens eventually pay, either today or tomorrow, either through explicit taxes or implicit ones like inflation. 11. Most people want other people to pay for public goods and government transfers (especially transfers to themselves). 12. Because market prices aggregate traders’ information, it is difficult to forecast stock prices and interest rates and exchange rates."

"Economists have never allowed their analysis to be influenced by psychologists of their time, but have always framed for themselves such assumptions about psychical processes as they have thought it desirable to make."

"Sera parsimonia in fundo est."

"Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest."

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

"Another difference between Milton and myself is that everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper."

"Economic events often make headlines in the newspapers or “breaking news” on television. Yet it is not always clear from these news stories what caused these particular events, much less what future consequences can be expected. The underlying principles involved in most economic events are usually not very complicated in themselves, but the political rhetoric and economic jargon in which they are discussed can make these events seem murky. Yet the basic economic principles that would clarify what is happening may remain unknown to most of the public and little understood by many in the media. These basic principles of economics apply around the world and have applied over thousands of years of recorded history. They apply in many very different kinds of economies—capitalist, socialist, feudal, or whatever—and among a wide variety of peoples, cultures, and governments. Policies which led to rising price levels under Alexander the Great have led to rising price levels in America, thousands of years later. Rent control laws have led to a very similar set of consequences in Cairo, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Melbourne, and New York. So have similar agricultural policies in India and in the European Union countries."

"Economics is not simply a topic on which to express opinions or vent emotions. It is a systematic study of what happens when you do specific things in specific ways. In economic analysis, the methods used by a Marxist economist like Oskar Lange did not differ in any fundamental way from the methods used by a conservative economist like Milton Friedman."

"Many economic fallacies depend upon (1) thinking of the economy as a set of zero-sum transactions, (2) ignoring the role of competition in the marketplace, or (3) not thinking beyond the initial consequences of particular policies."

"It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves."

"The first and the purest demand of society is for scientific knowledge: knowledge of how the economic system works. Knowledge of the consequences of economic actions. Knowledge of the causes of unemployment, of the effects of various taxes, of the sources of income inequality. Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic phenomena."

"Economics cannot digest the idea that the collective (and the aggregate) are disproportionately less predictable than individuals."

"Hard science gives sensational results with a horribly boring process; philosophy gives boring results with a sensational process; literature gives sensational results with a sensational process; and economics gives boring results with a boring process."

"The faith... that riches are not a means but an end, implies that all economic activity is equally estimable, whether it is subordinated to a social purpose or not."

"When people behave badly they always invent a philosophy of life which represents their bad actions to be not bad actions at all, but merely results of unalterable laws beyond their control."

"The condition of life to which people of the well-to-do classes are accustomed is that of an abundant production of various articles necessary for their comfort and pleasure, and these things are obtained only thanks to the existence of factories and works organized as at present. And, therefore, discussing the improvement of the workers' position, the men of science belonging to the well- to-do classes always have in view only such improvements as will not do away with the system of factory-production and those conveniences of which they avail themselves."

"Economy, the poor man's mint."

"Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it. Psychological tests have shown that economics majors are more egoistic than the average college student. Exposure in class after class to the capitalist self-interest model apparently kills off whatever prosocial tendencies these students have to begin with. They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them."

"[E]conomics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. But if resources aren't scarce then how can we study the allocation of something that doesn't exist? Of course, you might think that most economists are only discussing angels on pinheads anyway. And if we're honest about it all economists would insist that at least one current major theory is nothing more than that. But in the entire absence of scarce resources, economics would be even more like that. Akin to asking whether those angels could waltz or jitterbug upon their pinhead."

"Economics is a subject that really relates to core aspects of human well-being, and there’s a methodology for thinking about these things. This was a very appealing combination to me. Market systems are capable of massive breakdowns that can result in long, devastating periods of high unemployment. And I felt that economists had really learned something about how to address that."

"Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom."

"This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."

"Money, now this has to be some good shit."

"The usual definition of the functions of money are that money is a medium of exchange, a measure of value, a standard of deferred payment and a store of value."

"If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil."

"Plato said that virtue has no master. If a person does not honor this principle and rejoice in it, but is purchasable for money, he creates many masters for himself."

"Money makes the man."

"Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural."

"If the love of money is the root of all evil, the need of money is most certainly the root of all despair."

"Divitiæ bona ancilla, pessima domina."

"L'argent est un bon serviteur, mais un méchant maître."

"Money is like muck (manure), not good except it be spread."

""The love of money is the root of all evil". This throws us back on the fundamental weakness of humanity - the quality of desire. Of this money is the result and the symbol... Desire demands the satisfaction of sensed need, the desire for goods and possessions, the desire for material comfort, for the acquisition and accumulation of things... This desire controls and dominates human thinking; it is the keynote of our modern civilisation; it is also the octopus which is slowly strangling human life, enterprise, and decency; it is the millstone around the neck of mankind... There are, however, large numbers of people whose lives are not dominated by the love of money, and who can normally think in terms of the higher values. They are the hope of the future but are individually imprisoned in the system which, spiritually, must end. Though they do not love money, they need it, and must have it; the tentacles of the business world surround them; they too must work and earn the wherewithal to live; the work they seek to do to aid humanity, cannot be done without the required funds."

"Just as money has been in the past the instrument of men's selfishness, now it must be the instrument of their goodwill. (5 - 166)."

"I look at Paris Hilton, think about her parents' fortune and her grandparents' fortune. She thought she had it all together. A whole lot of people think that, that when you got money you can do anything you want to do. But I want to tell you there are some things money can't do for you; Money can buy you a house, but can't buy you a home; Money can buy you food to put on your table, but can't buy an appetite; Money can buy you one of the most finest matresses in the world, but can't buy you sleep."

"Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did."

"One of the wisest things anybody ever said to me was that if all you ever care about is money, money is all that will ever care for you."

"If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom He gives it."

"Money is the devil's dung."

"If money is, as it is often posited, the root of all evil, then where does that leave greed? Let's do the math: Greed takes up most of your time and most of your money, so therefore greed = time x money. And, as we all know, time = money. Ergo, greed = money x money. So, if money is the square root of all evil, then we are forced to conclude that greed is evil as well, perhaps even more so, in that it forced us to do math. But when does the desire to simply possess something turn into unchecked greed? That's easy: when the things that you possess start possessing you."

"Money is the currency of the world, but it rarely is our currency."

"Money should buy you one thing only and that is freedom."

"The sinews of business (or state)."

"A lot of money goes to money-heaven."

"The accuser of sins by my side doth stand, And he holds my money bag in his hand; For my worldly things God makes him pay; And he'd pay for more, if to him I would pray."

"We could never imagine what a strange disproportion a few or a great many pieces of money make between men, if we did not see it every day with our own eyes."

"And who can suffer injury by just taxation, impartial laws and the application of the Jeffersonian doctrine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none? Only those whose accumulations are stained with dishonesty and whose immoral methods have given them a distorted view of business, society and government. Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes."

"Money well managed deserves, indeed, the apotheosis to which she was raised by her Latin adorers; she is Diva Moneta — a goddess."

"The greediness of gain is the only principle on which a stranger can be induced to furnish a stranger."

"Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked."

"Penny wise, pound foolish."

"Mr. Butler urged the same idea: adding that money was power; and that the States ought to have weight in the government in proportion to their wealth."

"Still amorous, and fond, and billing, Like Philip and Mary on a shilling."

"Money…is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very good judge, but there is no better."

"How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins (Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests Weigh not the thin ore where their visage shines, But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp;— Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp."

"A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end."

"It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money."

"Money, which is of very uncertain value, and sometimes has no value at all and even less."

"THIS IS YOUR GOD"

"Covetousness ... chooses to love and care for images stamped on gold instead of God."

"We must not only guard against the possession of money, but also must expel from our souls the desire for it. For we should not so much avoid the results of covetousness, as cut off by the roots all disposition towards it. For it will do no good not to possess money, if there exists in us the desire for getting it."

"It is possible that those who are in no way pressed down with the weight of money may be condemned with the covetous in disposition and intent. For it was the opportunity of possessing which was wanting in their case, and not the will for it."

"If money is all that a man makes, then he will be poor — poor in happiness, poor in all that makes life worth living."

"Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away."

"Make ducks and drakes with shillings."

"Despising money is like toppling a king off his throne."

"L’intérêt d’argent est la grande épreuve des petits caractères, mais ce n’est encore que la plus petite pour les caractères distingués."

"Money is a symbol of what others in your society owe you, or your claim on particular amounts of the society's resources."

"The way to resumption is to resume."

"To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it."

"The purified righteous man has become a coin of the Lord, and has the impress of his King stamped upon him."

"I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow who used to say, "Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves.""

"Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody."

"Endless money forms the sinews of war"

"I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money. Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors."

"So pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! So pleasant it is to have money."

"As I sat at the Café I said to myself, They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking, But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! How pleasant it is to have money!"

"To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst."

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

"To make money honestly is to preach the gospel."

"Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money."

"Money was made, not to command our will, But all our lawful pleasures to fulfil. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey; The horse doth with the horseman run away."

"To virgin minds, which yet their native whiteness hold, Not yet discoloured with the love of gold (That jaundice of the soul, Which makes it look so gilded and so foul) ..."

"Stamps God's own name upon a lie just made, To turn a penny in the way of trade."

"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. … I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. .. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."

"The lands and houses, the goods and merchandise and the money of the world are owned by a very few. All the rest in some way serve that few for so much as the law of life and trade permit them to exact."

"The sinews of affairs are cut."

"The grabbing hands Grab all they can All for themselves, after all It's a competitive world Everything counts in large amounts"

"Everybody needs money. That's why it's called "money"."

"... I realized that "money talk," let's call it that way, is purposefully esoteric. Like, it's designed to not be understood — to create this aura around it — ... you, me, we shouldn't really concern ourselves with this, because it's too arcane and abstruse. Leave it to the specialists. And that's a power play ..."

"As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it."

"The sweet simplicity of the three per cents."

"The American nation in the Sixth Ward is a fine People," he says. "They love th' eagle," he says. "On the back iv a dollar."

"Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it: "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith.""

"Wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things."

"Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless."

"If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people."

"The elegant simplicity of the three per cents."

"Money, which represents the prose of life, and is hardly spoken of in parlors without apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses."

"Money often costs too much."

"It is not, believe me, the chief end of man that he should make a fortune and beget children whose end is likewise to make fortunes, but it is, in few words, that he should explore himself — an inexhaustible mine — and external nature is but the candle to illuminate in turn the innumerable and profound obscurities of the soul."

"If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it."

"Almighty gold."

"Penny saved is a penny got."

"Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the rest; Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!"

"Money. Cause of all evil, Auri sacra fames. The god of the day—but not to be confused with Apollo. Politicians call it emoluments; lawyers, retainers; doctors, fees; employees, salary; workmen, pay; servants, wages. "Money is not happiness.""

"That's Mao." "Do people still respect him?" "The government pays lip service to his memory, but the hero worship of past eras is over." "And what about the ordinary people?" "The so-called proletariat?" "Yup." "They've found another god to follow." "Xi Jinping?" "Money."

"Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich."

"Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage can cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue to misuse what it can get."

"Let every man abide in the art or employment wherein he was called. And for their labor they may receive all necessary things, except money. ... Let none of the brothers, wherever he may be or whithersoever he may go, carry or receive money or coin in any manner, or cause it to be received, either for clothing, or for books, or as the price of any labor, or indeed for any reason, except on account of the manifest necessity of the sick brothers."

"We ought not to have more use and esteem of money and coin than of stones. And the devil seeks to blind those who desire or value it more than stones. Let us therefore take care lest after having left all things we lose the kingdom of heaven for such a trifle. And if we should chance to find money in any place, let us no more regard it than the dust we tread under our feet. ... And let the brothers in nowise receive money for alms or cause it to be received, seek it or cause it to be sought."

"There are three faithful friends,"

"If you'd lose a troublesome visitor, lend him money."

"If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some."

"The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money."

"Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. [...] Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding feline taint, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds."

"'Tis money that begets money."

"In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply."

"It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country. This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war."

""I would not steal a penny, for my income's very fair— I do not want a penny—I have pennies and to spare— And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till, The sin would be enormous—the temptation being nil."

"The earning of money should be a means to an end; for more than thirty years — I began to support myself at sixteen — I had to regard it as the end itself."

"Money. You don’t know where it’s been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks."

"The money pigs of capitalist democracy… Money has made slaves of us… Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood."

"Ein Mensch, der um anderer willen, ohne dass es seine eigene Leidenschaft, sein eigenes Bedürfnis ist, sich um Geld oder Ehre oder sonst etwas abarbeitet, ist immer ein Tor."

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States."

"Your lovin' gives me a thrill But your lovin' don't pay my bills I need money — That's what I want."

"With money, so they all profess — And I've no wish to beg the question — One cannot purchase Happiness Or Peace of Mind, or yet Success, Or a robust digestion; But one can buy a good cigar And plovers' eggs and caviare!"

"Whoever said money can't solve your problems must not have had enough money to solve them."

"It's all about money cause without money you dead Ain't a damn thing funny You gotta have a con in this land of milk and honey"

"If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money."

"It is true that the masses have always been led in one manner or another, and it could be said that their part in history consists primarily in allowing themselves to be led, since they represent a merely passive element, a "matter" in the Aristotelian sense of the word. But, to lead them today, it is sufficient to dispose of purely material means, … and this shows clearly to what depths our age has sunk. At the same time the masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing themselves, and the fact that they believe this is a sign from which the extent of their stupidity may be inferred."

"Let your way of life be free of the love of money, while you are content with the present things. For he has said: “I will never leave you, and I will never abandon you.”"

"This bank-note world."

"Money is not coins and bank notes. Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services."

"The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and bank notes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90% percent of all money - more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts - exists only on computer servers."

"Money is accordingly, a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised."

"Money is more open-minded than language, state law, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation."

"Money has been essential both for building empires and for promoting science. Neither modern armies nor university laboratories can be sustained without banks."

"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be always controlled unless we declare our specific purpose. Or, since when we declare our specific purpose we shall also have to get it approved, we should really be controlled in everything."

"If you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do."

"“The answer to ‘Why’ is always ‘Money.’”"

"Get to live; Then live, and use it; else, it is not true That thou hast gotten. Surely use alone Makes money not a contemptible stone."

"Would you know what money is, go borrow some."

"Fight thou with shafts of silver, and o'ercome When no force else can get the masterdome."

"Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life."

"How widely its agencies vary,— To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless,— As even its minted coins express, Now stamp'd with the image of good Queen Bess, And now of a Bloody Mary."

"They may talk of the plugging and sweating Of our coinage that's minted of gold, But to me it produces no fretting Of its shortness of weight to be told: All the sov'reigns I'm able to levy As to lightness can never be wrong, But must surely be some of the heavy, For I never can carry them long."

"Quærenda pecunia primum est; virtus post nummos."

"... rem facias, rem, si possis, recte, si non, quocumque modo, rem"

"Quo mihi fortunam, si non conceditur uti? Of what use is a fortune to me, if I cannot use it?"

"Et genus et formam regina pecunia donat."

"Licet superbus ambules pecuniæ, Fortuna non mutat genus."

"Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca."

"Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion."

"MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY."

"Here then we may learn the fallacy of the remark... that any particular state is weak, though fertile, populous, and well cultivated, merely because it wants money. It appears that the want of money can never injure any state within itself: For men and commodities are the real strength of any community. It is the simple manner of living which here hurts the public, by confining the gold and silver to few hands, and preventing its universal diffusion and circulation. On the contrary, industry and refinements of all kinds incorporate it with the whole state, however small its quantity may be: They digest it into every vein, so to speak; and make it enter into every transaction and contract."

""That's sixty thousand!" cried Vorobyaninov."

"The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages."

"There should, I feel, be one branch [of the Black Panther Party] that is purely political, operating the rent strikes, the breakfast programs, the People's Bazaar's where all sorts of food are sold, hospitals or clinics (free, of course), and what I will term cottage shops to employ those who will work for the new medium of exchange—love and loyalty."

"Now, throughout history, the right to coin money has been a symbol of sovereignty. If states do not have the right to coin money, they are not sovereign."

"Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold, And almost every vice, almighty gold."

"Get money; still get money, boy; No matter by what means."

"Quantum quisque sua nummorum condit in arca, Tantum habet et fidei."

"Ploratur lacrimis amissa pecunia veris."

"Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit."

"Lost money is wept for with real tears."

"Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit, Et minus hanc optat, qu non habet."

"Increase of wealth increases our desires And hew, who least possesses, least requires."

"Alt. Translation: The love of money grows as the money itself grows."

"It is maintained by some that the bank is a means of executing the constitutional power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof." Congress have established a mint to coin money and passed laws to regulate the value thereof. The money so coined, with its value so regulated, and such foreign coins as Congress may adopt are the only currency known to the Constitution. But if they have other power to regulate the currency, it was conferred to be exercised by themselves, and not to be transferred to a corporation. If the bank be established for that purpose, with a charter unalterable without its consent, Congress have parted with their power for a term of years, during which the Constitution is a dead letter. It is neither necessary nor proper to transfer its legislative power to such a bank, and therefore unconstitutional."

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing."

"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

"No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction."

"Throw money at a problem and it will remain."

"The spark for a relationship might come for free—a look, a word. But the fuel to keep it going would always be expensive. Money might not buy happiness, but the lack of money could buy endless unhappiness for any two people."

"Things are simply so arranged that not all men can have money. Prometheus and Epimetheus, you say, were undeniably very wise, but all the same it is incomprehensible that when in other respects they endowed men so gloriously it did not occur to them to give them money also."

"It would undeniably be a superb invention by laughter to imagine eternity in a financial predicament-ah, but then let us weep a little because temporality has so completely forgotten eternity and forgotten that from the eternal point of view money is less that nothing! Alas, many are of the opinion that the eternal is a delusion and that money is the reality, whereas in the understanding of eternity and of truth money is a delusion. Think of eternity in whatever way you want to; only admit that many of the temporal things you have seen in temporality you wished to find again in eternity, that you wished to see the trees and the flowers and the stars again, to hear the singing of the birds and the murmuring of the brooks again, but, could it ever occur to you that there would be money in eternity? No, then the kingdom of heaven itself would again become a land of misery, and therefore this cannot possibly occur to you, just as it cannot possibly occur to someone who believes money is reality that there is an eternity."

"Any man who spends his income, whether large or small, benefits the community by putting money in circulation."

"Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!"

"Money in the pocket, devil in the heart."

"To borrow money, big money, you have to wear your hair in a certain way, walk in a certain way, and have about you an air of solemnity and majesty — something like the atmosphere of a Gothic cathedral."

"Jefferson "Jax" Jackson: Is there anything you think about other than yourself?Leonard Snart: Yes. Money."

"Money is like an iron ring we've put through our noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and it's now leading us around. I think it's time to figure out where we want to go--in my opinion toward sustainability and community--and then design a money system that gets us there."

"For the first time in human history we have available the production technologies to create unprecedented abundance. All this converges into an extraordinary opportunity to combine the hardware of our technologies of abundance and the software of archetypal shifts. Such a combination has never been available at this scale or at this speed: it enables us to consciously design money to work for us, instead of us for it. I propose that we choose to develop money systems that will enable us to attain sustainability and community healing on a local and global scale. These objectives are in our grasp within less than one generation's time. Whether we materialize them or not will depend on our capacity to cooperate with each other to consciously reinvent our money."

"While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money - using markets and resources to do so. So designing new money systems really amounts to redesigning the target that orients much human effort... Greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament... greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."

"Greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament... greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."

"Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000."

"Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system."

"Money is an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange."

"My expertise lies in international finance and money systems. This is why I have adopted here a whole systems approach to money. Whole systems take into account a broader, more comprehensive arena than economics does; it integrates not only economic interactions but also their most important side effects. This includes specifically in our case the effects of different money systems on the quality of human interactions, on society at large, and on ecological systems."

"In essence, money is a lifeblood flowing through ourselves, our society, our global human community, and should be acknowledged and treated consciously."

"We, as lawyers, as men of business, as men of experience, know perfectly well what evils necessarily result from handing over a great family estate to a mortgagee in possession, whose only chance of getting his money is to sacrifice the interests of everybody to money-getting."

"Nec quicquam acrius quam pecuniæ damnum stimulat."

"That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting in the streets."

"Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves."

"As a rule, there is nothing that offends us more than a new kind of money."

"Only think about it, it’s mysticism. You take a paper, make a special drawing on it. And suddenly the magic begins. It’s not a paper anymore. It’s any thing. Any desire. Freedom. Conquered space… But the drawing has to be very precise. If one tiny curl is missing, it seems like it makes no difference. But that’s the end. The magic is already destroyed. The paper is just a paper. But if everything is in place, look at these iridescence, the subtle magical patterns, the strict lines!"

"But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up, and it cankers and breeds worms."

"This currency is nothing more than the evidence of service having been rendered for which an equivalent has not been received, but which may at any time be demanded. It is obvious that as soon as it has been rendered, the evidence of its being due must be given up to the debtor to be destroyed, and it will be no longer current. And if any man can render services to his neighbours, he must in return receive either other services, or the evidence of their being due; and if he renders more services than he immediately requires in return, he will accumulate a store of this evidence for his future wants. ...It is quite clear that its use is to measure and record debts, and to facilitate their transfer from one person to another; and whatever means be adopted for this purpose, whether it be gold, silver, paper, or anything else, is a currency. We may therefore lay down as our fundamental conception that Currency and Transferable Debt are convertible terms; whatever represents transferable debt of any sort is Currency, and whatever material the currency may consist of, it represents transferable debt and nothing else."

"One cannot help regretting that where money is concerned, it is so much the rule to overlook moral obligations."

"Up and down the City Road, In and out the Eagle, That's the way the money goes— Pop goes the weasel!"

"It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money."

"Capital is money: Capital is commodities. In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs. Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be established. And this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, between the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money."

"Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc.,which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy."

"Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history"

"I who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their opposites?"

"Money is not a thing, but a social relation."

"Since money does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, whether a commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes sellable and purchasable. Circulation is the great social retort into which everything is thrown and out of which everything is recovered as crystallized money. Not even the bones of the saints are able to withstand this alchemy; and still less able to withstand it are more delicate things, sacrosanct things which are outside the commercial traffic of men. Just as all qualitative differences between commodities are effaced in money, so money, a radical leveller, effaces all distinctions. But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of an individual. Thus social power becomes private power in the hands of a private person."

"Luat in corpore, qui non habet in ære."

"Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes."

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, — what will compare with it?"

"Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy."

"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell"

"Money brings honor, friends, conquest, and realms."

"Les beaux yeux de ma cassette! Il parle d'elle comme un amant d'une maitresse."

"Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates."

"Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money without a corresponding increase in the demand for money, i.e., for cash holdings."

"I like to carry some cash because you feel like you can cope with any situation — such as being mugged. I always try to have about £50 in my pocket just for convenience, really."

"Truly, it is not want, but rather abundance, that breeds avarice."

"Money is gold, and nothing else."

"Common people do not make such distinction between money and land, as persons conversant in Law Matters do."

"It has been quaintly said "that the reason why money cannot be followed is, because it has no ear-mark ": But this is not true. The true reason is, upon account of the currency of it: it cannot be recovered after it has passed in currency."

"I am a great friend to the action for money had and received: it is a very beneficial action, and founded on principles of eternal justice."

"When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."

"Money is one of humankind's most important inventions and is now the basis for decision-making at most levels of society. The downside to our preoccupation with monetary values is that our money system does not take into account all the real costs and values of living. Money is not directly involved with natural wealth, which is not only the ultimate basis for human material wealth but also provides the life-supporting goods and services such as air and and , soil enrichment, atmospheric balances, and so on. Nor can money adequately valuate the aesthetic enjoyment of natural beauty, the arts, literature, and so on. ... the gross domestic product (GDP), the standard measure of economic progress, does not include social and ecological costs."

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."

"Since money belongs to the community … it would seem that the community may control it as it wills, and therefore may make as much profit from alteration as it likes, and treat money as its own property."

"In pretio pretium nunc est; dat census honores, Census amicitias; pauper ubique jacet."

"Children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children."

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

"My father told me that when you're working, don't stop to count your money."

"There are a precious few whose studies are sound and honest and whose goal is truth and virtue. This is the knowledge of things and the improvement of moral conduct. … As for the others, of whom there is an enormous mass, some seek glory, an insipid, yet gleaming prize. But the majority aims only at the gleam of money, which is not only a rather poor reward, but dirty, and neither equal to the trouble involved, nor worthy of efforts of the mind."

"Quid faciant leges, ubi sola pecunia regnat?"

"Money It's a crime Share it fairly But don't take a slice of my pie. Money So they say Is the root of all evil today."

"Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?"

"Money is a dangerous subject. Polite conversation avoids it. You may talk about economics, but not raw money…"

"Of what use is money in the hands of fools when they have no heart to acquire wisdom?"

""Get Money, money still! And then let virtue follow, if she will." This, this the saving doctrine preach'd to all, From low St. James' up to high St. Paul."

"Trade it may help, society extend, But lures the Pirate, and corrupts the friend: It raises armies in a nation's aid, But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd."

"When Gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotent."

"Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money."

"Point d'argent, point de Suisse."

"Money and friendship bribe justice. Beauty is potent, but money is omnipotent."

"Judas: I don't need your blood money!"

"Ohhhh All I see is signs All I see is dollar signs Ohhhh Money on my mind Money, money on my mind."

"I am more concerned with the return of my money than the return on my money."

"Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting."

"The lifeblood of our economy, indeed the whole world's economy, is based on money. Without a currency that can be trusted, the entire structure of economics, the division of labor itself, falls apart. Our wealth, our well being and our very lives are dependent on the continuation of this highly complex structure called the economy and it in turn is dependent on sound money. We have placed our trust for the management of this money on a gang of thieves called the Federal Reserve. They have now clearly demonstrated their inability to restrain themselves from the excesses that can be perpetrated within a paper money system. If we want to survive as a nation, we need to eliminate both the Federal Reserve and paper money."

"It is when money looks like manna that we truely delight in it."

"Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil."

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."

"Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by Compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

"I think it a greater theft to Rob the dead of their Praise, then the Living of their Money."

"Money can make you do ghastly things."

"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake."

"Never allow yourself to get caught without a loose million handy."

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."

"I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which has always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom.; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing."

"Money is the source of all the false ideas of society."

"The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some."

"Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money,—he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it."

"Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings."

"A Mafioso businessman’s number one priority is not to make money, but to hand out receipts in order to justify money that he already has."

"Money moves in, and people move out."

"Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money."

"People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable for them to love that which, as an untiring Proteus, is ready at any moment to convert itself into the particular object of our fickle desires and manifold needs. Thus every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry, wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on. Consequently, all these are only … relatively good. Money alone is the absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto."

"Money never made any man rich. Contrariwise, there is not any man that hath gathered store of it together that is not become more covetous."

"When I was stamp'd, some coiner with his tools Made me a counterfeit."

"No, they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself."

"For they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open."

"Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on."

"Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby or an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two-and-fifty horses; why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal."

"Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power, Upon a shining ore, and called it gold; Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue."

"Money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of "how much?" Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in the size of the area which they cover."

"The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations … often does not appear to him at all as a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation."

"Worldly success, measured by the accumulation of money, is no doubt a very dazzling thing; and all men are naturally more or less the admirers of worldly success."

"Bread is made for laughter, and wine makes life enjoyable; but money answers every need."

"πολλοί τοι πλουτοῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:"

"The citizens themselves are willing, by their follies and obedience to money, to destroy this great city."

"οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώποισιν οἷον ἄργυρος κακὸν νόμισμ᾽ ἔβλαστε. τοῦτο καὶ πόλεις πορθεῖ, τόδ᾽ ἄνδρας ἐξανίστησιν δόμων: τόδ᾽ ἐκδιδάσκει καὶ παραλλάσσει φρένας χρηστὰς πρὸς αἰσχρὰ πράγματ᾽ ἵστασθαι βροτῶν: πανουργίας δ᾽ ἔδειξεν ἀνθρώποις ἔχειν καὶ παντὸς ἔργου δυσσέβειαν εἰδέναι."

"Among the misconceptions of economics is that it is something that tells you how to make money or run a business or predict the ups and downs of the stock market. But economics is not personal finance or business administration, and predicting the ups and downs of the stock market has yet to be reduced to a dependable formula. When economists analyze prices, wages, profits, or the international balance of trade, for example, it is from the standpoint of how decisions in various parts of the economy affect the allocation of scarce resources in a way that raises or lowers the material standard of living of the people as a whole."

"In reality money, like numbers and law, is a category of thought. There is a monetary, just as there is a juristic and a mathematical and a technical, thinking of the world-around."

"Gold and silver are but merchandise, as well as cloth or linen; and that nation that buys the least, and sells the most, must always have the most money."

"If all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go round."

"Everyone has to make up their mind if money is money or money isn't money and sooner or later they always do decide that money is money."

"But as they all say if we sell our home what will we have for it, money, and what is the use of that money, money goes and after it is gone then where are we, beside we have all we want, what can we do with money except lose it, money to spend is not very welcome, if you have it and you try to spend it, well spending money is an anxiety, saving money is a comfort and a pleasure, economy is not a duty it is a comfort, avarice is an excitement, but spending money is nothing, money spent is money non-existent, money saved is money realised..."

"Meanwhile Hollywood has gone nuts. Carol [his wife] turned down a writing job for me at five thousand a week. She said, "Why Jesus Christ then I'd have to find a new bank every week." Just what in hell could a writing man do that would be worth five thousand a week. The whole place is nuts..."

"The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavour to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest."

"The world over, private financial markets fail when it comes to the very poor, ... Mainstream banks do not seek out poor communities—because that’s not where the money is."

"Money can always be traced. It leaves a trail of slime behind it wherever it goes."

"Her life was a complete mess, true, but it could be straightened out. All it would take was money. Money could straighten out anything, if you had enough of it."

"What is fiat money? you may ask. Essentially, it is an inconvertible or unbacked currency usually issued by the government/central bank. Fiat money is currency of unlimited supply."

"But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels."

"Pecuniam in loco negligere maximum est lucrum."

"Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life."

"What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative; what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!"

"Ploutos, no wonder mortals worship you: You are so tolerant of their sins!"

"Everyone in the world needs money – to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment. You can run out of it. It wears out. It can get lost or stolen. In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world. Many of these countries' governments play fast and loose with their currencies. They use inflation and sometimes wholesale currency devaluations, like we saw in Russia and several Southeast Asian countries last year [referring to the 1998 Russian and 1997 Asian financial crisis], to take wealth away from their citizens. Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars. Eventually PayPal will be able to change this. In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure."

"It's something very personal, a very important thing. Hell! It's a family motto. Are you ready Jerry? I wanna make sure you're ready, brother. Here it is: Show me the money. SHOW! ME! THE! MONEY! Jerry, it is such a pleasure to say that! Say it with me one time, Jerry."

"Not greedy of filthy lucre."

"The love of money is the root of all evil."

"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal — that there is no human relation between master and slave."

"Money has been a consensual hallucination since we abolished the gold standard. It has value because we say it does. Why should a black-and-gold plastic rectangle be any different?"

"A man will be generally very old and feeble before he forgets how much money he has in the funds."

"It may interest some if I state that during the last twenty years I have made by literature something near £70,000. As I have said before in these pages, I look upon the result as comfortable, but not splendid."

"Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game."

"A fool and his money be soon at debate."

"Simple rules for saving money. To save half: When you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count to forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five."

"Sex is like money; only too much is enough."

"Pecunia non olet"

"Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him."

"It is more easy to write on money than to obtain it; and those who gain it, jest much at those who only know how to write about it."

"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."

"On en trouve [l'argent] toujours quand il s’agit d’aller faire tuer des hommes sur la frontière: il n’y en a plus quand il faut les sauver."

"Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow money to do it with."

"Cash. I just am not happy when I don't have it. The minute I have it I have to spend it. And I just buy STUPID THINGS."

"Money is the MOMENT to me. Money is my MOOD."

"No honest man has been able to save any money in the last twenty years."

"Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then give all you can."

"We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people."

"Neither can anything we desire be got without money, or what money represents, i.e. without the command of exchangeable things. All the things that we so often say "cannot be had for money" we might with equal truth say cannot be had or enjoyed without it. Friendship cannot be had for money, but how often do the things that money commands enable us to form and develop our friendships! … But even "waiting" requires money, if not so much as marrying does. In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat. The things that money commands are strictly necessary to the realisation on earth of any programme whatsoever. The range of things, then, that money can command in no case secures any of those experiences or states of consciousness which make up the whole body of ultimately desired things, and yet none of the things that we ultimately desire can be had except on the basis of the things that money can command. Hence nothing that we really want can infallibly be secured by things that can be exchanged, but neither can it under any circumstances be enjoyed without them."

"A dollar is something that you multiply — something that causes an expansion of your house and your mechanical equipment, something that accelerates like speed; and that may be also slowed up or deflated. It is a value that may be totally imaginary, yet can for a time provide half-realized dreams."

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ..."

"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

"I get a few bruises, but I think of the money and I'm alright."

"It is money makes the mare to trot."

"No, let the monarch's bags and coffers hold The flattering, mighty, nay, all-mighty gold."

"I think this piece will help to boil thy pot."

"Those who take money are bound to carry out the work for which they get a fee, while I, because I refuse to take it, am not obliged to talk with anyone against my will."

"Money isn't everything, but it's way ahead of whatever's in second place."

"Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it."

"As this body has no authority to make anything whatever a tender in payment of private debts, it necessarily follows that nothing but gold and silver coin can be made a legal tender for that purpose, and that Congress cannot authorize the payment in any species of paper currency of any other debts but those due to the United States, or such debts of the United States as may, by special contract, be made payable in such paper."

"For the folk-community does not exist on the fictitious value of money but on the results of productive labour, which is what gives money its value."

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic."

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency."

"God gave me my money. I believe the power to make money is a gift from God … to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience."

""Not worth a Continental dam" had its origin about this time [1780]. It is not a profane expression. A "dam" is an Indian coin of less value than one cent and a Continental one cent was next to worthless when it took six pounds, or about thirty dollars to buy a "warm dinner"."

"He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread."

"In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip.' We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one. In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury."

"It is perhaps well enough that the people of the Nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy."

"I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war."

"The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers..... The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power."

"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance."

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!"

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests."

"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe."

"[Engineering concerns] the creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.""

"As with anything else, there are good and bad ways to forecast."

"Psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes."

"If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous."

"Question 8. Is There a Measurable, Qualitatively Distinctive Prediction of String Theory? String theories can, in principle, make many "s" (such as the calculation of the mass ratios of s and s, Higgs masses and couplings, s, etc.). They can also make many new predictions (such as the masses of the supersymmetric partners of the observed particles, new gauge interactions, etc.). These would be sufficient to establish the validity of the theory, however in each case one can imagine (although with some difficulty) conventinal field theories coming up with similar pre or post dictions. It would be nice to predict a phenomenon, which would be accessible at observable energies and is uniquely characteristic of string theory."

"I have always believed that people have misjudged the accuracy of economic forecasting... During the 1980s and 1990s, I researched and applied methods of high frequency economic forecasting, to be used by themselves, and for objective establishment of initial conditions for longer range forecasts from structural dynamic models that carry forward the pioneering contributions of Jan Tinbergen."

"A forecast can only be based on a diagnosis about current trends if it is to be based on something other than wishful thinking. This is why I was never a strong supporter of the distinction between forecasts and projections: our best forecasts are intelligent projections. Moreover, it turns out that learning about the diagnosis that underlies a forecast is often much more rewarding than learning about the forecast itself."

"Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways."

"I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular."

"Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness."

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

"Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making."

"This led me to the thought that it might be easy to pretend to be a Seer. After all, if one pretended to have visions of the far distant future, how would anyone know if they came true or not?"

"The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world."

"It is my hope that in such a way we may again, as Marx claimed, find scientific arguments in the competition between various systems, but up-to-date scientific arguments rather than obsolete ones. This more fundamental research in economics deserves relatively more attention and resources than the more superficial versions of economic research directed at forecasting or analysing very short-term fluctuations in market prices, on which quite some money is being spent to-day."

"The successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, and management."

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."

"to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and"

"to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and"

"to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and"

"to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,"

"to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and"

"to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and"

"to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and"

"to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,"

"More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations. Through the United Nations, we are working together to preserve peace; to outlaw weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately; to bring mass murderers and war criminals to justice. Through the United Nations, we are working together to defeat Aids and other epidemics; to control climate change; to make clean air and water available to everyone. Through the United Nations, we are working together to ensure that the global market benefits all of us, allowing the poor to lift themselves out of poverty."

"Through the United Nations, we are working together to make human rights a reality for everyone - to give all human beings real choices in life, and a real say in decisions that affect their lives. In all these areas and more, the United Nations is working for you. But it can do little without you. After all, it belongs to you, the peoples of the world. And therefore it can work much better with your help and your ideas. My friends, the new millennium need not be a time of fear or anxiety. If we work together and have faith in our own abilities, it can be a time of hope and opportunity. It's up to us to make it so."

"My friends, our challenge today is not to save Western civilization — or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task. You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago? Surely not. More than ever today, Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world’s peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function more effectively, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition. I hope and pray that the American leaders of today, and tomorrow, will provide it."

"Eradication of extreme poverty has been identified as a priority, and specific targets have been set for prescribed measures. Many said the potential benefits of globalization are understood but people have yet to feel them. It is agreed that part of the solution lies in sovereign States giving priority to the needs of their people, especially the poorest. States, however, must work with the private sector and civil society to solve the problems of globalization. A more equitable world economy has been called for, one where those who have more do more for those who have less."

"It may be said that the actual birth of World Government coincided with the formation of the United Nations Organization, and with the desperate wish to invest it with real authority. So the embryonic World Government is potentially already there, founded essentially upon the heritage of the League of Nations. What shape it eventually takes, whether it becomes an enlargement of former tyrannies, or whether in fact it will prove to be the instrument by means of which we shall produce our promised Golden Age, depends upon ourselves, the people. Only by appreciating possibilities shall we know for what to strive. In this respect we are not in such an inferior position to the experts as we might think, because we are living in a time of transition, when everything is going to be so different that the experts are possibly more handicapped by their traditional time-worn knowledge than are we, untrained and with minds empty of red tape and orthodoxy. It is possible that the truths and values of the coming new world conditions will be more easily and correctly apprehended by the man in the street to-day than by the tired politicians and economists. p. 23-24"

"The voice of humanity, as expressed by its greatest leaders is now declaring these things. The United Nations are beginning to back up these standards and ideal. They are being translated into action with the general consent of the people, and without arousing consternation, query or protest. As a whole the people are ready to go forward into this new outlook. Naturally, there exist large and powerful anti-progress elements in the community, the tenacious profiteers of all kinds, but they have had to recognize that they cannot outwardly protest — they are up against the strong tide of the peoples’ will-to-good, and can only work underground. So that we can really say that the revolutionary principles declared by the Atlantic Charter and Lend-lease have been ‘carried unanimously’ as it were. 156-157"

"We cannot say just because the United Nations...Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution? first of all, Who said? we know that you have the double standard in the world, in the United States policy, in the United Nations that is controlled by the United States and this so, it has no credibility. So, it's about evidences and documents, whenever they have we can discuss it just to discuss the report that we don't see in reality related to it. It is just a waste of time[...]for one reason, they haven't implemented, they never implemented any of the resolutions that related to the Arab world for example the Palestinians to the Syrian land. Why don't they, if they talk about human rights, what about the Palestinians suffering in the occupied territory? what about my land...my people? that leave their land because it's occupied by Israel..."

"Eagerly, musician, Sweep your string, So we may sing, Elated, optative, Our several voices Interblending, Playfully contending, Not interfering But co-inhering, For all within The cincture of the sound Is holy ground, Where all are Brothers, None faceless Others. Let mortals beware Of words, for With words we lie, Can say peace When we mean war, Foul thought speak fair And promise falsely, But song is true: Let music for peace Be the paradigm, For peace means to change At the right time, As the World Clock, Goes Tick and Tock. So may the story Of our human city Presently move Like music, when Begotten notes New notes beget, Making the flowing Of time a growing,Till what it could be, At last it is, Where even sadness Is a form of gladness, Where Fate is Freedom,Grace and Surprise."

"The distribution of the world's resources and the settled unity of the peoples of the world are in reality one and the same thing, for behind all modern wars lies a fundamental economic problem. Solve that and wars will very largely cease. In considering, therefore, the preservation of peace, as sought for and emphasized by the United Nations at this time, it becomes immediately apparent that peace, security and world stability are primarily tied up with the economic problem. When there is freedom from want, one of the major causes of war will disappear. Where there is uneven distribution of the world's riches and where there is a situation in which some nations have or take everything and other nations lack the necessities of life, it is obvious that there is a trouble-breeding factor there and that something must be done. Therefore we should deal with world unity and peace primarily from the angle of the economic problem."

"The true problem of the United Nations is a twofold one: it involves the right distribution of the world's resources so that there may be freedom from want, and it involves also the bringing about of a true equality of opportunity and of education for all men everywhere. The nations which have a wealth of resources are not owners; they are custodians of the world's riches and hold them in trust for their fellowmen. The time will inevitably come when—in the interest of peace and security—the capitalists in the various nations will be forced to realize this and will also be forced to substitute the principle of sharing for the ancient principle (which has hitherto governed them) of greedy grabbing."

"There was a time—a hundred years or more ago—when a just distribution of the world's wealth would have been impossible. That is not true today. Statistics exist; computations have been made; investigation has penetrated into every field of the earth's resources and these investigations, computations and statistics have been published and are available to the public. The men in power in every nation know well exactly what food, minerals, oil and other necessities are available for worldwide use upon just and equitable lines. But these commodities are reserved by the nations involved as "talking and bargaining points". The problem of distribution is no longer difficult once the food of the world is freed from politics and from capitalism..."

"None of this will, however, take place until the United Nations begin to talk in terms of humanity as a whole and not in terms of boundaries, of technical objectives and fears, in terms of the bargaining value of oil, as in the Near East, or in the language of mistrust and suspicion. Russia distrusts the capitalism of the United States and—to a lesser degree—that of Great Britain; South America is rapidly learning to mistrust the United States on the ground of imperialism; both Great Britain and the United States mistrust Russia, on the basis of her spoken word, her use of the veto and her ignorance of western idealism."

"Unity, peace and security will come through the recognition—intelligently assessed—of the evils which have led to the present world situation, and then through the taking of those wise, compassionate and understanding steps which will lead to the establishing of right human relations, to the substitution of cooperation for the present competitive system, and by the education of the masses in every land as to the nature of true goodwill and its hitherto unused potency."

"What at this moment appears to prevent world unity... ? The answer is not hard to find and involves all nations: nationalism, capitalism, competition, blind stupid greed.The mass of men need arousing to see that good comes to all men alike and not just to a few privileged groups, and to learn also that "hatred ceases not by hatred but that hatred ceases by love". This love is not a sentiment, but practical goodwill, expressing itself through individuals, in communities and among nations."

"The world economic council (or whatever body represents the resources of the world) must free itself from fraudulent politics, capitalistic influence and its devious scheming; it must set the resources of the earth free for the use of humanity. This will be a lengthy task but it will be possible when world need is better appreciated. An enlightened public opinion will make the decisions of the economic council practical and possible. Sharing and cooperation must be taught instead of greed and competition."

"At least 70 countries have signed on to the March 23 call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a worldwide ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like non-essential business and spectator sports, war is a luxury that the Secretary General says we must manage without for a while. After U.S. leaders have told Americans for years that war is a necessary evil or even a solution to many of our problems, Mr. Guterres is reminding us that war is really the most nonessential evil and an indulgence that the world cannot afford – especially during a pandemic."

"The UN Secretary General and the European Union have also both called for a suspension of the economic warfare that the US wages against other countries through unilateral coercive sanctions. Countries under unilateral US sanctions include Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe. In his update on April 3rd, Guterres showed that he was taking his ceasefire call seriously, insisting on actual ceasefires, not just feel-good declarations. "…There is a huge distance between declarations and deeds," Guterres said. His original plea to "put armed conflict on lockdown" explicitly called on warring parties everywhere to "silence the guns, stop the artillery, end the airstrikes," not just to say that they would like to, or that they’ll consider it if their enemies do it first."

"Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead."

"Memos about the sexual abuse in the Central African Republic were "passed from desk to desk, inbox to inbox, across multiple UN offices, with no one willing to take responsibility", the report found. It added: "The welfare of the victims and the accountability of the perpetrators appeared to be an afterthought, if considered at all." The investigation revealed that French peacekeepers from the UN's children agency, UNICEF, failed to act on reports of sexual abuse in early 2014 in the midst of civil war. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "profound regret that these children were betrayed by the very people sent to protect them" and said he accepted the panel's broad findings. No one has been arrested more than a year and a half after UN authorities were made aware of the sexual abuse allegations. Four French soldiers were questioned last week and released without charge. It took almost a year for UN staff to respond to allegations of rape by six children. One child reported he had been "orally and anally raped.""

"To make peace in the world secure, the United Nations must have readily at its disposal, as a result of firm commitments undertaken by all of its members, military strength of sufficient dimensions to make it certain that it can meet aggressive military force with international military force, speedily and conclusively. If that kind of strength is made available to the United Nations [...] in my view that strength will never again be challenged in war and therefore need never be employed. But military strength will not be enough. The moral position of the United Nations must ever be strong and unassailable; it must stand steadfastly, always, for the right."

"The international problems with which the United Nations is concerned are the problems of the interrelations of the peoples of the world. They are human problems. The United Nations is entitled to believe, and it does believe, that there are no insoluble problems of human relations and that there is none which cannot be solved by peaceful means. The United Nations - in Indonesia, Palestine, and Kashmir - has demonstrated convincingly that parties to the most severe conflict may be induced to abandon war as the method of settlement in favour of mediation and conciliation, at a merciful saving of untold lives and acute suffering. Unfortunately, there may yet be some in the world who have not learned that today war can settle nothing, that aggressive force can never be enough, nor will it be tolerated. If this should be so, the pitiless wrath of the organized world must fall upon those who would endanger the peace for selfish ends. For in this advanced day, there is no excuse, no justification, for nations resorting to force except to repel armed attack."

"There can be peace and a better life for all men. Given adequate authority and support, the United Nations can ensure this. But the decision really rests with the peoples of the world. The United Nations belongs to the people, but it is not yet as close to them, as much a part of their conscious interest, as it must come to be. The United Nations must always be on the people's side. Where their fundamental rights and interests are involved, it must never act from mere expediency. At times, perhaps, it has done so, but never to its own advantage nor to that of the sacred causes of peace and freedom. If the peoples of the world are strong in their resolve and if they speak through the United Nations, they need never be confronted with the tragic alternatives of war or dishonourable appeasement, death, or enslavement."

"It is worthy of emphasis that the United Nations exists not merely to preserve the peace but also to make change - even radical change - possible without violent upheaval. The United Nations has no vested interest in the status quo. It seeks a more secure world, a better world, a world of progress for all peoples. In the dynamic world society which is the objective of the United Nations, all peoples must have equality and equal rights. The rights of those who at any given time may be in the minority - whether for reasons of race, religion, or ideology - are as important as those of the majority, and the minorities must enjoy the same respect and protection. The United Nations does not seek a world cut after a single pattern, nor does it consider this desirable. The United Nations seeks only unity, not uniformity, out of the world's diversity."

"For the first time since World War II the international community is united. The leadership of the United Nations, once only a hoped-for ideal, is now confirming its founders’ vision. . . . The world can therefore seize this opportunity to fulfill the long-held promise of a new world order."

"War! Huh? What is it good for? Well, for start? It sorts out who is the strongest out of the two countries. Also, you get to see some amazing explosions. But, there is some people out there who not only don't enjoy the war, but they try to spoil the fun for everyone else. And those chickens is called the 'U.N.' Me went to New York to meet these player-haters."

"I is here standing outside the United Nations of Benetton. Which is where representatives from the three corners of the world come to end wars, international drug trafficking, and everything else that is a bit of a laugh."

"It's at times like this, isn't it, when you realize just how much we need the United Nations - about as much as we need an ear infection... Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of identity. This is my Holy Trinity, each one an intrinsic aspect of my god: Freedom, the Holiest of Holies. Yes it bloody well is. It is absolutely sacred and inviolable, beyond any negotiation or compromise, now and forever. Amen."

"Even though the Dalai Lama has a lot of respect for this noble institution, he tempers his words: “The problem with the United Nations is that they represent governments, but not the people. The five members of the Permanent Council, which includes China, frequently block any resolution favoring Tibet or even Indian Kashmir. »"

"The United Nations Organization is charged with positive tasks. That at least gives it a chance to be potent in the world. Whether the chance is realized will depend primarily upon the General Assembly. The role of the Security Council is predominantly negative. Its task is to stop the nations from public brawling. But it has no mandate to change the conditions which make brawls likely. By contrast, the General Assembly, directly or through its Economic and Social Council, is charged: to promote international cooperation in economic, social, cultural, educational and health fields; to assist in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion and, in this connection, to establish a Commission on Human Rights; to promote higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of economic and social progress and development...assuming the role of a "town meeting of the world," where public opinion is focused as an effective force."

"The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization."

"When it comes with [United Nations] Security Council my opininion is very clear, from now on, I do not accept the Security Council as up now. I call on all nations to stop recognizing the Security Council as up now. Its existence is illegal, unacceptable, and non-democratic. We will not attend its sessions, we will not recognize it at all. I call upon the world to stop recognizing the Security Council from now on in its current form, it is useless! 65 wars have happened and the Security Council did not deter the aggressions, what is the Security Council? it is the tool in the hands of major powers using it to serve their exclusive interests."

"It has been said that the United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell."

"It is not the Soviet Union or indeed any other big Powers who need the United Nations for their protection. It is all the others. In this sense, the Organization is first of all their Organization and I deeply believe in the wisdom with which they will be able to use it and guide it. I shall remain in my post during the term of my office as a servant of the Organization in the interests of all those other nations, as long as they wish me to do so."

"I have so much respect for the U.N. in the field, that humanitarian aid workers, the human rights officials. And what frustrates me a great deal is the intergovernmental discussions where the states themselves are often unable to arrive at a conclusion, where the discussions are often rather thoughtless, banal and sometimes too formulaic. And I think the world's people deserve better, and they deserve a political class around the world that is really solving the problems of the planet."

"[Question: What surprised him most about his U.N. post?] I think I knew there would be strong pushback from governments, but I didn’t anticipate the degree of human suffering, the feeling of inadequacy. I could give speeches, do reports and press conferences, but it was not equal to the need to alleviate the suffering... You see the severest degradation. Bombs hit schools, hospitals, marketplaces, and law seems not to matter at all. All rules of war were cast aside... It seems President Trump is drawn by authoritarian leadership that shows little respect for human rights. This feeds the perspective that the U.S. doesn’t care. When he attacks the U.S. media as ‘enemies of the people,’ two days later [an autocrat like] Cambodia’s Hun Sen uses the same language... It’s not like we gave a pass to the Obama administration, but we were able to talk to the U.S. administration under Obama. This doesn’t apply to the Trump administration."

"For the UN is rightly criticized for being anachronistic, for reflecting the old world that is drifting away into the past. Particularly we, the Polish people, and all the nations of Central and Eastern Europe find it difficult to forget about that. The UN idea dates back to 1943; to the meeting of the "Big Three" in Tehran; to the illusions that Roosevelt harbored about Stalin, benevolently nicknamed "Uncle Joe". As a result, the road to San Francisco led via Yalta. And even though Poland had made a major contribution to the victory which put an end to the Second World War, in June 1945 a representative of our country was not allowed to put his signature to the United Nations Charter. We remember that event when Artur Rubinstein, seeing that there was no Polish delegation at the concert to mark the signing of the Charter, decided to play the Dąbrowski Mazurka, Poland's national anthem, to demonstrate that "Poland was not lost yet", that Poland lived on. I am recalling this because I had a very touching moment a few days ago in the same San Francisco opera house, to which I was invited for the opening of the season. This time it was the orchestra that played the "Dąbrowski Mazurka", and at that moment the memories of the great Artur Rubinstein and his performance came back with full force and it was very touching indeed for me. The UN is rooted in the Second World War and in the post-war situation; it reflects the balance of power of that era."

"How can a beret coloured blue erase, just like that, the prejudices of conservative officers from Sweden, Canada or Britain? How does a blue armband vaccinate against the racism and paternalism of people whose only vision of Africa is lion hunting, slave markets and colonial conquest; people for whom the history of civilisation is built on the possession of colonies? Naturally they understand the Belgians. They have the same past, the same history, the same lust for our wealth."

"The European Union and many of its countries, which used to take initiatives in the United Nations for peaceful settlements of conflict, are now one of the most important war assets of the U.S./NATO front. Many countries have also been drawn into complicity in breaking international law through U.S./U.K./NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on. It is for this reason that I believe NATO should be abolished and that steps be taken towards disarmament through non-violent action and civil resistance."

"The plain truth is the day is coming when no single nation, however powerful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its own borders. Regional and international organizations for peace-keeping purposes are as yet rudimentary; but they must grow in experience and be strengthened by deliberate and practical cooperative action."

"Our main goal should be to establish a precedent for a new post-Cold War era, in which the community of nations, working through the United Nations and other organizations, can insure that would-be aggressors do not profit from invasion, coercion and force."

"And our enduring strength is also reflected in our respect for an international system that protects the rights of both nations and people -- a United Nations and a Universal Declaration of Human Rights; international law and the means to enforce those laws. But we also know that those rules are not self-executing; they depend on people and nations of goodwill continually affirming them."

"Even perfect decisions of the Organization cannot yield expected practical results unless and until they have the response and support in the political will of Member States. I trust that mankind will succeed in halting and reversing the course towards the precipice."

"I hope the United Nations will ever remain the supreme forum of peace and justice, the authentic seat of freedom."

"How many people outside China are aware of the responsible way China acts internationally? Take the UN for example. According to the respected journalist Fareed Zakaria, writing in this month’s Foreign Affairs, “Beijing is now the second-largest funder of the UN and UN peacekeepers. It has deployed 2,500 peacekeepers, more than all the other permanent members of the Security Council combined. Between 2000 and 2008 it supported 182 of 190 Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on nations deemed to have violated international rules or norms”. This is a very different China than the one projected by many Western politicians and journalists. Usually, China is reported as being an impediment at the Security Council, using its veto fast and furiously."

"The [United Nations] has been and is weak in moments and places when strength was and is needed. Several of its resolutions remain just on paper. Signs of serious ideological bias multiply. Its upheld notion of human rights is so undefined to let tyrants free to roam. Its upheld notion of human dignity is so vague to allow nasty abuses. It ignores many people, at the extent that a counterpoint organization, the Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization (UNPO), was conceived in the late 1980s by exiled leaders of people living under communist oppression to be formally established in Brussels, Belgium, in 1991. Totalitarian regimes are condoned by the UN, even permitted to paralyze its security council through their veto powers. In one word, the main institution in the world promoting tolerance often tolerates evil."

"Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just one step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down."

"Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, ‘It can’t be done.’"

"The world of the future is in our making. Tomorrow is now."

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

"It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it."

"The UN is our greatest hope for future peace. Alone we cannot keep the peace of the world, but in cooperation with others we have to achieve this much longed-for security.”"

"We have been determined . . . to so organize the peace-loving nations that they may through unity of desire, unity of will, and unity of strength be in position to assure that no other would-be aggressor or conqueror shall even get started. That is why from the very beginning of the war, and paralleling our military plans, we have begun to lay the foundations for the general organization for the maintenance of peace and security."

"The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation...it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.""

"We pay tribute to the soldiers and fliers and seamen of others of the United Nations whose countries have been overrun by Axis hordes. As a result of the Allied occupation of North Africa, powerful units of the French Army and Navy are going into action. They are in action with the United Nations forces. We welcome them as allies and as friends. They join with those Frenchmen who, since the dark days of June, 1940, have been fighting valiantly... We pay tribute to the fighting leaders of our allies, to Winston Churchill, to Joseph Stalin, and to the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Yes, there is a very great unanimity between the leaders of the United Nations... I cannot tell you when or where the United Nations are going to strike next in Europe. But we are going to strike--and strike hard. I cannot tell you whether we are going to hit them in Norway... through Poland--or at several points simultaneously. But I can tell you that no matter where and when we strike by land, we and the British and the Russians will hit them from the air heavily and relentlessly... Hitler and Mussolini will understand now the enormity of their miscalculations--that the Nazis would always have the advantage of superior air power...That superiority has gone--forever. Yes, the Nazis and the Fascists have asked for it--and they are going to get it."

"The idea that the UN system could provide real leadership on the great development challenges will strain credulity in some quarters."

"So, yes, we have a global food system, but we need a different system. That different system must be based on the principle of universal human dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the principle of national sovereignty in the UN Charter, and the economic rights in the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. In the Universal Declaration, all governments agreed that social protection is a human right, not merely a “nice thing,” or a pleasant thing, but a basic human right. That was 73 years ago. The Sustainable Development Goals are our generation’s pledge to honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights..."

"We need the United Nations as the core and central institution of our world. The only way we’re going to have a peaceful, civilized world is through a strong UN. It’s absurd that the UN core budget is a mere $3 billion per year, when New York City’s budget is around $100 billion. We chronically underfund the UN system and then ask, “Why don’t things work well?”"

"It was a question of: “All right, what now?” And I didn’t really have an idea... I talked with lawyers that were introduced to me by the journalists — human rights lawyers — and tried to plan my next stage....I talked to the United Nations. And ultimately, the United Nations came back and went..."...the U.S. has enormous sway in our organization. They pay an enormous amount of our budget. And the U.S. gets what the U.S. wants. We probably can’t help you...”"

"The United Nations, the whole international community, every free man in the world recognizes our right to fight. Allah, himself, may his name be praised, requires it. Why do we wait?"

"As far as I've ever heard, the U. N. hasn’t meant anything to anyone for years, except an idealistic, sappy idea that got taken over by Third Worlders and went broke."

"Protocol, alcohol, and Geritol."

"What is the United Nations, even? What, are you just a support system for a diverse and pleasing food court? What are you?!"

"Our support of European recovery is in full accord with our support of the United Nations. The success of the United Nations depends upon the independent strength of its members and their determination and ability to adhere to the ideals and principles embodied in the Charter."

"The principles and the purposes expressed in the Charter of the United Nations continue to represent our hope for the eventual establishment of the rule of law in international affairs. The Charter constitutes the basic expression of the code of international ethics to which this country is dedicated."

"The United Nations provides, or should provide, the means by which all nations, great and small, participate on a basis of sovereign equality in the political process of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, in facing common problems through co-operation, and in planning and organizing for a better future. The improvement of great Power relations through bilateral diplomacy is certainly of fundamental importance to this process, but past experience indicates that it needs to be complemented and balanced by the multilateral diplomacy of the global Organization as a safeguard against misunderstandings, as a safety valve in critical times and as an instrument for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Despite its obvious shortcomings and despite the current popular tendency in some parts of the world to downgrade the United Nations, the Organization still remains the best long-term basis on which the international community as a whole can opt for survival, justice and progress with the participation of all nations. In the long run there is no substitute for such an instrumentality. The problem is how to make it work in the political realities of today."

"You must not expect the United Nations to accomplish miracles. We are made up of sovereign nations. We can only accomplish what our member nations allow us to accomplish."

"I am convinced that the United Nations provides the best road to the future for those who have confidence in our capacity to shape our own fate on this planet."

"Beijing is now the second-largest funder of the UN and UN peacekeepers. It has deployed 2,500 peacekeepers, more than all the other permanent members of the Security Council combined. Between 2000 and 2008 it supported 182 of 190 Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on nations deemed to have violated international rules or norms."

"I believe the United Nations has been gradually weakened since the end of the Cold War, despite the fact that important initiatives have been passed recently. In 1954, UN officials realized that the world needed to share its resources better, and that it was unfair that some countries were so poor and others so wealthy. Back then, the first most important programme was created: the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Suddenly, the international community realized that sharing was the key. And what’s the best course of action for sharing? Development. Then came a long debate over how to develop all countries to the same level, and whether political, educational and cultural developments were necessary for economic development. This is what we now call ‘integral development’. But then another notion emerged which is even more important: ‘endogenous development’, helping countries to help themselves. This is ‘capacity building’, but at present we are not doing this at all; if we were, every rich country would give 0.7 per cent of its GDP [Gross Domestic Product]. A third big step in the field of development came with the notion of ‘sustainability’. Gro Harlem Brundtland was the first to say that development is useless if we exhaust natural resources. Therefore, every resource we use must be replenished in equal proportion. It goes without saying that we are not taking any of these three basic and commonsense steps in development. We are not bringing about development with a human face..."

"The time has come to replace groups of plutocrats (created by President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher that have proved to be totally useless) by a strong United Nations, endowed with the personal, technical and financial resources that would enable it to fulfill its noble mission (of ensuring international security; guaranteeing democratic principles; freedom of expression and access to accurate information; of coordinated action to reduce the impact of natural and man-made catastrophes; protecting the environment; providing appropriately applied guidelines for social and economic development)... p. 4 & 5"

"International trusts operate with absolute impunity, due to the United Nations not being strong enough to impose the authority that could benefit each and everyone, the oil tankers from different countries –who nonetheless sail under the same two or three ―flags – continue to pollute the sea, and the lawbreakers –such as the ones who traffic in weapons, drugs and human beings and who seek shelter in tax heavens to escape from their responsibilities– cannot be either arrested or taken before the courts. p. 11"

"News of important events that might make us reflect and adopt our own decisions and attitudes (and this is precisely what education is all about) are concealed, distorted or otherwise disguised. The meetings of the G8 (a group of plutocrats who attempt to govern the world) fill pages upon pages, while proposals for reform made by the United Nations as a whole or by its financial institutions (managed by the President of the General Assembly with the participation of Nobel Prize Laureates in Economics) receive only a few paragraphs. The same may be said of worldwide meetings such as the recent UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education (not even a line!) or with respect to the topic that for me (and for that reason I reiterate this) constitutes our greatest problem of conscience: the extreme poverty and hunger, which, in a horrendous genocide, results in the death of 60,000 persons daily, while we invest over 2500 million euros in useless weapons. p. 13/14"

"Can The World Be Fixed? 1) If democracy is consolidated and political leaders take the reins instead of bowing to pressure from financial institutions, and replace our present speculation-based economy with a knowledge-based economy. 2) If investment in weapons and military spending is reduced and more money is devoted to global sustainable development, significantly increasing the number of people who benefit from progress. 3) If tax havens are decisively closed down and alternative financing measures are put into place, such as fees for electronic transactions. 4) If, for once and for all, the plutocratic G-7, G-8, G-20... factions imposed by the ―globalizers" are dissolved and the United Nations is reinforced and endowed with the means for fulfilling its worldwide security missions, enforcing international law, including the World Trade Organization and ensuring that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund carry out the goals for which they were founded, with rapid deployment of UN Blue Helmets, rather than remaining as passive witnesses to genocide and massive human rights violations... 5) If it is decided overnight that drugs are worthless and are made universally available at reasonable prices, as is the case with alcohol and tobacco. This ―legalization would be accompanied, as warranted, by a campaign in the communications media, educational institutions, etc. to discourage drug use and [encourage] clinical treatment to cure addiction. 6) If citizens the world over, aware of the power of distance participation, cease to be resigned ―receivers and turn to action. The world can be fixed. p. 21."

"The United Nations have been reduced to an international humanitarian agency and an institutional refuge of convenience, conferring real power to groups of the world’s wealthiest nations (G6, G-7, G-8.... G-20). Since the 1980s when values (social justice, equity, solidarity …) were replaced by the rules of the market and the ―democracy that the UN represented was replaced by plutocracy, it became clear that inequalities would increase, production would be outsourced, tax havens would overflow instead of being shut down once and for all, supranational trafficking (drugs, arms, people) would go unpunished, financial transactions would remain unregulated… p. 23/24."

"How much do you think it costs to go to college? Most people are likely to answer by adding together their expenditures on tuition, room and board, books, and the like, and then deducting any scholarship funds they may receive. Suppose that amount comes to $15,000. Economists keep score differently. They first want to know how much you would be earning if you were not attending college. Suppose that salary is $20,000 per year. This may seem irrelevant, but because you give up these earnings by attending college, they must be added to your tuition bill. You have that much less income because of your education. On the other side of the ledger, economists would not count all of the university’s bill for room and board as part of the costs of your education. They would want to know how much more it costs you to live at school rather than at home. Economists would count only these extra costs as an educational expense because you would have incurred these costs whether or not you attend college. On balance, college is probably costing you much more than you think. And, as we will see later, taking opportunity cost into account in any personal planning will help you to make more rational decisions."

"Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired."

"Because people face trade-offs, making decisions requires comparing the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action. In many cases, however, the cost of an action is not as obvious as it might first appear. […] The opportunity cost of an item is what you give up to get that item. When making any decision, decision makers should be aware of the opportunity costs that accompany each possible action. In fact, they usually are. College athletes who can earn millions if they drop out of school and play professional sports are well aware that their opportunity cost of college is very high. It is not surprising that they often decide that the benefit of a college education is not worth the cost."

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

"If the economy is producing efficiently, scarcity values must be equal to opportunity costs, and their common value is the efficiency price... An economy is efficient, as opposed to just production efficient, if it is impossible to make anyone better off without making someone else worse off. In addition to producing efficiently, the final consumers must have exhausted all possibilities of mutually beneficial exchange. This in turn requires they all face the same market prices and that these are equal to efficiency prices...The case for removing distortions and moving market prices closer to efficiency prices rests on the argument that prices influence production efficiency and the reform will increase production efficiency."

"Economists teach that the market is the fundamental social phenomenon, and its culmination is money. Anthropologists teach that culture is the fundamental social phenomenon, and its culmination is the sacred. Such is the confrontation—man the producer of consumption goods vs. man the producer of culture, the maximizing animal vs. the reverent one."

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

"Economists are tellers of stories and makers of poems."

"If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn't go and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, "What would I do if I were a horse?""

"I am a capitalist, and after a 30-year career in capitalism... I'm not just in the top one percent, I'm in the top .01 percent of all earners. Today, I have come to share the secrets of our success, because rich capitalists like me have never been richer... How do we manage to grab an ever-increasing share of the economic pie every year? ... here's the dirty secret. There was a time in which the economics profession worked in the public interest, but in the neoliberal era, today, they work only for big corporations and billionaires... We could choose to enact economic policies that raise taxes on the rich, regulate powerful corporations or raise wages for workers... But neoliberal economists would warn that all of these policies would be a terrible mistake, because raising taxes always kills economic growth, and any form of government regulation is inefficient, and raising wages always kills jobs. Well, as a consequence of that thinking, over the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world. And yet, as middle class families struggle to get by on wages that have not budged in about 40 years, neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization."

"The old economics is correct, of course, that competition plays a crucial role in how markets work, but what it fails to see is that it is largely a competition between highly cooperative groups -- competition between firms, competition between networks of firms, competition between nations -- and anyone who has ever run a successful business knows that building a cooperative team by including the talents of everyone is almost always a better strategy than just a bunch of selfish jerks. So how do we leave neoliberalism behind and build a more sustainable, more prosperous and more equitable society? The new economics suggests just five rules of thumb. First is that successful economies are not jungles, they're gardens, which is to say that markets, like gardens, must be tended, that the market is the greatest social technology ever invented for solving human problems, but unconstrained by social norms or democratic regulation, markets inevitably create more problems than they solve. Climate change, the great financial crisis of 2008 are two easy examples."

"Inclusion creates economic growth. So the neoliberal idea that inclusion is this fancy luxury to be afforded if and when we have growth is both wrong and backwards. The economy is people. Including more people in more ways is what causes economic growth in market economies...The third principle is the purpose of the corporation is not merely to enrich shareholders. The greatest grift in contemporary economic life is the neoliberal idea that the only purpose of the corporation and the only responsibility of executives is to enrich themselves and shareholders. The new economics must and can insist that the purpose of the corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders: customers, workers, community and shareholders alike. *Greed is not good. Being rapacious doesn't make you a capitalist, it makes you a sociopath. And in an economy as dependent upon cooperation at scale as ours, sociopathy is as bad for business as it is for society.... Neoliberal economic theory has sold itself to you as unchangeable natural law, when in fact it's social norms and constructed narratives based on pseudoscience. If we truly want a more equitable, more prosperous and more sustainable economy, if we want high-functioning democracies and civil society, we must have a new economics."

"You cannot successfully use your technical knowledge unless you are a fairly educated person, and, in particular, have some knowledge of the whole field of the social sciences as well as some knowledge of history and philosophy. Of course real competence in some particular field comes first. Unless you really know your economics or whatever your special field is, you will be simply a fraud. But if you know economics and nothing else, you will be a bane to mankind, good, perhaps, for writing articles for other economists to read, but for nothing else."

"It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. But the basic reason for this ought not to be mysterious. The reason is that the demagogues and bad economists are presenting half-truths. They are speaking only of the immediate effect of a proposed policy or its effect upon a single group. As far as they go they may often be right. In these cases the answer consists in showing that the proposed policy would also have longer and less desirable effects, or that it could benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The answer consists in supplementing and correcting the half-truth with the other half. But to consider all the chief effects of a proposed course on everybody often requires a long, complicated, and dull chain of reasoning. Most of the audience finds this chain of reasoning difficult to follow and soon becomes bored and inattentive. The bad economists rationalize this intellectual debility and laziness by assuring the audience that it need not even attempt to follow the reasoning or judge it on its merits because it is only “classicism” or “laissez-faire,” or “capitalist apologetics” or whatever other term of abuse may happen to strike them as effective."

"The whole notion of the free market, laissez-faire capitalism, globalization is a very thin rationale for unmitigated greed by a tiny oligarchic elite. And they have made sure that that ideology is taught in universities across the country. And people, especially economists, who deviate from that ideology have been pushed aside, and become pariahs. And yet the driving ethos of that ideology is really to justify the hoarding of immense amounts of wealth by a very tiny percentage of the upper ruling class."

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

"Good economists are scarce because the gift for using "vigilant observation" to choose good models, although it does not require a highly specialised intellectual technique, appears to be a very rare one."

"Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources. In most societies, resources are allocated not by an all-powerful dictator but through the combined actions of millions of households and firms. Economists therefore study how people make decisions: how much they work, what they buy, how much they save, and how they invest their savings. Economists also study how people interact with one another. For instance, they examine how the multitude of buyers and sellers of a good together determine the price at which the good is sold and the quantity that is sold. Finally, economists analyze forces and trends that affect the economy as a whole, including the growth in average income, the fraction of the population that cannot find work, and the rate at which prices are rising."

"In bourgeois economics - and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds — this complete working-out of the human content appears as a complete emptying- out, this universal objectification as total alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end."

"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

"Economists have never allowed their analysis to be influenced by psychologists of their time, but have always framed for themselves such assumptions about psychical processes as they have thought it desirable to make."

"Economics is not simply a topic on which to express opinions or vent emotions. It is a systematic study of what happens when you do specific things in specific ways. In economic analysis, the methods used by a Marxist economist like Oskar Lange did not differ in any fundamental way from the methods used by a conservative economist like Milton Friedman."

"This is really odd that economists are expected to predict the future, because no on expect other people in other disciplines to predict the future. Nobody says to the biologists: What is the next stage in evolution? If you can't expect the next stage in evolution... well I guess biology just isn't a science and, that no one should listen to you. Nobody says to the political scientist: Well... you know, who is going to win the next election? If you can't tell me now, then I guess, you know, political science does not mean anything. But somehow economics takes this burden, that people in economics are supposed to be able to forecast the future."

"Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it. Psychological tests have shown that economics majors are more egoistic than the average college student. Exposure in class after class to the capitalist self-interest model apparently kills off whatever prosocial tendencies these students have to begin with. They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them."

"[E]conomics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. But if resources aren't scarce then how can we study the allocation of something that doesn't exist? Of course, you might think that most economists are only discussing angels on pinheads anyway. And if we're honest about it all economists would insist that at least one current major theory is nothing more than that. But in the entire absence of scarce resources, economics would be even more like that. Akin to asking whether those angels could waltz or jitterbug upon their pinhead."

"Too many people have taken the incels’ explanation of their own virulent misogyny at face value, and repeated the comfortable line that these men stand apart from all others. Along with influential columnists, even economists have endorsed the idea of “sexual marketplace”, wherein women are figured as a commodity, and some men have inadequate buying power to procure. (Most have been too polite to mention many incels’ accompanying belief that the world, and women, are so corrupted that sex is beneath them.)"

"Bernard: I don't think Sir Humphrey understands economics, Prime Minister; he did read Classics, you know. Jim Hacker: What about Sir Frank? He's head of the Treasury! Bernard: Well I'm afraid he's at an even greater disadvantage in understanding economics: he's an economist."

"JPS doesn't publicize its costs or charges. Its chargemaster, which lists prices for thousands of different services, is public information for anyone requesting it. But chargemasters are written in codes that are hard to understand. And it wouldn't provide a comparison of prices of another hospital."

"Chargemasters contain laughably high prices that hospital administrators don’t even try to justify. (They don’t seem to know how they were set to begin with, and argue that they’re misleading because insurance companies always negotiate lower ones.) Yet people without insurance, or with too little insurance, often end up paying chargemaster prices."

"To put it simply, the chargemaster system on which hospitals rely to set pricing and billing codes has a forty-year history of changes that has distorted the relationship between price and cost."

"However, I quickly found that although every hospital has a chargemaster, officials treat it as if it were an eccentric uncle living in the attic. Whenever I asked, they deflected all conversation away from it. They even argued that it is irrelevant. I soon found that they have good reason to hope that outsiders pay no attention to the chargemaster or the process that produces it. For there seems to be no process, no rationale, behind the core document that is the basis for hundreds of billions of dollars in health care bills."

"The higher the chargemaster markup over cost, the greater the potential for profit."

"Handing consumers hospital chargemasters to help them 'shop' for the best deal is about as useful as handing them a scalpel and telling them to perform their own bypass surgery. Yet, the state of California in 2003 enacted a law requiring all hospitals to make their chargemasters publicly available."

"Do you have any idea how much your hospital laboratory charges for an outpatient urinalysis? I didn't until recently, when my daughter showed me a copy of the bill my hospital was sending to her insurer. The charge for urinalysis, culture, and sensitivities was $491. When I ordered a follow-up a week later, it was $273. How could that be? This inquiry about one urine test is symbolic. There are 20,000 items in the hospital's Chargemaster computer billing program. This massive list comprises the healthcare problem in America. In light of this, I decided to spend time as an amateur economist. The first question I asked: Where is the hospital lee schedule published? Not on the hospital website."

"California is a unique state in that all hospitals are required to submit a copy of their chargemasters, which the state then posts online for all consumers and patients to see."

"It has been common for hospitals to raise their chargemaster rates substantially each year in an effort to win higher reimbursement rates from health insurers. But the practice falls hard on uninsured patients, because most hospitals give no more than a 20-percent discount to the uninsured."

"What a hospital is actually paid by an MCO, Medicare, or Medicaid is rarely even close to what is listed on the chargemaster. In fact, only the uninsured are subject to those charges."

"Of particular importance, other than in Maryland, hospitals are generally free to charge whatever they want in their chargemaster."

"Hospitals use a chargemaster to list the items involved in procedures performed at the hospital. A chargemaster contains the prices of all services, goods, and procedures for which a separate charge exists and is used to generate a patient's bill. Chargemaster information has traditionally been kept proprietary, but California via the Payers Bill of Rights has recently made its chargemaster available to the public."

"In addition to patients without insurance, hospitals also charged international visitors and patients with health plans through insurers that haven't negotiated hospital discounts approximately two and a half times the price offered to health insurers with discounts, the report estimates. These inflated bills base their prices on a hospital's chargemaster file, an undiscounted master list of the prices hospitals set for services."

"Several hospitals have made initial, defensible pricing investments to eliminate the most egregious perceived offenses--e.g., the $100 aspirin--item from their chargemasters. However, few hospitals have designed or adopted a charge-code-by-charge-code pricing methodology that is auditable, logical, and defensible."

"There are no current measures in ObamaCare that will help Medicare and the private market gain better transparency on the "chargemaster" of hospitals and until this happens, there are many hospital executives who will continue to bring in enormous salaries at the expense of the market and consumers."

"Much ink has been spilt bemoaning that incomprehensible foundation of hospital cost accounting and prices, the redoubtable chargemaster."

"The Sisneros suit is a counterclaim to a civil case filed by ENMMC against him, for failure to pay a $12,730 hospital bill for treatment. The counterclaim accuses the hospital of inflating its chargemaster rates, or the standard costs for any given procedure, in an effort to engage in 'turbocharging'."

"Hospitals readily admit that chargemaster prices are inflated. That's because they are the starting point for negotiating the discounts given to private insurance plans in return for the volume of patients they send to a hospital. Those bloated chargemaster prices, however, are the numbers used to bill uninsured patients - many of whom will struggle to pay those bills and will get nasty collection letters if they don't."

"Perhaps worst of all, billed charges can be perceived as shocking, or even punitive, to the uninsured. As hospitals increasingly raised their charges and set prices by negotiating discounts from their chargemasters, those with the least bargaining power received the smallest discounts. An unfortunate consequence of this system is that self-payers, including the uninsured, were usually forced to accept the charges that hospitals stipulated. This created, probably inadvertently, a rather pernicious outcome in which patients who had the least ability to pay for their health care were charged the highest prices. This has resulted in considerable problems for some patients with very high health care personal debt, aggressive efforts at collection, and avoidance of needed services."

"[] Staff views it as inappropriate for a hospital to seek payment from a patient by sending a bill, (and) when payment is not received, to seek to recharacterize that debt as charity care. In addition, staff has found that the decision by some hospitals to include bad debt which often consists of very high charges from the (chargemaster list) provides a misleading and inflated accounting of a hospital 's charity care to policymakers and the public."

"These gross prices are listed on spreadsheets called chargemasters, and are typically used as a starting point in negotiations over fees in much the same way the sticker price of a car is the initial bargaining point at an auto dealership. The chargemaster prices are typically negotiated downward to reasonable reimbursement rates for private insurers and public programs such as Medi-Cal and Medicare, according to the suit. Not so for uninsured patients of Sutter hospitals , who are billed the full sticker price, which can be 80 percent higher than the industry standard, according to the suit."

"Bills that include chargemaster prices are not a true reflection of actual price and if paid at the chargemaster list price would yield extremely large profits for the hospital. (50) It can be argued that because hospitals accept different payments from different payers for identical services, hospitals engage in price discrimination--the practice of charging different customers different prices for identical goods or services."

"In the 1920s, the flourishing automobile industry brought prosperity to Detroit, Michigan. With the 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, car sales collapsed, and production plummeted. The depression forced General Motors and other car companies to lay off many of their workers in Detroit. On March 7, 1932, a march of unemployed autoworkers was met with violence when four workers were shot to death by the local police and security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. The Ford Hunger March, as the demonstration became known, contributed to the creation of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) labor union. Four years later, the UAW staged a strike that began in December 1936. Some 100,000 autoworkers simply sat down on the job and occupied 17 General Motors plants. “Sit Down,” written by attorney Maurice Sugar, became an anthem of the strikers. After f44 days, the strike ended in a victory for UAW, thanks in part to a labor-friendly governor, Frank Murphy, who used the National Guard as a peacekeeping force that assisted negotiations. The UAW gained union recognition from General Motors and a promise the company would not fire or otherwise punish the strikers. Workers also received a wage increase of five cents an hour. Maurice Sugar went on to serve as general counsel of the UAW from 1937 to 1946."

"This paper examines the economic impact of the 1979 labor strike against lettuce producer-shippers in the Imperial Valley of California. The theory presented suggests that formidable problems are encountered by agricultural labor unions in obtaining higher wages for farm workers. During the 1979 strike, ironically the returns to many of the lettuce producers in the Imperial Valley increased substantially."

"We shall Strike. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking, bread and justice. Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve, we want a new social order. We are poor, we are humble, and our only choices is to Strike in those ranchers where we are not treated with the respect we deserve as working men, where our rights as free and sovereign men are not recognized. We do not want the paternalism of the rancher; we do not want the contractor; we do not want charity at the price of our dignity. We want to be equal with all the working men in the nation; we want just wage, better working conditions, a decent future for our children. To those who oppose us, be they ranchers, police, politicians, or speculators, we say that we are going to continue fighting until we die, or we win. We shall overcome."

"There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time."

"Government employee unions have vastly more power than do private-sector unions because the entities they work for are mostly monopolies. When the employees of a grocery store, for example, go on strike and shut down the store or grocery chain, consumers can shop elsewhere, and the grocery store management is perfectly free to hire replacement workers. In contrast, when a city teachers’ or garbage truck drivers union goes on strike, there is no school or garbage collection as long as the strike goes on. is gives the government union enormous bargaining power as elected officials must then deal with the rabid complaints of voters about the absence of schools or garbage collection and are pressured to quickly give in to the union’s demands. In addition, government school teachers often are tenured after only two or three years and civil service regulations make it extremely costly, if not impossible, to hire replacement workers. Thus, when government bureaucrats go on strike they have the ability to completely shut down the entire “industry” that they work in indefinitely. This is the primary reason why the expenses of state and local governments have skyrocketed in recent decades."

"Although recourse must always be had first to a sincere dialogue between the parties, a strike, nevertheless, can remain even in present-day circumstances a necessary, though ultimate, aid for the defense of the workers' own rights and the fulfillment of their just desires."

"The Teamsters union said it has secured pay raises for United Parcel Service workers, averting what would have been one of the largest strikes in U.S. history. "UPS has put $30 billion in new money on the table as a direct result of these negotiations," Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien said in a statement. "This contract sets a new standard in the labor movement and raises the bar for all workers." Under the tentative five-year agreement, existing full and part-time UPS Teamsters will earn $2.75 more per hour in 2023, and $7.50 more per hour over the length of the contract. Wages for existing part-timers will also be raised to no less than $21 per hour, effective immediately, according to a Teamsters statement."

"New part-time hires at UPS will start at $21 per hour and advance to $23 per hour. The current five-year collective bargaining agreement expires July 31. It is the largest private-sector contract in North America, covering roughly 340,000 UPS workers. Local Teamsters chapters had been holding practice pickets in recent weeks in preparation for a strike if the company and the union failed to negotiate a new contract by the end of the month. Union members from across the country still need to ratify the new contract in August. Contract negotiations stalled in early July over wages for part-time workers, who make up more than half of the unionized workforce at UPS. The union initially rejected UPS' economic proposal, arguing the company can afford to increase pay for its part-time employees. UPS posted a record profit last year, as the company reached $100 billion in revenue in 2022 for the first time. "Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers," said UPS CEO Carol Tomé in a statement on Tuesday. "This agreement continues to reward UPS's full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive, serve our customers and keep our business strong.""

"The contract talks, which began in April, had previously yielded significant wins for the union on issues related to wages and workplace safety. UPS agreed to equip new delivery vehicles with air conditioning, end forced overtime and eliminate a two-tier pay system for delivery drivers, among other concessions. But wages and benefits for part-time workers remained an unresolved sticking point for weeks, until just days before a possible strike. The last nationwide walkout at UPS, in 1997, lasted 15 days and cost the company $850 million. A strike this year would have disrupted package deliveries for millions of customers across the U.S. It could have cost the U.S. economy more than $7 billion, according to economic estimates. UPS' main competitors – including FedEx, Amazon and the United States Postal Service – would not have been able to take on all the volume left behind during a UPS strike. UPS delivered an average of 24.3 million packages per day in 2022.Earlier in July, UPS started to train its management employees to step in during the strike – a move that a Teamsters spokesperson called an "insult" to unionized workers. The threat of a UPS strike came as thousands of workers across sectors, from Hollywood to the hospitality industry, have walked off the job in recent weeks over wages and work conditions."

"Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against preparedness that means death and misery to millions of human beings. Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction. Be heroes in an army of construction."

"When I was leaving Poland at the end of 1968 (I had not been in any Western country for at least six previous years), I had as somewhat vague idea of what the radical student movement and different leftist groups or parties might be. What I saw and read I found pathetic and disgusting in nearly all (still: not all) cases. I do not shed tears for a few windows smashed in demonstrations, that old bitch, consumer capitalism, will survive it. Neither do I find scandalous the rather natural ignorance of young people. What impressed me was mental degradation of a kind I had never seen before in any leftist movement. I saw young people trying to "reconstitute" universities and to liberate them from horrifying, savage, monstrous, fascist oppression. The list of demands, with variations, was very similar all over the world of campuses. These fascist pigs of the Establishment want us to pass examinations while we are making the revolution; let them give all of us A grades without examinations; curiously enough, the anti-fascist warriors wanted to get their degrees and diplomas in such fields as mathematics, sociology or law, and not in such as carrying posters, distributing leaflets or destroying offices. And sometimes they got what they wanted, the fascist pigs of the establishment gave them grades without examinations. Very often there were demands for abolishing altogether some subjects of teaching as irrelevant, e.g. foreign languages (these fascists want us, internationalist revolutionaries, to waste time in learning languages, why? To prevent us from making world revolution!) In one place revolutionary philosophers went on strike because they got a reading list including Plato, Descartes and other bourgeois idiots, instead of relevant great philosophers like Che Guevara and Mao."

"A former rector of San Marcos, the oldest university of the Americas, declared to me more than ten years ago that he had resigned his exalted office because either the students or the professors were on strike. Regular teaching had become well-nigh impossible."

"Across the United States, we are seeing workers walk off the job in wildcat strikes in response to the employers’ failure either to shut down the workplace or to make it safe. The strikes are too few to call them a strike wave, but we should be aware that on their own initiative workers are taking what practically is the most powerful action they can: withdrawing their labour. The strikes are taking place in both the private and , in both unionised and non-union s large and small."

"What is most extraordinary about these actions is that union officials have not called them. In some cases, there is no union. In other cases, such as auto, there is a union and workers are forced to strike against it as well as the company. In certain cases, such as the Bath shipyard, it seems that union officials may have tacitly supported the workers’ walkouts, though the situation is unclear. Sometimes these unofficial strikes violate a union’s contractual non-strike provisions or in the case of public employees such s may also violate the law. Yet workers have organised themselves to carry them out with few resources beyond social media and traditional word-of-mouth, in order to protect their health and to save their jobs."

"Wildcat strikes can be looked upon from two sides. The wildcat strike usually erupts either because there is no union or the union’s leaders have failed to provide leadership to fight the boss. Leftists have sometimes romanticised the wildcat as the authentic expression of the workers’ will, an act that developed spontaneously out of the workers’ resistance to the boss. Some see it as the harbinger of the general strike that will overthrow capitalism and bring the workers to power. At the same time, one has to recognise that workers had to go on a wildcat strike because they hadn’t taken control of their union and couldn’t use the union as the expression of their power. The wildcat is both an expression of workers’ direct power at the point of production, but also a demonstration of their failure – because of the power of the bosses and the labour bureaucracy – to build a democratically controlled union that could express their will."

"When workers recognise this, at least in a period of social upheaval, they have in the past sometimes attempted to take power in their unions and turn them into fighting organisations. Wildcat strikes then can become the source of energy that fuels rank-and-file movements, as has been the case in heavy industry for more than a century and among public employees for 75 years. The great advance of American workers in the 1930s that led to the founding of the and a vast expansion of the derived from just such wildcat strikes in the rubber plants, the auto industry, among electrical workers and many others. Workers walked out by the thousands, some occupied their plants, while others created mass picket lines, fought scabs and police. Wildcat strikes spread during the Depression decade like a virus through the United States, drawing in small industrial shops and retail workers. A similar thing happened in the 1960s and 1970s with teachers and public employees who walked out in illegal strikes to found their unions. Rank-and-file upheavals also transformed the in the 1970s and shook up other unions as well."

"Calvin Coolidge, when Governor of Massachusetts, refused to allow a police strike in 1919, the one President Wilson criticized is was an act of great courage, since it could have led to public disorder and chaos. Voters agreed and Coolidge was propelled into the vice presidency and then the presidency in 1923 President Ronald Reagan also fired the federal air traffic controllers in 1981, when they illegally went on strike But these were rare exceptions As the decades passed, fewer and fewer public officials dared to stand up to labor and to government labor in particular"

"I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world."

"Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less."

"Although the union leadership may recognize early in negotiations that the firm cannot or will not meet the workers' demands, the rank and file of the union often do not understand the impracticability of their position until after the workers have struck and the firm fails to surrender."

"Imagine that General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler jointly agreed to raise the price of the cars they sold by $2,000: Their profits would rise as every American who bought a car paid more. Some Americans would no longer be able to afford a car at the higher price, so the automakers would manufacture and sell fewer vehicles. Then they would need--and hire--fewer workers. The Detroit automakers' stock prices would rise, but the overall economy would suffer. That is why federal anti-trust laws prohibit cartels and the automakers cannot collude to raise prices. Now consider how the United Auto Workers (UAW)--the union representing the autoworkers in Detroit--functions. Before the current downturn, the UAW routinely went on strike unless the Detroit automakers paid what they demanded-- until recently, $70 an hour in wages and benefits. Gold-plated UAW health benefits for retirees and active workers added $1,200 to the cost of each vehicle that GM produced in 2007. Other benefits, such as full retirement after 30 years of employment and the recently eliminated JOBS bank (which paid workers for not working), added more. Some of these costs come out of profits, and some get passed to consumers through higher prices. UAW members earn higher wages, but every American who buys a car pays more, stock owners' wealth falls, and some Americans can no longer afford to buy a new car. The automakers also hire fewer workers because they now make and sell fewer cars."

"Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution."

"When they tie the hands of the union man—sit down, sit down When they give ’em a pact they’ll take them back—sit down, sit down"

"When they smile and say, “No raise in pay!”—sit down, sit down When you want the boss to come across—sit down, sit down"

"When your feet are numb just twiddle your thumb—sit down, sit down When you want ’em to know they’d better go slow—sit down, sit down"

"When the boss won’t talk go and take a walk—sit down, sit down When the boss see that he’ll want a little chat—sit down, sit down"

"Sit down, just keep your seat Sit down and rest your feet Sit down, you got ’em beat Sit down, sit down!"

"If we are rewarded according to our need, not according to our work, how do you get people to work at all -- they would get their income without work if the need it without work? Further, how would one get people to work where they are needed, rather than where they want to if their income is independent of their work and of the demand for it and depends only on their need? Compulsion would have to replace the inducements of the market which now attract people to the occupations in which they are needed and to the employers who can use them. Only slave labor can be rewarded according to need-as seen by the slave holder, of course. And slave labor is not efficient. Therefore the Soviet Union has now returned to an incentive system which differs from ours only by being much steeper and leading to greater inequalities. If a demonstration was needed, the recent events in Poland certainly furnish it. In that socialist country the workers went on strike against the management of the socialized industries. What more is needed to make it clear that the classless society Marx imagined in which everyone wouldshare the same interest is a dream that cannot be realized, contrary to what he thought, by socializing the means of production?"

"At the end of my second year at Hampton, by the help of some money sent me by my mother and brother John, supplemented by a small gift from one of the teachers at Hampton, I was enabled to return to my home in Malden, West Virginia, to spend my vacation. When I reached home I found that the salt-furnaces were not running, and that the coal-mine was not being operated on account of the miners being out on a “strike.” This was something which, it seemed, usually occurred whenever the men got two or three months ahead in their savings. During the strike, of course, they spent all that they had saved, and would often return to work in debt at the same wages, or would move to another mine at considerable expense. In either case, my observations convinced me that the miners were worse off at the end of a strike. Before the days of strikes in that section of the country, I knew miners who had considerable money in the bank, but as soon as the professional labor agitators got control, the savings of even the more thrifty ones began disappearing."

"When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results."

"There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job."

"Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability... which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals. This crippling of individuals social consciousness, I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career."

"Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals."

"Unemployment is viewed as one of the more stressful of life events that an adult can experience. Job loss leads to decreased social status, disrupts family and social roles, produces financial strain, and loss of self esteem, all of which have detrimental consequences for mental health."

"In this paper we examine whether unemployment has a differential impact on the expression of psychological distress among men and women. Based on the traditional centrality of the work role to men and the family role to women, we defined several key domains that might affect unemployed men and women differentially: family circumstances, concerns and worries about children and family; coping responses; social support and social integration; and the centrality of the work role. While the study population either were or hoped to be in the labor force and had dependent children, they varied in their marital status and whether they were the custodial parent. Using data collected in Baltimore from those who had been unemployed but had returned to work, those who had remained continuously unemployed for a year, and those who had been continuously employed, we compared the patterns of men's and women's reactions to unemployment. The important differences in psychological symptoms in this population were related to employment status, problems with parenting, financial difficulties, perceived lack of social support, hostility, and feelings about unemployment. By and large, the patterns of these relationships were similar for men and women. These findings suggest that when gender differences in psychological distress are found they may be due to differences in role configurations of men and women rather than intrinsic gender differences."

"[Capitalism] requires a certain level of unemployment to function. If there were enough work to go round, no worker would worry about losing their job, and all workers could demand higher wages and better conditions. The ever-present spectre of unemployment, on the other hand, enables employers to dictate conditions. Equally, in times of severe crisis this ‘reserve army’ of unemployed people can be called into employment as and when the economy requires it. This system of deliberate unemployment needs ways to mark who will work and who will be left unemployed. In our society this is principally achieved through race, class, gender and disability."

"It was the phenomenon of industrial unemployment that shocked contemporaries most. 'Next to war,' remarked The Times in an editorial ten years after the nadir of the downturn, 'unemployment has been the most widespread, the most insidious, and the most corroding malady of our generation: it is the specific social disease of Western civilisation in our time.' As a percentage of the civilian labour force, unemployment in the United States rose from 3.2 per cent on the eve of the Depression to a peak of 25 per cent in 1933. It remained above 15 per cent for the remainder of the decade. In Germany, which used a somewhat different definition, unemployment exceeded 50 per cent of trade union members in 1932."

"In 1970 Clarke addressed a conference based on the futuristic theme of life in the year 2000, and he envisioned a society of full unemployment: The world is heading toward “full unemployment,” Clarke said, as 99 per cent of the current human activity will be eliminated through machines, the “slaves of tomorrow.”"

"The sources of mass unemployment in the are multiple and often cited: a high birthrate, widespread corruption, a large shadow economy, and instability; but in addition, Marina Liptshits says, there is another: Moscow benefits from this situation and isn’t doing anything to change it."

"But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams; and, in those Manchesters and Birminghams, hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test."

"The more education, the less unemployment of women; this relationship is as strong as it is in the male labor force. The channel through which this relation arises is also the same, namely, labor turnover, almost half of which involves unemployment. However, the relation between education and turnover is mediated largely by educational differences in on-the-job training among men, while educational differences in labor force attachment are the main source of turnover differences among women. This is because levels of educational differences in on-the-job (in-house) training are small among women, while nonparticipation in the labor market and educational differences in it are quite small among men. Educational differences in the duration of unemployment are negligible among women, though they are observable, if small, among men. Recent growth in women's work attachment has reduced their inter-labor force turnover and their unemployment rate to the point of eliminating the sex differential. On-the-job training of women appears to have increased, though it still remains skimpy"

"When alone, I have never known what it is to feel weary, even when I am entirely unemployed; my imagination fills up every void, and is alone sufficient to occupy me. It is only the idle gossip of a room, when people sit opposite each other, moving nothing but their tongues, that I have never been able to endure. When walking or moving, I can put up with it; the feet and eyes are at least employed; but, to remain with folded arms, talking about the weather and the flies buzzing round, or, what is worse, exchanging compliments, that is to me unendurable torture."

"Throughout the Keynesian and post-Keynesian era, the inexorable laws of economics have not changed. Unemployment still is, and always has been, a cost phenomenon. A worker whose employ ment adds valuable output and is profitable to his employer can always find a job. A worker whose employment inflicts losses is destined to be unemployed. As long as the earth is no paradise, there is an infinite amount of work to be done. But if a worker produces only $2 per hour, while the government decrees a minimum wage of $2.30 an hour plus sizable fringe costs, he cannot be employed. For a businessman to hire him would mean capital loss and waste. In other words, any compulsion, be it by government or union, to raise labor costs above those determined by the marginal productivity of labor, creates institutional unemployment."

"If one machine can cut necessary human labor by half, why make half of the workforce redundant, rather than employing the same number for half the time? This would be possible if the gains from automation were not mostly seized by the rich and powerful, but were distributed fairly instead."

"We advocate a Universal Basic Income , received by all citizens on an unconditional basis: that is, detached from the labor market. This offers a choice between work and leisure. To offer such a choice is both a fruit of an affluent society and a solution to the problem of technological unemployment."

"If we do not find a way to provide a basic income for people who have no work, or no meaningful work, we’re going to have social unrest that could get people killed."

"America has lost more than 12 million jobs in the last six months. An estimated 12 million people have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance during the worst pandemic in a century. Tens of millions report not having enough to eat. But one month ago, tens of millions of unemployed Americans lost... a $600 weekly federal unemployment insurance benefit that Congress failed to renew... How can this happen in a democracy? This is a question that everyone who works for a living... might want to consider on this Labor Day... If the facts of this political disaster were more widely known and understood, Republicans could lose not only the presidency but also the Senate in November. After all, millions of unemployed Republicans lost most of their income as a result of what their political party...did... Republican senators repeatedly expressed worries that the unemployment benefits created a "disincentive to work." But economists have found no evidence of this; on the contrary, millions of workers who were receiving these benefits returned to work in May through July, and there are more than 11 million more workers and there are more than 11 million more workers unemployed than there are job openings."

"The horror of unemployment is the final undoing of the worker. When he sees this confronting him he sells himself regardless of the intrinsic worth of his ability. Labor unions and collective bargaining arose to give him some show of power and dignity."

"The primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity"

"... The first law of capital allocation – whether the money is slated for acquisitions or share repurchases – is that what is smart at one price is dumb at another. (One CEO who always stresses the price/value factor in repurchase decisions is Jamie Dimon at J.P. Morgan; I recommend that you read his annual letter.)"

"The introduction of linotype machinery, the octuple press, the folding machine, color processes, wireless reporting, news photography and photogravure, press associations such as the AP and the UP, telegraph and cable services, special features, syndicated columns, and Sunday supplements, the rising costs of reporting, labor, and transportation, all added enormously to the cost of acquiring and operating a newspaper. In Greeley's day, and Bennett's, it was possible to start a newspaper without capital, and as late as 1878 twenty-year-old Adolph S. Ochs took over the Chattanooga Times for 250 dollars, and Joseph Pulitzer the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a few thousand. Forty years later Munsey paid four million for Bennett's Herald and Scripps a reported six million for the Pittsburgh Press, while by 1930 it cost Cyrus H. K. Curtis eighteen million to acquire the old Philadelphia Inquirer."

"To have a great capital is not so necessary as to know how to manage a small one, and never to be without a little."

"Capital is money, but money as a process, which reproduces and increases its value. Capital arises only when the owner of the means of production finds workers on the market as sellers of their own labor power."

"As we have repeatedly seen over the last decade, capital frequently seizes moments of crisis as a moment of opportunity — a chance to implement radical change that was previously blocked or appeared impossible."

"Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism."

"Capital consists of money, goods and resources that are invested in production. Wealth, on the other hand, is buried in the ground or wasted on unproductive activities."

"The geographical movement of money and commodities as capital is not the same as the movements of products and of precious metals. Capital is, after all, money used in a certain way, and is by no means identical with all money uses."

"When times are good, capital can extract huge profits from labor with little risk. For instance, after the last economic crisis, the (thanks in large part to government bailouts) not only managed to recover all of its losses by 2013, it then proceeded to almost double its value in the seven years that followed — an average rate of growth equal to about 14 percent per year. By contrast, average hourly wages for working people, which rose less than three percent per year for most of that same period, recovered much more slowly, and many workers actually saw their wages fall or remain flat when adjusted for inflation. When times are bad, however, in moments of crisis, when profits are low, or when there is little or no demand — such as we are seeing in many industries today — corporations and companies can protect themselves and their by simply letting workers go. Workers, on the other hand usually must continue to pay for food, rent, healthcare, and basic utilities in order to survive. As a consequence, while capital can often weather the storm of such economic crises, they can severely weaken the power of the working class by creating what Marx called a vast . And since unemployment insurance compensations are rarely available to all and always only for a short period of time, workers — whether laid off or only threatened with the prospect of layoffs—will eventually be pressured to work much harder for less wages. And this is precisely why the future of worker’s power depends on how we respond to this crisis now. While capitalists and their paid politicians will scoff at these demands, claiming they are economically infeasible or impossible, this is because they only understand the language of profit and cannot imagine a world run for the benefit of all. Nonetheless, the fact remains that capital has significant resources that could and must be made available to all working people."

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

"In general it may be said that demand is quite as necessary to the increase of capital as the increase of capital is to demand."

"If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists."

"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

"Capital is money: Capital is commodities. In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs. Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be established. And this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, between the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money."

"Capital is money, capital is commodities. … By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs."

"Kapital ist tote Arbeit, die, vampirgleich, nur durch das Einsaugen lebendiger Arbeit lebt und die um so mehr lebt, je mehr lebendige Arbeit sie einsaugt."

"Capitals accumulate faster than population."

"Capitalism is the condition of possessing capital; the position of a capitalist; a system which favours the existence of capitalists."

"The produce of the earth - all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and capital, is divided among three classes of the community, namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated."

"Population regulates itself by the funds which are to employ it, and therefore always increases or diminishes with the increase or the diminution of capital. Every reduction of capital is therefore necessarily followed by a less effective demand for corn, by a fall in price, and by diminished cultivation."

"Capital seeks domination. It grows and spreads and seeks to get hold of everything in sight. The exploitation of Africa gave European monopoly capital full opportunities to indulge in its tendencies for expansion and domination."

"People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist."

"With artists and virtuosi of every kind, … what they earn should become their capital, whereas they recklessly regard it as mere interest and thus end in ruin. On the other hand, those who possess inherited wealth at least know at once and quite correctly what is capital and what is interest."

"His capital is continually going from him in one shape, and returning to him in another, and it is only by means of such circulation, or successive exchanges, that it can yield him any profit. Such capitals, therefore, may very properly be called circulating capitals."

"No can yield any revenue but by means of a ."

"It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it."

"Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor."

""Interactive Decision Theory" would perhaps be a more descriptive name for the discipline usually called Game Theory"

"There are quite a number of novel developments intended to meet the needs of a general theory of systems. We may enumerate them in brief survey:"

"# Cybernetics, based upon the principle of feedback or circular causal trains providing mechanisms for goal-seeking and self-controlling behavior."

"# Information theory, introducing the concept of information as a quantity measurable by an expression isomorphic to negative entropy in physics, and developing the principles of its transmission."

"# Game theory, analyzing in a novel mathematical framework, rational competition between two or more antagonists for maximum gain and minimum loss."

"# , similarly analyzing rational choices, within human organizations, based upon examination of a given situation and its possible outcomes."

"# or relational mathematics, including non-metrical fields such as network and graph theory."

"# Factor analysis, i.e., isolation by way of mathematical analysis, of factors in multivariable phenomena in psychology and other fields"

"# General system theory in the narrower sense (G.S.T.), trying to derive from a general definition of “system” as complex of interacting components, concepts characteristic of organized wholes such as interaction, sum, mechanization, centralization, competition, finality, etc., and to apply them to concrete phenomena."

"Game theory is the study of individual decision-making in the face of competing boundedly rational actors."

"An equilibrium is not always an optimum; it might not even be good. This may be the most important discovery of game theory."

"A proven theorem of game theory states that every game with complete information possesses a saddle point and therefore a solution."

"Like all of mathematics, game theory is a tautology whose conclusions are true because they are contained in the premises."

"That strategic rivalry in a long-term relationship may differ from that of a one-shot game is by now quite a familiar idea. Repeated play allows players to respond to each other’s actions, and so each player must consider the reactions of his opponents in making his decision. The fear of retaliation may thus lead to outcomes that otherwise would not occur. The most dramatic expression of this phenomenon is the celebrated "Folk Theorem." An outcome that Pareto dominates the point is called individually rational. The Folk Theorem asserts that any individually rational outcome can arise as a in infinitely repeated games with sufficiently little discounting."

"By the end of the war the new game theoretic methods that had been developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern were added to the toolkit and mathematical techniques that operations research scientists deployed. These proved very valuable, and game theoretic approaches took on great importance after the war."

"Game theory is about how people cooperate as much as how they compete... Game theory is about the emergence, transformation, diffusion and stabilization of forms of behavior."

"Game theory is logically demanding, but on a practical level, it requires surprisingly few mathematical techniques. Algebra, calculus, and basic probability theory suffice. ...the stress placed on game-theoretic rigor in recent years is misplaced. Theorists could worry more about the empirical relevance of their models and take less solace in mathematical elegance. ...[I]f a proposition is proved for a model with a finite number of agents, it is... irrelevant whether it is true for an ifinite number... There are... only a finite number of people, or even bacteria. Similarly, if something is true in games in which payoffs are finitely divisible... it does not matter whether it is true when payoffs are infinitely divisible. There are no payoffs in the universe... infinitely divisible. Even time... continuous in principle, can be measured only by devices with a finite number of s. Of course, models based on the real and complex numbers can be hugely useful, but they are just approximations... There is... no intrinsic value of a theorem that is true for a continuum of agents on a , if it is also true for a finite number of agents of a finite choice space."

"Direct application of the theory of games to the solution of real problems has been rare, and its chief uses have been to offer some insight and understanding into the problems of competition (without actually solving them), and to provide mathematicians with new fields to conquer. Many important real problems involve more than two opponents, are not zero-sum, and exceed the bounds of the most developed versions of game theory."

"Chapter 2 describes the most demanding rational choice theory of all, game theory, which was developed by a genius and assumes that other people are geniuses."

"Game theory can be defined as the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers."

"Game theory, however, deals only with the way in which ultrasmart, all knowing people should behave in competitive situations, and has little to say to Mr. X as he confronts the morass of his problem."

"At present game theory has, in my opinion, two important uses, neither of them related to games nor to conflict directly. First, game theory stimulates us to think about conflict in a novel way. Second, game theory leads to some genuine impasses, that is, to situations where its axiomatic base is shown to be insufficient for dealing even theoretically with certain types of conflict situations... Thus, the impact is made on our thinking process themselves, rather than on the actual content of our knowledge."

"(Game theory is) essentially a structural theory. It uncovers the logical structure of a great variety of conflict situations and describes this structure in mathematical terms. Sometimes the logical structure of a conflict situation admits rational decisions; sometimes it does not."

"[G]ame theory has already established itself as an essential tool in the , where it is widely regarded as a unifying language for investigating human behavior. Game theory's prominence in evolutionary biology builds a natural bridge between the life sciences and the behavioral sciences. And connections have been established between game theory and the two most prominent pillars of physics: and quantum theory. ...[M]any physicists, neuroscientists, and social scientists... are... pursuing the dream of a quantitative science of human behavior. Game theory is showing signs of... an increasing important role in that endeavor. It's a story of exploration along the shoreline separating the continent of knowledge from an ocean of ignorance... a story worth telling."

"The last decade has seen a steady increase in the application of concepts from the theory of games to the study of evolution. Fields as diverse as sex ratio theory, animal distribution, contest behaviour and have contributed to what is now emerging as a universal way of thinking about phenotypic evolution... Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed"

"The theory of games was first formalised by Von Neumann & Morgenstern (1953) in reference to human economic behaviour. Since that time, the theory has undergone extensive development... Sensibly enough, a central assumption of classical game theory is that the players will behave rationally, and according to some criterion of self-interest. Such an assumption would clearly be out of place in an evolutionary context. Instead, the criterion of rationality is replaced by that of and stability, and the criterion of self-interest by Darwinian fitness."

"Mathematics is what we want to keep for ourselves. When playing games, we stick to the rules (or we are changing the game...), but when doing serious mathematics (not executing algorithms) we make up the rules—definitions, axioms... even logics. ...[I]n arithmetic we find s... a whole new 'game'... [T]o identify mathematics with games would be one of those part-for-whole mistakes (like 'all geometry is projective geometry' or 'arithmetic is just logic' from the nineteenth century)... [M]y separation of game analysis from playing games tells in favour of the analogy of mathematics to analysis of games played by other... agents, and against the analogy of mathematics to the expert play of the game itself."

"One should remember that mathematical logic itself or the study of mathematics as a formal system can be considered a branch of combinatorial analysis. Metamathematics introduces a class of games—"solitaires"—to be played with symbols according to formal rules. One sense of Gödel's theorem is that some properties of these games can be ascertained only by playing them."

"The cybernetics phase of cognitive science produced an amazing array of concrete results, in addition to its long-term (often underground) influence:"

"Game theory brings to the chaos-theory table the idea that generally, societies are not designed, and that most situations don’t come with a rulebook. Instead, people have their own plans and designs on how things should fit together. They want to determine how the game is played, and they see societal designers as myopic busybodies who would imprison them with their theories."

"The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others."

"With the euro, that form of pressure has gone."

"Our Union is more than an association of states. It is a new legal order, which is not based on the balance of power between nations but on the free consent of states to share sovereignty. From pooling coal and steel, to abolishing internal borders, from six countries to soon twenty-eight with Croatia joining the family this has been a remarkable European journey which is leading us to an “ever closer Union”. And today one of the most visible symbols of our unity is in everyone’s hands. It is the Euro, the currency of our European Union. We will stand by it."

"The most likely scenario is that EMU (Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union) will occur but will neither end Europe’s currency troubles nor solve its prosperity problems."

"Once Italy is in, with an appreciated currency, the country will soon be back on the ropes, just as in 1992, when the currency came under attack."

"The most serious criticism of EMU is that by abandoning exchange rate adjustments it transfers to the labor market the task of adjusting for competitiveness and relative prices... losses in output and employment (and pressure on the European central bank to inflate) will predominate."

"Italians dream that the ECB (European Central Bank) will make their life easier than the Bundesbank does now... The new central bank is certain to establish itself at the outset as a direct continuation of the German central bank."

"If there was ever a bad idea, EMU it is."

"Instead of increasing intra-European harmony and global peace, the shift to EMU and the political integration that would follow it would be more likely to lead to increased conflicts within Europe."

"Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war."

"What is clear is that a French aspiration for equality and a German expectation of hegemony are not consistent."

"A critical feature of the EU(European Union) in general and EMU in particular is that there is no legitimate way for a member to withdraw... The American experience with the secession of the South may contain some lessons about the danger of a treaty or constitution that has no exits."

"When the Monetary Union was founded in 1992, it was a common understanding among economists that a monetary union of states of very different economic strength could function only if either economic policy was communalized as well or the strong states were willing to pay for the debts of the weaker states. Politicians ignored this warning. The financial crisis showed that the economic experts were right. The Monetary Union deprives the states of a number of fiscal instruments such as revaluation or devaluation of the currency. This contributed to the crisis."

"The fundamental problem of European monetary union lies in its incompleteness or lopsidedness. There was a much better preparation for the monetary side of monetary union than for the fiscal concomitants that should have underpinned its stability (and prevented the threat of large-scale monetisation of fiscal debt burdens). No adequate provision on a European basis existed for banking supervision and regulation, which, like fiscal policy, was left to diverse national authorities."

"The eurozone’s significance was more than symbolic. It implied the gradual synchronization of its members’ economies, including monetary policy, national investment and transfers between rich and poor regions. For northern Europe the euro bound Germany into ever closer union. For Spain, Italy and Greece, it was a double-edged sword. It signified merger with Europe’s most sophisticated economies, but also economic adjustments for which these countries were by no means ready. Britain had joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism, but dropped out with the pound under extreme pressure on ‘black Wednesday’ in 1992. The Major government declined to join the euro. It also ‘opted out’ of Maastricht’s ‘Social Chapter’, which covered areas such as employment rights."

"Europe’s political stability, social cohesion, economic prosperity and security are more threatened today than at any point since the Cold War, Russia is destabilizing the Continent on every front. Indigenous factors – whether long-extant nationalism, design flaws in the Eurozone, lack of a common foreign policy, or incapability at assimilating immigrants – certainly lie at the root of these crises."

"The euro is bad for Europe. The euro is bad for the Netherlands, it’s especially bad because it is a stimulus for politicians to kill the Welfare State. I look forward to a European economy using multiple currencies. In the end that will be much better: it will make us more resistant to shocks and makes us less vulnerable to what is happening now."

"What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of Third World countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

"EMU wasn't designed to make everyone happy. It was designed to keep Germany happy - to provide the kind of stern anti-inflationary discipline that everyone knew Germany had always wanted and would always want in future."

"The clear and present danger is, instead, that Europe will turn Japanese: that it will slip inexorably into deflation, that by the time the central bankers finally decide to loosen up it will be too late."

"By trying to move prematurely to monetary union, we would run very serious risks. The dangers of forcing the pace have been amply demonstrated in Germany. Karl Otto Pohl, the director of the Bundesbank, has described Germany's experience as "a drastic object lesson" of the need for prior convergence before establishing a currency union. Reunification there has meant the rapid merger of two very different economies. The short-term consequences are a huge rise in the German budget deficit and rising unemployment in eastern Germany, but for the rest of the Community their experience is salutary. It shows the strains and tensions set up by moving to currency union before there is proper economic convergence. In the case of Germany one strong currency and one strong economy effectively took over those of a weaker neighbour. How much greater would those strains and tensions be if 12 very different states with different economies were now to adopt a single currency?"

"In a monetary union with irreversibly fixed exchange rates the weak would become ever weaker and the strong ever stronger. We would thus experience great tensions in the real economy of Europe. For this reason alone, monetary union without the simultaneous integration in fields like fiscal policy as well as regional and social policy is completely inconceivable... In order to create a European currency, the governments and parliaments of Europe would have to be prepared to transfer sovereign rights to a supranational institution."

"The idea that the euro has "failed" is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor – and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it – predicted and planned for it to do."

"ECB [European Central Bank] President Mario Draghi’s famous promise to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the eurozone was a masterly move to buy time. But monetary policy cannot solve the currency union’s problems."

"Moving to a full monetary union in Europe is like putting the cart before the horse. A major shock would result in unbearable pressure within the Union because of limited labour mobility, inadequate fiscal redistribution, and a ECB (European Central Bank) that will probably want to keep monetary conditions tight in order to make the euro as strong as the dollar. This is surely the prescription for major future problems."

"While it is legitimacy that gives a board the authority to impose its will on management, it is credibility that makes a board effective and value creating."

"Like all fads, corporate governance has its zealots."

"Corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. The aim is to align as nearly as possible the interests of individuals, corporations and society."

"We have to change the mindset of our corporate leaders and, obviously, we have to raise the level of corporate governance."

"Freeman is the acknowledged father of the stakeholder approach. His Strategic Management: a Stakeholder Approach (1984) introduced the concept of stakeholders, all of those individuals or groups other than shareholders (or owners) who have a stake in the particular decision or action of companies. The book proved to be a landmark in the development of stakeholder theory, a theory of management and business ethics that emphasises morality and ethicality in managing organisations. This theory was a departure from the dominant Anglo-Saxon approach that grants priority to shareholders and independence of management. Nowadays, the stakeholder approach is mentioned in virtually every publication on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. By interacting with their stakeholders and societal context, organisations are able to establish their (social) responsibility system, enforced in part through laws and regulations but also increasingly voluntarily through company codes and business principles. The stakeholder theory is applied within various scientific disciplines ranging from business to law, from politics to health."

"Berle and Means’ book remains the point of departure and the central reference for reflection about corporate governance. It has given rise to differing, even contradictory interpretations, which explains how it could be used in support of opposing theories, notably on the question of the relationship between shareholders and managers. Thus, it has been used to argue in favor of the shareholder conception that is now dominant, even though it contains, as we shall see, a conception of the corporation that is radically different to the contractualist view that underpins the current doctrine of shareholder primacy."

"But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary."

"It makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all."

"Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety."

"It is not a question of trying to reproduce objective features, only of good practice for the fingers and for the perceptive faculty, and that too is very useful. You must have read how Van Gogh was always getting his brother to send him drawings to copy. And how Rembrandt used to copy Indian an Italian pictures. Not of course, because they were short of material, but to get 'du corps'. So one should be always drawing... ...Oh, you’d love the Indians. The pure, Aryan Indians, not those one could see in Berlin, whose forms had become rigid and sterile through mingling with the Chinese."

"That portion of the earth's surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more. Its vast extent and its variety of climate and productions are of advantage in this age for one people, whatever they might have been in former ages. Steam, telegraphs, and intelligence have brought these to be an advantageous combination for one united people."

"The productive apparatus and the which it produces “sell” or impose the social system as a whole. The means of mass transportation and communication, the commodities of lodging, food, and clothing, the irresistible output of the industry and carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a which is immune against its falsehood. And as these beneficial products become available to more individuals in more social classes, the indoctrination they carry ceases to be publicity; it becomes a way of life. It is a good way of life—much better than before—and as a good way of life, it militates against change. Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe. They are redefined by the rationality of the given system and of its quantitative extension."

"Capitalism [is] a system of wage-labour and commodity production for sale, exchange, and profit, rather than for the immediate need of the producers."

"The product of mental labor — science — always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production."

"A country’s wealth comes not from taxes but from production."

"Corporations are necessary to the effective use of the forces of production and commerce under modern conditions."

"Part of the goods which are annually produced, and which are called wealth, is, strictly speaking, waste, because it consists of articles which ... either should not have been produced until other articles had already been produced in sufficient abundance, or should not have been produced at all. And some part of the population is employed in making goods which no man can make with happiness, or indeed without loss of self-respect, because he knows that they had much better not be made; and that his life is wasted in making them."

"To those who clamor, as many now do, "Produce! Produce!" one simple question may be addressed:—"Produce what?" ...What can be more childish than to urge the necessity that productive power should be increased, if part of the productive power which exists already is misapplied? Is not less production of futilities as important as, indeed a condition of, more production of things of moment? ... Yet this result of inequality ... cannot be prevented, or checked, or even recognized by a society which excludes the idea of purpose from its social arrangements and industrial activity."

"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."

"Production systems which are technologically the most advanced are also the least adaptable and work to the longest time scale of decision making. These are the process industries (chemical plants, oil refineries and so on) in which vast resources are invested in the creation of a closely programmed and tightly controlled process which will continue to perform the same task over a very long period."

"The little jihad is over, and now we have the bigger jihad - the bigger battle is achieving security and economic growth."

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

"The reason it's on the rise is because probably the boom times are getting even more boomer."

"It is the welfare state that has made capitalism, with all its attendant benefits of economic growth, politically feasible."

"There’s no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U.S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse."

"World economies are growing, not shrinking, and emissions will therefore continue to rise. The human population of nearly 8 billion people may soon climb to 10 billion or more. The world’s two most populous nations, China and India, are rapidly modernizing, and creating ever-greater consumer- oriented middle classes, while on a building spree of new power plant construction to meet rising demand. In China, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and every nation where average income levels are rising, meat consumption -- a major contributor to climate change and every major environmental problem -- is increasing as well."

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

"agree that humanity is on the verge of causing a mass extinction and that its primary driver is our immense and rapidly expanding global economy."

"I want to make it clear, if there is ever a conflict (between environmental quality and economic growth), I will go for beauty, clean air, water, and landscape."

"Economists with a historical bent have only just begun to study institutional change and its impact on industrial organization. Douglass C. North has been the innovator here. In his work with he outlined a most useful theory of institutional change and applied it to American economic growth. In his study with Robert Paul Thomas he demonstrated how the changing industrial organization affected the rise of the west. The works of North and his colleagues use this sweeping panorama of history to test, buttress, and refine their theory. They have not yet focused on a detailed analysis of the historical development of any specific economic institution."

"[W]e have crossed a great divide, between what we used to do in all of previous human history and what we do now. Utopia, it is true, this is not. I imagine Bellamy would be at once impressed and disappointed. The economic historian helps explain why. ...With our increasing wealth, what used to be necessities become matters of little concern ...conveniences turn into necessities. Luxuries turn into conveniences. And we humans envision and then create new luxuries. ...He saw humanity on a hedonic treadmill: "...the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is a triumph of material wants over humanity." ...[T]his hedonic treadmill is one powerful reason why, even when all went very well, we only slouched rather than galloped toward utopia."

"Generation after generation thinks it needs only another ten or twenty percent more income to be perfectly happy... In the end, the triumph of economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity."

"This Constitution does not reflect the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of ordinary people. It does nothing for jobs or economic growth and widens further still the democratic deficit. The gap between the governors and the governed is now a gaping chasm."

"As Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani showed how exercising fiscal discipline, including tax cuts, lowers deficits, spurs economic growth, and increases revenue. It is time the rest of the country benefit from a true fiscal conservative leader who gets real results."

"Keynes himself had in his day been known to make some fairly radical noises, for instance, calling for the complete elimination of that class of people who lived off other people's debts—"the euthanasia of the rentier," as he put it—though all he really meant by this was their elimination through a gradual reduction of interest rates. As in much of Keynesianism, this was much less radical than it first appeared. Actually, it was thoroughly in the great tradition of political economy, hearkening back to Adam Smith's ideal of a debtless utopia but especially David Ricardo's condemnation of landlords as parasites, their very existence inimical to economic growth."

"Intensive research in recent years into the sources of economic growth among both developing and developed nations generally point to a number of important factors: the state of knowledge and skill of a population; the degree of control over indigenous natural resources; the quality of a country's legal system, particularly a strong commitment to a rule of law and protection of property rights; and yes, the extent of a country's openness to trade with the rest of the world. For the United States, arguably the most important factor is the type of rule of law under which economic activity takes place. When asked abroad why the United States has become the most prosperous large economy in the world, I respond, with only mild exaggeration, that our forefathers wrote a constitution and set in motion a system of laws that protects individual rights, especially the right to own property. Nonetheless, the degree of state protection is sometimes in dispute. But by and large, secure property rights are almost universally accepted by Americans as a critical pillar of our economy. While the right of property in the abstract is generally uncontested in all societies embracing democratic market capitalism, different degrees of property protection do apparently foster different economic incentives and outcomes."

"When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined."

"The Fabians laid the groundwork for modern social democracy, and their influence on the world would end up being at least as powerful as that of Marx."

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

"The secret to economic growth lay in the fact that that each generation attacked Nature not only with its own energies and resources, but with the heritage of equipment accumulated by its forebears."

"The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation."

"Hypocrisy, double standards, and "but nots" are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle."

"The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. [...] But question it we must. [...] No subsystem of a finite system can grow indefinitely – at least in physical terms. Economists have to be able to answer the question of how a continually growing economic system can fit within a finite ecological system. The only answer available is that growth in dollars must be 'decoupled' from growth in physical throughputs and environmental impacts. But [...] this hasn't so far achieved what's needed. There are no prospects for it doing so in the immediate future. And the sheer scale of decoupling required to meet the limits set out here (and stay within them in perpetuity while the economy keeps on growing) staggers the imagination. In short, we have no alternative but to question growth. The myth of growth has failed us."

"One of the reasons nations fail to address climate change is the belief that we can have infinite economic growth independent of ecosystem sustainability. Extreme weather events, melting arctic ice, and species extinction expose the lie that growth can forever be prioritized over planetary boundaries. It wasn’t always this way. The fairytale of infinite growth—which so many today accept as unquestioned fact—is relatively recent. Economists have only begun to model never-ending growth over the last 75 years. Before that, they had ignored the topic for a century. And before that, they had believed in limits. If more people saw the idea of infinite growth as a departure from the history of economics rather than a timeless law of nature, perhaps they’d be readier to reimagine the links between the environment and the economy."

"Both China and the United States are countries of significant influence in the world. We share important common strategic interests in a wide range of areas, including economic cooperation and trade, security, public health, energy, and environmental protection, and on major international and regional issues. In particular, mutually beneficial and win-win China-U.S. economic cooperation and trade benefit our two peoples and promote the economic growth in the Asia Pacific region and the world at large. Indeed, they have become an important foundation for China-U.S. relations."

"There are many economic puzzles, but there are only two really great mysteries. One of these mysteries is why economic growth takes places at different rates over time and across countries. Nobody really knows why the U.S. economy could generate 3 percent annual productivity growth before 1973 but only 1 percent afterward, nobody really knows why Japan surged from defeat to global economic power after World War II, while Britain slid slowly into third-rate status. At any given time there are always policy entrepreneurs willing to claim that they have all the answers, but we'll come to that story in later chapters."

"The economic illusion is the belief that social justice is bad for economic growth."

"I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them representing possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia's or Egypt's? If so, what exactly? If not, what is it about the "nature of India" that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else."

"The laws of economics are subject to the laws of physics. The physical processes that govern this planet and the continued life upon it place as stringent an upper limit on economic growth as the speed of light does on our knowledge of the universe."

"The important thing to realise: we don’t consider climate change to be a problem — it’s a symptom. When you have physical growth in a finite planet, pressures are going to mount to stop the growth. And climate change is one of those pressures. So it’s a symptom of our efforts to keep promoting physical growth in a finite planet. You know ironically, if we solved climate change, if we could somehow push a magic button and eliminate greenhouse gasses... but continue with our growth, we’ll just have to see bigger pressures in other sectors. Then water scarcity, or epidemics, or warfare or some other pressure will have to become even more powerful, because finally the pressures against growth have to equal the pressures in favour of growth. And only when they’re equal, growth will stop."

"Growth has costs as well as benefits, and we typically don't count the costs – among which are poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, and so on – the whole list of problems that we are trying to solve with growth! What is needed is much slower growth, very different kinds of growth, and in some cases no growth or negative growth. The world's leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they're pushing it with all their might in the wrong direction."

"The ideal situation for any state is to experience sharp economic growth while its rivals' economies grow slowly or hardly at all."

"If we could export more finished products instead of raw materials, we could become a middle-income country."

"We have achieved political freedom but our revolution is not yet complete and is still in progress, for political freedom without the assurance of the right to live and to pursue happiness, which economic progress alone can bring, can never satisfy a people. Therefore, our immediate task is to raise the living standards of our people, to remove all that comes in the way of the economic growth of the nation. We have tackled the major problem of India, as it is today the major problem of Asia, the agrarian problem. Much that was feudal in our system of land tenure is being changed so that the fruits of cultivation should go to the tiller of the soil and that he may be secure in the possession of the land he cultivates. In a country of which agriculture is still the principal industry, this reform is essential not only for the well-being and contentment of the individual but also for the stability of society. One of the main causes of social instability in many parts of the world, more especially in Asia, is agrarian discontent due to the continuance of systems of land tenure which are completely out of place in the modem world. Another — and one which is also true of the greater part of Asia and Africa — is the low standard of living of the masses."

"It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it's an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States. It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades. And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment. The same way the computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate, we've got to understand that this is a national security issue, as well. And that's why we've got to make some investments and I've called for investments in solar, wind, geothermal."

"Our combined endeavour should be to ensure that the rate of economic growth is sustained and it is socially inclusive; We must also ensure that every region of the country participates in and benefits from the process of economic growth."

"We have spoken on many occasions of the need to achieve high economic growth as an absolute priority for our country. The annual address for 2003 set for the first time the goal of doubling gross domestic product within a decade."

"In general dictators have not done better at [economic] policies than democrats—far from it. Most dictators have ravaged their countries for personal gain. Scholars have asked whether democracy helps or hurts the economic growth of poor countries and despite many surveys, have come to no conclusive answer."

"Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive. What we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow."

"It’s usually the top income earners that reap the biggest reward and the average worker may barely notice that GDP increased and those in extreme poverty definitely wouldn’t. Lifting people out of poverty is one of the main reasons that is cited in favour of continued economic growth. In fact, in older data, whilst $2.20 might have ended up in the pockets of those under the then poverty line, in the 1980s, for every $100 added to the global economy, that shrunk to just 60 cents in the 1990s… [and] it is much worse now. All that extra growth required to lift people out of poverty is devastating for the environment."

"Populists rarely mention these positive consequences, nor can they cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic growth and expansion of our political power without them."

"Development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth. It means that an economy must register advances which in turn will promote further progress. The loss of industry and skill in Africa was extremely small, if we measure it from the viewpoint of modern scientific achievements or even by standards of England in the late eighteenth century. However, it must be borne in mind that to be held back at one stage means that it is impossible to go on to a further stage. When a person was forced to leave school after only two years of primary school education, it is no reflection on him that he is academically and intellectually less developed than someone who had the opportunity to be schooled right through to university level. What Africa experienced in the early centuries of trade was precisely a loss of development opportunity, and this is of the greatest importance."

"Understanding how the agricultural revolution transformed human societies was once no more than a question of intellectual curiosity. Now, though, it has taken on a more practical and urgent aspect. Many of the challenges created by the agricultural revolution, such as the problem of scarcity, have largely been solved by technology – yet our preoccupation with hard work and unrestrained economic growth remains undimmed."

"To those who clamor, as many now do, "Produce! Produce!" one simple question may be addressed:—"Produce what?" ... What can be more childish than to urge the necessity that productive power should be increased, if part of the productive power which exists already is misapplied? Is not less production of futilities as important as, indeed a condition of, more production of things of moment? ... Yet this result of inequality ... cannot be prevented, or checked, or even recognized by a society which excludes the idea of purpose from its social arrangements and industrial activity."

"A year ago this time, the third quarter figure for 2012... we were talking about negative growth of more than 3%."

"People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! Fore more than thirty years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away, and come here saying that you are doing enough."

"Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are [not] the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously [known to be] reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles. [But] We are also the greatest destroyer of life since the ten-kilometer-wide meteorite that landed near Yucatan and ended the Age of Reptiles sixty-five million years ago. Through overpopulation we have put ourselves in danger of running out of food and water. So a very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic."

"Today, the grandeur of a country is measured by the extent to which it defends and extends its citizens' rights through its impulse towards total equality, by its capacity to create energy that contributes towards cultural, social and economic growth. That is how a country becomes strong, by making its citizens more powerful."

"Though he died in 1946, Keynes still dominated economics at Cambridge in the mid-1960s. It wasn't just that all the leading figures among the faculty, Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Brian Reddaway, David Champernowne, Nicholas Kaldor, and James Meade, had been his pupils and/or collaborators. It was the tone of the place. The study of economics, theoretical or empirical, was driven by the desire to improve the conduct of economic policy. This did not mean that pure theory was neglected. Indeed, in those years Robinson was fighting a stirring battle in the realms of high theory with Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nor was Cambridge innocent of the cutting edge of econometric technique. Richard Stone, who, following Keynes's suggestions, had created the first modern national income accounts, was still director of the Department of Applied Economics where much of modern econometrics was pioneered. Nonetheless, we were taught that theory and technique should serve the higher cause of rational economic policies, and to use our newly learned econometric expertise to write essays on unemployment, or inflation, or the balance of trade, or some other topic at the top of the current political agenda."

"Intermediate between mathematics, statistics, and economics, we find a new discipline which, for lack of a better name, may be called econometrics. Econometrics has as its aim to subject abstract laws of theoretical political economy or "pure" economics to experimental and numerical verification, and thus to turn pure economics, as far as possible, into a science in the strict sense of the word."

"(Econometrics is) the unification of economic theory, statistics and mathematics."

"What makes a piece of mathematical economics not only mathematics but also economics is, I believe, this: When we set up a system of theoretical relationships and use economic names for the otherwise purely theoretical variables involved, we have in mind some actual experiment, or some design of an experiment, which we could at least imagine arranging, in order to measure those quantities in real economic life that we think might obey the laws imposed on their theoretical namesakes."

"(Kálmán's) fundamental contributions to modern system theory... provided rigorous mathematical tools for engineering, econometrics, and statistics, and in particular for his invention of the "Kalman filter,"… was critical to achieving the Moon landings and creating the Global Positioning System and which has facilitated the use of computers in control and communications technology."

"In mathematical statistics, as well as econometrics, Ted Anderson is a scholar of immense stature. The scope and diversity of his research in statistical theory is almost a phenomenon in itself. Sometimes it seems that wherever one turns the subject, Ted's mark and influence is already firmly established. His books on multivariate analysis and time series rapidly became accepted as major treatises and are now integral parts of the bookshelves of every statistician."

"Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference."

"As an econ blogger, I get the sense that this is exactly how many Americans still think of economists--as self-appointed defenders of the free market, spinning theories to show that greed is good. Watching those old Milton Friedman videos, I wonder if that picture might have been accurate in the 1960s and 1970s. But some big things have changed in the field of economics, and America should know about them. Three big changes stand out in particular: Econ today is more data-driven, far less politically conservative, and in general much more like engineering than it used to be."

"Econometrics is the name for a field of science in which mathematical-economic and mathematical-statistical research are applied in combination. Econometrics, therefore, forms a borderland between two branches of science, with the advantages and disadvantages thereof; advantages, because new combinations are introduced which often open up new perspectives; disadvantages, because the work in this field requires skill in two domains, which either takes up too much time or leads to insufficient training of its students in one of the two respects."

"The possibility of a stable economic life with full utilization of our resources is still not sufficiently assured, and it is extremely important that it should be so assured, and that the whole world should accept this as a fact. The work that is being done in econometrics is massive, and undaunted by mathematical difficulties, but it appears, at any rate as viewed from outside, to be unclear as to its aim."

"The successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, and management."

"Macroeconomics is the branch of economics that deals with the whole economy and the big picture. The behavior of smaller units within the economy including households, firms, and consumers is covered within microeconomics."

"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."

"The dictionary defines "economics" as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." Here is another definition of economics which I think is more helpful in explaining how economics relates to software engineering.Economics is the study of how people make decisions in resource-limited situations.This definition of economics fits the major branches of classical economics very well.Macroeconomics is the study of how people make decisions in resource-limited situations on a national or global scale. It deals with the effects of decisions that national leaders make on such issues as tax rates, interest rates, foreign and trade policy.Microeconomics is the study of how people make decisions in resource-limited situations on a more personal scale. It deals with the decisions that individuals and organizations make on such issues such as how much insurance to buy, which word processor to buy, or what prices to charge for their products or services."

"Inflation is bad for growth—this has become one of the most widely accepted economic nostrums of our age. But see how you feel about it after digesting the following piece of information.During the 1960s and the 1970s, Brazil’s average inflation rate was 42% a year. Despite this, Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world for those two decades—its per capita income grew at 4.5% a year during this period. In contrast, between 1996 and 2005, during which time Brazil embraced the neo-liberal orthodoxy, especially in relation to macroeconomic policy, its inflation rate averaged a much lower 7.1% a year. But during this period, per capita income in Brazil grew at only 1.3% a year.If you are not entirely persuaded by the Brazilian case—understandable, given that hyperinflation went side by side with low growth in the 1980s and the early 1990s—how about this? During its ‘miracle’ years, when its economy was growing at 7% a year in per capita terms, Korea had inflation rates close to 20%-17.4% in the 1960s and 19.8% in the 1970s. These were rates higher than those found in several Latin American countries … Are you still convinced that inflation is incompatible with economic success?."

"Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor."

"Macro-economic policy had accelerated the "expulsion" of landless peasants from the countryside leading to the formation of a nomadic migrant labor force moving from one metropolitan area to another."

"Macro-economic reform undermined the legal economy, reinforced illicit trade and contributed to the recycling of "dirty money" towards Peru's official and commercial creditors."

"So-called macroeconomics has never been real economics but rather an endless series of engineering-type models purporting to guide politicians in centrally planning an economy. In the bizarro world of macroeconomics all capital is the same, and all workers are the same, as one big lump, expressed as 'K' and 'L' in the models. Relative prices and their role in allocating resources in a market economy are mostly ignored, while 'economic aggregates' are said to influence 'the' price level.In macroeconomics it is taken as a given that markets are incapable of allocating resources in an acceptable way; that's why there is supposedly a need for macroeconomic central planning in the first place. No such 'failures' are assumed on the part of the macroeconomic central planners."

"While many of the conflicting claims can be reconciled in terms of the short-run and long-run orientation of Keynesians and monetarists, respectively, and in terms of their contrasting philosophical orientations, neither vision takes into account the workings or failings of the market mechanisms within the investment aggregate.Austrian macroeconomics is set apart from both Keynesianism and monetarism by its attention to the differential effects of interest-rate changes within the investment sector, or—using the Austrian terminology—within the economy's structure of production."

"Accounting for the artificial boom and the consequent bust is not part of Keynesian income-expenditure analysis, nor is it an integral part of monetarist analysis. The absence of any significant relationship between boom and bust is an inevitable result of dealing with the investment sector in aggregate terms. The analytical oversight derives from theoretical formulation in Keynesian analysis and from empirical observation in monetarist analysis. But from an Austrian perspective, the differences in method and substance are outweighed by the common implication of Keynesianism and monetarism, namely, that there is no boom-bust cycle of any macroeconomic significance."

"To take what might seem an "objective", macro-economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities—as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. Or if there is a demand for sugar in England, and enslaving millions is the easiest way to acquire labor to produce it, then it is inevitable that some will enslave them."

"The world probably would have been much better off had macroeconomics never been devised. Although I have in mind Keynesian macroeconomics above all, I include other types of macro models as well. I even include, somewhat reluctantly, the whole quantity theory approach descended from David Hume to the Friedmanites, now known as monetarism."

"Most macroeconomics of the past 30 years was spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst."

"It is likely that many modern economists would have no difficulty accepting Hayek's statement of the problem (of macroeconomics) as roughly equivalent to their own. Whether or not this is so, I wish … to argue that it should be so, or that the most rapid progress toward a coherent and useful aggregate economic theory will result from the acceptance of the problem statement as advanced by Hayek."

"If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist would be John Maynard Keynes. Although Keynes died more than a half-century ago, his diagnosis of recessions and depressions remains the foundation of modern macroeconomics. His insights go a long way toward explaining the challenges we now confront."

"The field of economics is traditionally divided into two broad subfields. Microeconomics is the study of how households and firms make decisions and how they interact in specific markets. Macroeconomics is the study of economy wide phenomena. A microeconomist might study the effects of rent control on housing in New York City, the impact of foreign competition on the U.S. auto industry, or the effects of compulsory school attendance on workers' earnings. A macroeconomist might study the effects of borrowing by the federal government, the changes over time in the economy's rate of unemployment, or alternative policies to promote growth in national living standards. Microeconomics and macroeconomics are closely intertwined. Because changes in the overall economy arise from the decisions of millions of individuals, it is impossible to understand macroeconomic developments without considering the associated microeconomic decisions."

"Professor Ohlin also made an important contribution to what now might be called the macro-economic aspects of a country's balance of payments. In 1929 in the Economic Journal he engaged in a famous controversy with Keynes on the problem of transferring payments from one country to another across the foreign exchanges. In this he laid stress upon the income-expenditure effects of the reduced spending power in the paying country and of the increased spending power in the recipient country. In doing so he made use of the usual distinction between a country's imports and exports; but in addition he emphasised the importance of the less usual distinction between a country's domestic non-tradeable goods and services and its tradeable, exportable and importable, goods. I made some use of this latter distinction in my Balance of Payments; but looking back I regret that I did not let it play a much more central role in that book"

"During the relatively brief period in the late 1960s when economists were pondering the possible obsolescence of business cycles, the scholarly discipline of macroeconomics showed signs of becoming fragmented into speciality areas devoted to components of the then popular large-scale econometric models-for example, consumption, investment, money demand, and the Phillips curve. But more recently the revival of severe real world business cycles, together with the revolutions associated with Milton Friedman's monetarism and Lucas's classical equilibrium models, has brought about a revival of interest in economic analysis that focuses on a few broad aggregates summarizing activity in the economy as a whole-nominal and real income, the inflation rate, and the unemployment rate."

"The basic economic principles involved in discussions of the national economy are not overly complicated but two crucial misconceptions need to be guarded against: (1) the fallacy of composition and (2) assessing economic activity as if it were a zero-sum game, in which what is gained by some is lost by others. There are also sometimes misconceptions of the nature of government, leading to unrealistic demands being made on it and then hasty denunciations of the "stupidity" or "irrationality" of government officials when those demands are not met."

"If we are to grasp the dynamics of this unforecasted storm, we have to move beyond the familiar cognitive frame of macroeconomics that we inherited from the early twentieth century. Forged in the wake of World War I and World War II, the macroeconomic perspective on international economics is organized around nation-states, national productive systems and the trade imbalances they generate. It is a view of the economy that will forever be identified with John Maynard Keynes. Predictably, the onset of the crisis in 2008 evoked memories of the 1930s and triggered calls for a return to “the master.” And Keynesian economics is, indeed, indispensable for grasping the dynamics of collapsing consumption and investment, the surge in unemployment and the options for monetary and fiscal policy after 2009. But when it comes to analyzing the onset of financial crises in an age of deep globalization, the standard macroeconomic approach has its limits. In discussions of international trade it is now commonly accepted that it is no longer national economies that matter. What drives global trade are not the relationships between national economies but multinational corporations coordinating far-flung “value chains.” The same is true for the global business of money. To understand the tensions within the global financial system that exploded in 2008 we have to move beyond Keynesian macroeconomics and its familiar apparatus of national economic statistics. As Hyun Song Shin, chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements and one of the foremost thinkers of the new breed of “macrofinance,” has put it, we need to analyze the global economy not in terms of an “island model” of international economic interaction—national economy to national economy—but through the “interlocking matrix” of corporate balance sheets—bank to bank. As both the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the crisis in the eurozone after 2010 would demonstrate, government deficits and current account imbalances are poor predictors of the force and speed with which modern financial crises can strike. This can be grasped only if we focus on the shocking adjustments that can take place within this interlocking matrix of financial accounts. For all the pressure that classic “macroeconomic imbalances”—in budgets and trade—can exert, a modern global bank run moves far more money far more abruptly."

"A central concern of macroeconomics is the upswings and downswings in the level of real output called the business cycle. The business cycle consists of alternating periods of economic growth and contraction. Business cycles are inherent in market economies."

"If government will not instill discipline, markets will. The dollar will collapse into worthlessness."

"The [pay] policy is principally designed to hold down wages rather than to check inflation. Inflation is being used as an excuse to destroy free trade union bargaining."

"These steps will enhance our productivity — raising wages without raising prices. That won’t increase inflation. It will take the pressure off of inflation, give a boost to our workforce, which leads to lower prices in the years ahead. So, if your primary concern right now is inflation, you should be even more enthusiastic about this plan. And as we promote — as we promote fair competition in our economy through the executive order I mentioned, it will drive down prices even further."

"High rates of inflation create a tax on capital that makes much corporate investment unwise — at least if measured by the criterion of a positive real investment return to owners. This “hurdle rate” — the return on equity that must be achieved by a corporation in order to produce any real return for its individual owners — has increased dramatically in recent years. The average tax-paying investor is now running up a down escalator whose pace has accelerated to the point where his upward progress is nil."

"The big, looming, monetary issue is "quantitative easing": that is, printing money. What happens is that the government borrows from the Bank of England, not from the markets. It expands the money supply to keep the economy going and also to counter deflation without simultaneously increasing government debt. The attractions are obvious, as are the dangers. The Robert Mugabe school of economics provides a salutary warning about uncontrolled monetary expansion in generating hyper-inflation. The road to Harare is not as long as we might hope. Monetary easing may prove to be necessary but will have to be managed with great skill and care: Too little easing and the crisis drags on – as in Japan. If there is too much, the authorities face the messy task of mopping-up liquidity by issuing bonds which add to the burden of borrowing or else we lurch back from deflation to inflation. So interest rates may soon become yesterday's story."

"Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development."

"Inflation is bad for growth—this has become one of the most widely accepted economic nostrums of our age. But see how you feel about it after digesting the following piece of information. During the 1960s and the 1970s, Brazil’s average inflation rate was 42% a year. Despite this, Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world for those two decades—its per capita income grew at 4.5% a year during this period. In contrast, between 1996 and 2005, during which time Brazil embraced the neo-liberal orthodoxy, especially in relation to macroeconomic policy, its inflation rate averaged a much lower 7.1% a year. But during this period, per capita income in Brazil grew at only 1.3% a year. If you are not entirely persuaded by the Brazilian case—understandable, given that hyperinflation went side by side with low growth in the 1980s and the early 1990s—how about this? During its ‘miracle’ years, when its economy was growing at 7% a year in per capita terms, Korea had inflation rates close to 20%-17.4% in the 1960s and 19.8% in the 1970s. These were rates higher than those found in several Latin American countries … Are you still convinced that inflation is incompatible with economic success?"

"Taking a step back, does either political party have a better track record on inflation? The short answer is no, based on my analysis of economic data from 1953 to 2020. From Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower through Donald Trump, inflation has averaged 3.35% under Democratic administrations and 3.5% under Republicans."

"Another way to look at this is to examine the parties’ current or proposed policies. Democrats have touted their “Inflation Reduction Act,” a package of climate, health care and tax measures passed in August, as proof that they are tackling the problem. But despite the name, economists expect it to have very little impact on inflation anytime soon, because most of the measures will take years to go into effect. Republicans, meanwhile, have proposed cutting spending – such as on America’s social safety net – and lowering taxes for wealthier individuals and businesses. While spending cuts could reduce demand – and inflation – the lower taxes would work at cross purposes and drive up prices by pumping more money into the economy."

"Supply chain concerns are growing beyond electronics and chips into most other commodities. Lead times are extending, shipping lanes are slowing, and we will not see an end to this in 2021"

"The end of must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism. This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer."

"At its height, the hyperinflation seemed terrifying. Money lost its meaning almost completely. Printing presses were unable to keep up with the need to produce banknotes of ever more astronomical denominations, and municipalities began to print their own emergency money, using one side of the paper only. Employees collected their wages in shopping baskets and wheelbarrows, so numerous were the banknotes needed to make up their pay packets; and immediately rushed to the shops to buy supplies before the continuing plunge in the value of money put them out of reach."

"The consequences both of the hyperinflation and the way it came to an end were momentous. Yet its long-term effects on the economic situation of Germany's population are hard to measure. It used to be thought that it destroyed the economic prosperity of the middle-class. But the middle class was a very diverse group in economic and financial terms. Anyone who had invested money in war bonds or other loans to the state lost it, but anyone who had borrowed a large sum of money as a mortgage for a house or flat was likely to end up acquiring the property for virtually nothing. Often these two situations were united to one degree or another in the same person. But for those who depended on a fixed income, the results were ruinous. Creditors were embittered. The economic and social cohesion of the middle class was shattered, as winners and losers confronted one another across new social divides. The result was a growing fragmentation of the middle-class political parties in the second half of the 1920s, rendering them helpless in the face of demagogic assaults from the far right. And, crucially, as the deflationary effects of the stabilization began to bite, all social groups felt the pinch. Popular memory conflated the effects of the inflation, the hyperinflation and the stabilization into a single economic catastrophe in which virtually every group in German society was a loser."

"Inflation is elevated, largely reflecting factors that are expected to be transitory. Supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy have contributed to sizable price increases in some sectors"

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. … A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society."

"Tax reduction has an almost irresitible appeal to the politician, and it is no doubt also gratifying to the citizen. It means more dollars in his pocket, dollars that he can spend if inflation doesn't consume them first. But dollars in his pocket won't buy him clean streets or an adequate police force or good schools or clear air and water. Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery."

"Hyperinflation is not going to happen in this country, will never happen... The Fed putting so much money into the system is not going to create the risk of hyperinflation in the future. We have a strong independent Federal Reserve with a very strong mandate from the Congress, and they will do what's necessary to keep inflation low and stable over time."

"We are obviously all hurt by inflation. Everybody is hurt by inflation. If you really wanted to examine who percentage-wise is hurt the most in their incomes, it is the Wall Street brokers. I mean their incomes have gone down the most."

"Globalization was exerting a dis-inflationary impact."

"The well-being of the British people and the health of our economy are far more important than any government's commitment to a particular strategy, but to change course now would be fatal to the whole counter-inflation strategy."

"As taxpayers we gave one of Warren Buffet's companies, in 2006, an interest-free loan of $665 million dollars, and he only has to pay half of it back 28 years from now. ...Imagine ...you bought a house in 1980 at the price in 1980. Up until now [2009] you haven't made any payments on the house, and this year you have to pay half in the... dollars you agreed to back then, no adjustment for inflation. Do you think that alone might make you a wealthy man?"

"As soon as interest is abolished, inflation becomes unnecessary..."

"In the new we abolish interest and inflation, thereby reducing the prices of all goods and services as well as taxes by about 40%."

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

"The acid test of monetary policy is its record in reducing inflation. Those who wish to join the debate about the intricacies of different measures of money and the implications they may have for the future are welcome to do so. But at the end of the day the position is clear and unambiguous. The inflation rate is judge and jury."

"Indeed, let us be frank about it. Most of our people have never had it so good."

"Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money without a corresponding increase in the demand for money, i.e., for cash holdings."

"The value of currency had come down, because Sultan Sikandar had got idols of gold, silver and copper broken and turned into coins."

"In most Western economies, the general relationship is not in fact between the rate of inflation and the level of unemployment, but between the rate of change of inflation and the rate of change of unemployment."

"Once the true relationship between inflation and unemployment is understood, with luck and skill, a free lunch is possible."

"Of course, some responsibility for overstimulating lies with the Federal Reserve, which responded correctly to the onset of the pandemic by cutting interest rates and shoveling money into the financial system. More recently, the Fed has been too slow to curtail its program of buying debt, sending still more money to chase those few goods. And until recently, Fed officials were echoing the White House line about “transitory” inflation. For the Fed, addressing inflation will mean raising interest rates, perhaps sooner than it thinks necessary. The Fed targets average annual inflation of 2 percent. So if or when the pace of price increases gets stuck far above that level, the central bank will need to raise in-terest rates to address the problem. While the Fed thinks this won’t happen until late next year, the bond market believes rates will be hiked by midyear. The responsibility for easing inflationary pressures also lies with the Biden administration. To its credit, it is scrambling to address the supply shortages, doing things like unclogging ports. But other ideas, such as releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, amount to distracting symbolic moves that are unlikely to have a significant effect on inflation."

"Mr. Carter had also promised that he would not use unemployment as a tool to fight against inflation. And yet, his 1980 economic message stated that we would reduce productivity and gross national product and increase unemployment in order to get a handle on inflation, because in January, at the beginning of the year, it was more than 18 percent. Since then, he has blamed to the people for inflation, OPEC, he's blamed the Federal Reserve System, he has blamed the lack of productivity of the American people, he has then accused the people of living too well and that we must share in scarcity, we must sacrifice and get used to doing with less. We don't have inflation because the people are living too well. We have inflation because the Government is living too well."

"A merchant trading with capital has been injured by the depreciation of money, as his capital has not been equal to the same extent of business as before the depreciation; but there are few merchants in this situation:—their capitals, as well as that of tradesmen, are invested in goods, ships, &c. they are rather debtors than creditors to the rest of the community... the prices of their commodities will undergo the same variations as the prices of all others, their comparative value will... be the same... The depreciation of the circulating medium has been more injurious to monied men... It may be laid down as a principle of universal application, that every man is injured or benefited by the variation of the value of the circulating medium in proportion as his property consists of money, or as the fixed demands on him in money exceed those fixed demands which he may have on others. Thus the farmer is injured by any increase in the value of money... whilst he has a fixed money rent, and fixed money taxes to pay. His produce... will sell for less, whilst his taxes and rent continue the same. ...He, more than any other class of the community, is benefited by the depreciation of money, and injured by the increase of its value."

"The real story in the inflation data was the upside in the more cyclical and persistent components like rent. That tells us that there’s an important source of support that is likely to keep the inflation data firm in the months ahead and potentially beyond"

"The natural tendency of the state is inflation."

"But while Republicans insist they will be better stewards of the economy, few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term. Instead, many say some of what Republicans are proposing — including tax cuts for high earners and businesses — could actually make price pressures worse by pumping more money into the economy. “It is unlikely that any of the policies proposed by Republicans would meaningfully reduce inflation in 2023, when rapidly rising prices will still be a major problem for the economy and for consumers,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute."

"“The amount of cuts you’d have to do to move the needle on inflation are completely off the table,” said Jon Lieber, a former aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is now the Eurasia Group’s managing director for the United States."

"Everyone in the world needs money – to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment. You can run out of it. It wears out. It can get lost or stolen. In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world. Many of these countries' governments play fast and loose with their currencies. They use inflation and sometimes wholesale currency devaluations, like we saw in Russia and several Southeast Asian countries last year [referring to the 1998 Russian and 1997 Asian financial crisis], to take wealth away from their citizens. Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars. Eventually PayPal will be able to change this. In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure."

"As in so much else, the French revolutionary regime (1789–94) was the precursor of the centralized, totalitarian, managerial, pseudo-democratic despotisms that now reign over the West. It is also reminder that mass democracy and inflation go together, as surely as thunder and lightning. Let us revisit the Revolution, from a free-market, hard-money perspective."

"Let's turn inflation over to the post office. That'll slow it down."

"You know what's worse than high inflation and low unemployment? It's high inflation and a recession with millions of people out of work. I hope you'll reconsider that, before you drive this economy off a cliff."

"It is our increase in the cost of capital that causes the inflation cycle. We do not labor or manage, and yet we receive the profits. Through our money manipulation, the capital that we supply industry costs us nothing. Through our national bank, the Federal Reserve, we extend book credit which we create from nothing to all local banks who are member banks. They in turn extend book credit to industry. Thus, we do more than God, for all of our wealth is created from nothing. You look shocked! Don't be! It's true, we actually do more than God. With this supposed capital we bring industry, management and labor into our debt, which debt only increases and is never liquidated. ... We are the necessary element since we expend nothing. Management can create its own capital and keep the cream - the profits. Its business would grow and profits increase."

"Ziyauddin's sarcasm is incisive. Occasionally his sardonic humour helps him to sum up his ideas in a few words. His remark that in Alauddin's days "a camel could be had for a dang," but wherefrom the dang?" - shows at once how the reforms of Alauddin had made articles cheap and people poor."

"To every outworn shibboleth of 19th-century economics he clung with fanatic tenacity. Economy, Free Trade, Gold - these were the keynotes of his political philosophy, and deflation the path he trod with almost ghoulish enthusiasm."

"The big, looming, monetary issue is "quantitative easing": that is, printing money. What happens is that the government borrows from the Bank of England, not from the markets. It expands the money supply to keep the economy going and also to counter deflation without simultaneously increasing government debt. The attractions are obvious, as are the dangers. The Robert Mugabe school of economics provides a salutary warning about uncontrolled monetary expansion in generating hyper-inflation. The road to Harare is not as long as we might hope. Monetary easing may prove to be necessary but will have to be managed with great skill and care: Too little easing and the crisis drags on – as in Japan. If there is too much, the authorities face the messy task of mopping-up liquidity by issuing bonds which add to the burden of borrowing or else we lurch back from deflation to inflation. So interest rates may soon become yesterday's story."

"See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation."

"Between August 1921 and August 1929 the Dow Jones Industrial index increased by a factor of 4.4. Other prices, however, had not risen so far. Some were already falling. For those fortunate enough not to be fighting it, the First World War had been a two-fold boon. The temporary diversion of so much European production into the business of destruction had allowed Asian and American producers to expand mightily, but they could not wholly compensate for the disruption caused by the war. It was a global seller's market. At the same time, the inflationary financing of the war, as governments printed money to pay for their deficits, pushed up world prices. The spot price of wheat in the Chicago market - a reasonably good proxy for traded primary commodity prices - hit roughly treble its pre-war average in 1917 and again in 1920. The twin stimuli of dearth and currency depreciation ended thereafter, and a global recession in 1920-21 saw steep declines in the prices of primary products and manufactures. Thereafter, they barely recovered. The price of wheat peaked in February 1925 at 182 cents a bushel (compared with 294 cents in May 1920) and by May 1929 it was down to 102 cents. Similar forces were driving down the world prices of other key commodities like iron and steel. This deflation was the overture to the Great Depression. In the 1920s it meant poverty for farmers, but easy living for those who received the profits of industry and finance."

"Globalization was exerting a dis-inflationary impact."

"You can't push on a string."

"The clear and present danger is, instead, that Europe will turn Japanese: that it will slip inexorably into deflation, that by the time the central bankers finally decide to loosen up it will be too late."

"The declared object of deflation was the restoration of the gold standard at pre-war parity. Its actual effect has been to create unemployment by the restriction of industrial credit. By the lever of unemployment it has forced down wages and has thus facilitated the return to gold through the reduction of prices. An incidental effect has been to transfer purchasing power from the workers, whose wages have been reduced, to the bondholders, whose interest has remained the same. It has also doubled the real burden of Debt since 1920, and was largely responsible for the mining lock-out last year, by the reduction in terms of sterling of the money which we receive for coal sold abroad. Deflation, in fact, has been responsible for a sinister catalogue of disasters which can be substantiated in detailed argument that has never yet been rebutted."

"All that most economists know about Herbert Simon is that he wrote about bounded rationality and organizational behavior."

"The type of rationality we assume in economics — perfect, logical, deductive rationality — is extremely useful in generating solutions to theoretical problems. But it demands much of human behavior — much more in fact than it can usually deliver. If we were to imagine the vast collection of decision problems economic agents might conceivably deal with as a sea or an ocean, with the easier problems on top and more complicated ones at increasing depth, then deductive rationality would describe human behavior accurately only within a few feet of the surface. For example, the game Tic-Tac-Toe is simple, and we can readily find a perfectly rational, minimax solution to it. But we do not find rational “solutions” at the depth of Checkers; and certainly not at the still modest depths of Chess and Go."

"There are two basic ways market organization is brought about... Some combination of the two is usual the case:"

"# Strategic structuring, informal or formal, whereby social agents, including the state, establish a rule regime regulating market access and transactions..."

"# Emergent structuring, whereby participants discover or adopt certain similar strategies within bounded rationality and situations with certain opportunity structures and incentive structures. Social network and ecological properties result in relatively well-defined aggregate performance characteristics..."

"The term “bounded rationality” was coined in the 1950s by Herbert A. Simon."

"Models of bounded rationality describe how a judgement or decision is reached (that is, the heuristic processes or proximal mechanisms) rather than merely the outcome of the decision, and they describe the class of environments in which these heuristics will succeed or fail."

"One is forced to assume that ordinary people have the computational capabilities and statistical software of econometricians."

"Although contributions of many writers have helped the rise of behavioral economics including psychologists Kahneman and Tversky, I regard the works of George Katona and Herbert Simon instrumental in its rise. While the works of Katona and his colleagues at Michigan University led to the use of survey method in economics and its utilization in measuring the impact of consumer expectations on macroeconomic activity, the work of Simon at Carnegie Tech. (a tremendously stimulating intellectual environment for economic theorizing then) resulted in the important theoretical foundations of behavioral economics, such as the concept of bounded rationality."

"Two types of conventions [ in organizational settings] may be distinguished here: (a) conventional rules of behavior demonstrated in the classroom mental experience (first part of the story) and (b) conventional representation of the world revealed in the following discussions with ‘‘experienced” friends (second part)."

"Simon’s conventionalism leads to a decision paradigm, according to which understanding problems of coordination is impossible without taking into consideration individual cognitive limits and social representations of reality."

"Bounded rationality means that people make quite reasonable decisions based on the information they have. But they don't have perfect information, especially about more distant parts of the system. [...] We don't even interpret perfectly the imperfect information that we do have, say behavioral scientists. [...] Which is to say, we don't even make decisions that optimize our own individual good, much less the good of the system as a whole."

"In a fundamental sense, Alchian's theory of economic organizations is different from those of Coase or Simon. He disavows an explicit model of individual choice... and... offers a system-level explanation of organizational emergence, structure, and survival that is largely independent of decision making at the micro level... Yet it is precisely this independence of a distinct model of choice that ultimately renders it compatible with the individualistic theories of both Coase and Simon...."

"Around 1958, I became aware of H.A. Simon's seminal papers on bounded rationality and was immediately convinced by his arguments. I tried to construct a theory of boundedly rational multi-goal decision making. Together with Heinz Sauermann, I worked out an "aspiration adaptation theory of the firm" which was published as a journal article in 1962... More and more I came to the conclusion that purely speculative approaches like that of our paper of 1962 are of limited value. The structure of boundedly rational economic behavior cannot be invented in the armchair, it must be explored experimentally."

"The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world — or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality."

"Broadly stated, the task is to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist."

"… I shall assume that the concept of ‘economic man’(...) is in need of fairly drastic revision, and shall put forth some suggestions as to the direction the revision might take."

"The problem can be approached initially either by inquiring into the properties of the choosing organism, or by inquiring into the environment of choice."

"Both from these scanty data and from an examination of the postulates of the economic models it appears probable that, however adaptive the behavior of organisms in learning and choice situations, this adaptiveness falls far short of the ideal of ‘maximizing’ postulated in economic theory. Evidently, organisms adapt well enough to‘satisfice’; theydo not, in general, ‘optimize’."

"A comparative examination of the models of adaptive behavior employed in psychology (e.g., learning theories), and of the models of rational behavior employed in economics, shows that in almost all respects the latter postulate a much greater complexity in the choice mechanisms, and a much larger capacity in the organism for obtaining information and performing computations, than do the former. Moreover, in the limited range of situations where the predictions of the two theories have been compared (...), the learning theories appear to account for the observed behavior rather better than do the theories of rational behavior."

"The first consequence of the principle of bounded rationality is that the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it. He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behavior is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world. To predict his behavior we must understand the way in which this simplified model is constructed, and its construction will certainly be related to his psychological properties as a perceiving, thinking, and learning animal."

"In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is largely characterized as a residual category — rationality is bounded when it falls short of omniscience. And the failures of omniscience are largely failures of knowing all the alternatives, uncertainty about relevant exogenous events, and inability to calculate consequences. There was needed a more positive and formal characterization of the mechanisms of choice under conditions of bounded rationality... Two concepts are central to the characterization: search and satisficing."

"If (...) we accept the proposition that both the knowledge and the computational power of the decision maker are severely limited, then we must distinguish between the real world and the actor’s perception of it and reasoning about it."

"In the literature of problem solving, the topic I am now taking up is called "problem representation." In the past 30 years, a great deal has been learned about how people solve problems by searching selectively through a problem space defined by a particular problem representation. Much less has been learned about how people acquire a representation for dealing with a new problem—one they haven't previously encountered."

"Information impactedness is a derivative condition that arises mainly because of uncertainty and opportunism, though bounded rationality is involved as well. It exists when true underlying circumstances relevant to the transaction, or related set of transactions, are known to one or more parties but cannot be costlessly discerned by or displayed for others."

"(Archie and Mike are talking about the benefits of the USA)"

"For the logic of Saint-Simon is that the only legitimate social functions are those of production, and those of the scholarship which aids production. It is no accident that this corporatist utopia is today defended by western labour movements, for it exhausts the contemporary utopic vision of citizenship - good citizens are those who either boost Gross National Product or who conduct Wissenschaft as part of that process."

"The concept of man as mass robot was both an expression of and a powerful motive force in industrialized mass society. It was the basis for behavioural engineering in commercial, economic, political and other advertising and propaganda; the expanding economy of the 'affluent society' could not subsist without such manipulation. Only by manipulating humans ever more into Skinnerian rats, robots buying automata, homeostatically adjusted conformers and opportunists (or, bluntly speaking, into morons and zombies) can this great society follow its progress toward ever increasing gross national product."

"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It is like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."

"There was a plea from honourable Members relating to the need for formal Gross National Product figures. Such figures are very inexact even in the most sophisticated countries I think they do not have a great deal of meaning, even as a basis of comparison between economies. That other countries make use of them is not, I think, necessarily a good reason to suppose that we need them. But, although I am not entirely clear what practical purpose they would serve in Hong Kong, I am sure they would be of interest. I suspect myself, however, that the need arises in other countries because high taxation and more or less detailed Government intervention in the economy have made it essential to be able to judge (or to hope to be able to judge) the effect of policies, and of changes in policies, on the economy. One of the honourable Members who spoke on this subject, said outright, as a confirmed planner, that he thought that they were desirable for the planning of our future economic policy. But we are in the happy position, happier at least for the Financial Secretary where the leverage exercised by Government on the economy is so small that it is not necessary, nor even of any particular value, to have these figures available for the formulation of policy. We might indeed be right to be apprehensive lest the availability of such figures might lead, by a reversal of cause and effect, to policies designed to have a direct effect on the economy. I would myself deplore this."

"The computer field is intoxicated with change. We have seen galloping growth over a period of four decades and it still does not seem to be slowing down. The field is not mature yet and already it accounts for a significant percentage of the Gross National Product."

"Macroeconomics deals with national aggregates like gross national product, employment, price levels, consumption and investment, money supply and demand, balance of payments, and so on."

"Keynes was chief economic adviser to the British government and largely responsible for keeping the British economy afloat at a time when more than half of our gross national product, and all of out foreign exchange, was being spent on the war. ...I was lucky to be present at one of his rare appearances in Cambridge, when he gave a lecture with the title "Newton, the Man." …Four years later he died of heart failure, precipitated by overwork and the hardships of crossing the Atlantic repeatedly in slow propeller-driven airplanes under wartime conditions."

"... in economic political discussions there is a nearly infinite number of specific questions that may be asked. Besides the ones mentioned in section 3 consider for instance these: "Should we build a road between points A and B in the country?", "Should we promote investments that will give employment to many people, or should we on the contrary promote such investment which will save labour?"… "Should we put more emphasis on things that have up to now not been included in the statistical concept of the gross national product? For instance, should we try to avoid air-pollution and all the kinds of intoxications that may be caused by refuse and waste (a problem that must be studied in its totality as a problem of circulation of matter in society, much in the same way as we study interindustry relations in an input-output table)?“, “Should we assess economic value to an undisturbed nature?” etc."

"Even if we can never quantify [satisfaction or happiness]... as precisely as we currently quantify GNP,... perhaps it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong."

"It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations."

"I didn't care about the statistics in anything else. I didn't, and don't pay any attention to the statistics of the stock market, the weather, the crime rate, the gross national product, the circulation of magazines, the ebb and flow of literacy among football fans and how many people are going to starve to death before the year 2050 if I don't start adopting them for $3.69 a month; just baseball. Now why is that? It is because baseball statistics, unlike the statistics in any other area, have acquired the powers of language."

"Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

"The Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

"The university is being called upon to educate previously unimagined numbers of students; to respond to the expanding claims of national service; to merge its activities with industry as never before. Characteristic of this transformation is the growth of the knowledge industry, which is coming to permeate government and business, and to draw into it more and more people raised to higher and higher levels of skill. The production, distribution and consumption of knowledge is said to account for 29 percent of gross national product, and knowledge production is growing at about twice the rate of the rest of the economy. What the railroads did for the second half of the last century, and the automobile for the first half of this century, may be done for the second half of this century by the knowledge industry; and that is, to serve as the focal point for national growth."

"Britain, with the most completely socialized health system in the West, now spends the lowest fraction of GNP on health care of any major nation. There are frequent complaints of excessive waits for elective surgery and other inconveniences, but British citizens live slightly longer than Americans, on average, and our overall health conditions are comparable."

"The usefulness and importance of a system of national accounts can most readily be appreciated by returning to origins of the method and at the same time considering the actual necessity of this type of analysis. This new analytical technique was first introduced in Great Britain during the Second War. John Maynard Keynes was at that time an expert adviser to the Treasury on problems of war finance, and his assistants included Richard Stone. Keynes took as his starting point a balance between total current resources (including real gross national product) on the supply side and total consumption, investments and expenditure for the war effort on the demand side. Richard Stone's experiments in the systematic processing of the copious flood of statistical material in the form of national accounts moved Keynes to exclaim: "We are in a new era of joy through statistics""

"Having eliminated the soul, modern science cannot understand the body in its most important aspect, which is its capacity for self-importance. Modern biology, particularly the theory of evolution, is based on the overriding concern for survival in all life. This is surely wrong in regard to human life. If you cannot look around you and must insist on indulging a taste for the primitive, you have only to visit the ruins of an ancient people and ponder how much of its GNP was devoted to religion, to its sense of the meaning of human life rather than mere survival."

"These examples confuse effort with result, one of the most common mistakes of this kind is designing systems around the wrong goal. Maybe the worst mistake this kind has been the adoption of the GNP as the measure of national economic success. [...] If you define the goal of a society as GNP, that society will do its best to produce GNP. It will not produce welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency unless you define a goal and regularly measure and report the state of welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency."

"A long decade ago economic growth was the reigning fashion of political economy. It was simultaneously the hottest subject of economic theory and research, a slogan eagerly claimed by politicians of all stripes, and a serious objective of the policies of governments. The climate of opinion has changed dramatically. Disillusioned critics indict both economic science and economic policy for blind obeisance to aggregate material "progress," and for neglect of its costly side effects. Growth, it is charged, distorts national priorities, worsens the distribution of income, and irreparably damages the environment. Paul Erlich speaks for a multitude when he says, "We must acquire a life style which has as its goal maximum freedom and happiness for the individual, not a maximum Gross National Product.""

"(re an antique book on his desk) Oliver, would you mind leaving that alone? It's not mine, and it's worth half the gross national product."

"The GNP by itself is no mark of our national achievement. For it includes smokestacks that pollute, drugs that destroy, and ambulances which clear our highways of human wreckage. It includes a mugger's knife, a rioter's bomb, and Oswald's rifle, but if the GNP tells us all this, there is much that it does not tell us. It says nothing about the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play."

"Jule [to Hardenberg during a conversation at table]: The First World could cancel the Third World's debts. That's only 0.01% of the GNP!"

"Simon Kuznets is best known for his studies of national income and its components. Prior to World War I, measures of GNP were rough guesses, at best. No government agency collected data to compute GNP, and no private economic researcher did so systematically, either. Kuznets changed all that. With work that began in the 1930s and stretched over decades, Kuznets computed national income back to 1869. He broke it down by industry, by final product, and by use. He also measured the distribution of income between rich and poor."

"The dominant role played by... exporters’ and importers’ GNP and distance in explaining trade flows."

"Dorian Tyrell: Okay, Twinkle-Toes, I want to know where my money is and I want to know right now!"

"Economics also succeeded in grafting onto the countries of the third world impressive theories and isolated important concepts such as gross national product, gross domestic product, and income per capita. These concepts served as building blocks with which economics constructed elaborate and impressive theories of development, including formula for predicting the rate of economic development of a given nation. According to economics, gross national product (GNP) is the total value of goods and services produced by a given country during a specified time period, such as a year. Gross domestic product (GDP), on the other hand, is gross national product minus the net income the nation earned abroad."

"Veronica: Another thing girls love are Jimmy Choos, Dolce & Gabbana, and convertibles that cost more than the gross national product of Sri Lanka."

"But, but I mean, we've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's nine percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. I mean, that is more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II."

"I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it."

"I define it, I think we're in a recession until real per capita GDP gets back up to where it was before. That is not the way the National Bureau of Economic Research measures it. But I will tell you that to any, on any common sense definition, the average American is below where he was before, or his family, in terms of real income, GDP. We're still in a recession. And, and we're not gonna be out of it for awhile, but we will get out of it."

"Basically, GDP is a concept of value added. It is the sum of gross value added of all resident producer units (institutional sectors or, alternatively, industries) plus that part (possibly the total) of taxes, less subsidies, on products which is not included in the valuation of output. Gross value added is the difference between output and intermediate consumption."

"Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessities of life; which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another."

"The way in which economists incorporate inequality into their analyses can have a significant impact on their policy recommendations. If all costs are evaluated in dollars, a loss of, say, 10% of GDP in a poor country is likely to be much less than a loss of 3% of GDP in a rich country. Thus the damages from climate change in poor countries, which may be large as a percentage of GDP, would receive relatively little weight because the losses are relatively small in dollar terms... Stern estimates that, without the effects of inequity, the costs of a BAU scenario will be 11-14% of global GDP. Weighing the impacts on the world’s poor more heavily gives a cost estimate of 20% of global GDP."

"It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don't riot when oil prices rise. But the problem with cheap, subsidized fuel is that it creates more demand, and thus costs the governments more money. Countries like Iran, Yemen, Colombia, and Nigeria could go broke if they keep providing cheap gas to keep people happy."

"India needs to be liberated both from the 'high GDP growth hedgehogs' and the 'conservation at all costs hedgehogs.'"

"We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is humankind's collective GDP."

"Government [the US] is taking 40 percent of the GDP. And that's at the state, local and federal level. President Obama has taken government spending at the federal level from 20 percent to 25 percent. Look, at some point, you cease being a free economy, and you become a government economy. And we've got to stop that."

"For 60 years Gross Domestic Product, or GDP for short, has been the yardstick by which the world has measured and understood economic and social progress. However, it has failed to capture some of the factors that make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to their happiness, such as security, leisure,income distribution and a clean environment–including the kinds of factors which growth itself needs to be sustainable."

"We are consuming the past, present, and future of this biosphere, our only home, in an unthinking rush for profits and GDP that we call 'progress', belying our species name homo sapiens."

"Economics also succeeded in grafting onto the countries of the third world impressive theories and isolated important concepts such as gross national product, gross domestic product, and income per capita. These concepts served as building blocks with which economics constructed elaborate and impressive theories of development, including formula for predicting the rate of economic development of a given nation. According to economics, gross national product (GNP) is the total value of goods and services produced by a given country during a specified time period, such as a year. Gross domestic product (GDP), on the other hand, is gross national product minus the net income the nation earned abroad."

"Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G.D.P. is one measure of national income, of how much wealth Americans make, and it’s a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing. It ought to join buggy."

"To begin with, Gross Domestic Product excludes a great deal of production that has economic value. Neither volunteer work nor unpaid domestic services (housework, child rearing, do-it-yourself home improvement) make it into the accounts, and our standard of living, our general level of economic well-being, benefits mightily from both. Nor does it include the huge economic benefit that we get directly, outside of any market, from nature. A mundane example: If you let the sun dry your clothes, the service is free and doesn’t show up in our domestic product; if you throw your laundry in the dryer, you burn fossil fuel, increase your carbon footprint, make the economy more unsustainable — and give G.D.P. a bit of a bump."

"Several alternatives to Gross Domestic Product have been proposed, and each tackles the central problem of placing a value on goods and services that never had a dollar price. The alternatives are controversial, because that kind of valuation creates room for subjectivity – for the expression of personal values, of ideology and political belief....It’s admittedly difficult to set a dollar price on such things – but this is no reason to set that price at zero, as gross domestic product currently does"

"Today, there is an increasing need for an integrated solution to problems and GNH provides a systematic approach. In a world drenched with materialism, the human heart yearns for something beyond material possessions, and that is one of the reasons that GNH is attracting so many people."

"The pursuit of happiness is a deeply moral obligation, on both the personal and the national level... we have the right to pursue happiness. But we also have an ethical responsibility to exercise that right, and to guide our values, policies, and politics as a nation in a way that makes it possible for our fellow-citizens and those around the world to pursue happiness as well."

"The Gross National Happiness Index is often used by cities, campuses, communities, companies and other groups to assess their area or group's well-being."

"Our philosophical mission of maintaining GNH generates great interest, yet it creates more responsibility to us in Bhutan to ensure that we don’t lose that special and unique perspective for our country. So how does GNH translate to life in Bhutan? GNH comprises four pillars: Conservation of the Environment, Equitable and Sustainable Development, Good Governance, and Preservation of Culture."

"To help the government in its meaningful work to achieve Bhutan’s development goal of Gross National Happiness and to continue the development success the country has achieved so far, the Bhutan Foundation aligns its programs to support initiatives under all four pillars of GNH."

"Bhutan measures prosperity by gauging its citizens' happiness levels, not the GDP. Now its ideas are attracting interest at the UN climate change conference in Doha."

"Since 1971, the country [Bhutan] has rejected GDP as the only way to measure progress. In its place, it has championed a new approach to development, which measures prosperity through formal principles of gross national happiness (GNH) and the spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of its citizens and natural environment."

"This remote kingdom, a place of ancient monasteries, fluttering prayer flags and staggering natural beauty. Less than 40 years ago, Bhutan opened its borders for the first time. Since then, it has gained an almost mythical status as a real-life Shangri-La, largely for its determined and methodical pursuit of the most elusive of concepts – national happiness."

"The level and extent of global interest in Gross National Happiness in the wake of the General Assembly resolution and the Bhutan-sponsored High Level Meeting at the UN Headquarters in New York on April 2, 2012 have been truly astounding and inspiring as well as deeply humbling. Some of the finest minds in the world today are engaged in exploring and understanding the scope and sweep of this revolutionary ideal of human well-being and societal progress."

"Gross National Happiness is a function of personal decisions and individual actions as surely as little drops of water make the mighty ocean. Gross National Happiness is more than an antidote to Gross National Product. It is an anodyne that can heal the wounds of our ailing planet and still the tooth that nibbles at the soul."

"Gross National Happiness’ is one of the most beautiful and inclusive expressions in the corpus of the 21st century sustainable development discourse. Today, GNH is more than a confluence of three loaded terms that define the vision of one country. It carries a meaning that is universal in scope and compelling in relevance."

"Although the term “Gross National Happiness” was first coined by the Fourth King of Bhutan the concept has a much longer resonance in the Kingdom of Bhutan. The 1729 legal code, which dates from the unification of Bhutan, declared that “if the Government can not create happiness (dekid) for its people, there is no purpose or the Government to exist"."

"(Capitalism is) an economic system based on private, rather than state, ownership of businesses, factories, transport services, etc, with free competition and profit-making."

"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors."

"So far we have studies how, for each commodity by itself, the law of demand in connection with the conditions of production of that commodity, determines the price of it and regulates the incomes of its producers. We considered as given and invariable the prices of other commodities and the incomes of other producers; but, in reality the economic system is a whole of which the parts are connected and react on each other. An increase in the incomes of the producers of commodity A will affect the demand for commodities Band C, etc., and the incomes of their producers, and, by its reaction will involve a change in the demand for A. It seems, therefore, as if, for a complete and rigorous solution of the problems relative to some parts of the economic system, it were indispensable to take the entire system into consideration. But this would surpass the powers of mathematical analysis and of our practical methods of calculation, even if the values of all the constants could be assigned to them numerically."

"The state of an economy is the resultant of real flows and money flows. The financial institutions operating through capital and money markets is institutional infrastructure. It lubricates the wheel of the economic system"

"The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market."

"I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognise from the beginning as of unequal value."

"When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker."

"Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt. This could be accomplished, if we implement a resource-based economy."

"In the infinitely complex economic system on which we rely for our daily bread, no productive function is more important than that of our business leaders. These men are charged with the responsibility of giving direction and unity to the efforts of the many who participate in economic activity. It is their job to make the plans and decisions which will transform economic effort into the particular goods and services wanted by a myriad of consumers. Conversely, it is their job also to translate consumers' needs into employment opportunities for labor and other economic resources"

"I am a capitalist, and after a 30-year career in capitalism... I'm not just in the top one percent, I'm in the top .01 percent of all earners. Today, I have come to share the secrets of our success, because rich capitalists like me have never been richer... How do we manage to grab an ever-increasing share of the economic pie every year? ... here's the dirty secret. There was a time in which the economics profession worked in the public interest, but in the neoliberal era, today, they work only for big corporations and billionaires... We could choose to enact economic policies that raise taxes on the rich, regulate powerful corporations or raise wages for workers... But neoliberal economists would warn that all of these policies would be a terrible mistake, because raising taxes always kills economic growth, and any form of government regulation is inefficient, and raising wages always kills jobs. Well, as a consequence of that thinking, over the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world. And yet, as middle class families struggle to get by on wages that have not budged in about 40 years, neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization."

"The old economics is correct, of course, that competition plays a crucial role in how markets work, but what it fails to see is that it is largely a competition between highly cooperative groups -- competition between firms, competition between networks of firms, competition between nations -- and anyone who has ever run a successful business knows that building a cooperative team by including the talents of everyone is almost always a better strategy than just a bunch of selfish jerks. So how do we leave neoliberalism behind and build a more sustainable, more prosperous and more equitable society? The new economics suggests just five rules of thumb. First is that successful economies are not jungles, they're gardens, which is to say that markets, like gardens, must be tended, that the market is the greatest social technology ever invented for solving human problems, but unconstrained by social norms or democratic regulation, markets inevitably create more problems than they solve. Climate change, the great financial crisis of 2008 are two easy examples."

"Inclusion creates economic growth. So the neoliberal idea that inclusion is this fancy luxury to be afforded if and when we have growth is both wrong and backwards. The economy is people. Including more people in more ways is what causes economic growth in market economies...The third principle is the purpose of the corporation is not merely to enrich shareholders. The greatest grift in contemporary economic life is the neoliberal idea that the only purpose of the corporation and the only responsibility of executives is to enrich themselves and shareholders. The new economics must and can insist that the purpose of the corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders: customers, workers, community and shareholders alike."

"Greed is not good. Being rapacious doesn't make you a capitalist, it makes you a sociopath. And in an economy as dependent upon cooperation at scale as ours, sociopathy is as bad for business as it is for society.... Neoliberal economic theory has sold itself to you as unchangeable natural law, when in fact it's social norms and constructed narratives based on pseudoscience. If we truly want a more equitable, more prosperous and more sustainable economy, if we want high-functioning democracies and civil society, we must have a new economics."

"We complain of the increased tempo of our lives, but our frenetic lives are just reflection of the economic system that we have created."

"The US, burdened by de facto tax boycotts by the rich and corporations, is sinking in debt, the highest in our history. The US government budget deficit was $2.77 trillion for the 2021 budget year that ended Sept. 30, the second highest annual deficit on record. It was exceeded only by the $3.13 trillion deficit for 2020. Total US national total debt is over $30 trillion. Household debt grew by $1 trillion last year. The total debt balance in our government Ponzi scheme is now $1.4 trillion higher than it was at the end of 2019. Our wars are waged on borrowed money. The Watson Institute at Brown University estimates that interest payments on the military debt could be over $6.5 trillion by the 2050s. None of this debt is sustainable. At the same time, the US is facing the ascendency of China, whose economy is projected to overtake the US economy by the end of the decade. Washington’s slew of desperate financial tricks – flooding the global market with new dollars and lowering interest rates to near zero – staved off major depressions after the 2000 dot.com crash, 9/11 and the 2008 global financial meltdown. The cheap interest rates led corporations and banks to borrow massively from the Federal Reserve, often to paper over shortfalls and bad investments. The result is that US businesses are deeper in debt than at any time in US history."

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

"With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system."

"The British came to India primarily as traders but ultimately succeeded in carving out a strong empire in India. During their rule of over two centuries, they brought about far-reaching changes in the economic system of India. They completely destroyed the isolationist and self-sufficing character of the village;…"

"The Ethics of Competition is a book of Frank H. Knight's writings on a common theme: the problem of social control and its various implications. Knight believed in free economic institutions but was also aware that the competitive economic system could be improved. One of the central figures of neoclassical economics in the twentieth century, Knight pursued a lifelong campaign against irrationalities of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and group conflict, while conceding that these were fundamental orientations of human action that might yet frustrate his own work as an economist. While Knight vigorously defended human freedom and the liberal order, he also was sufficiently moved by the shortcomings of liberalism as to condemn it as rife with abuse."

"Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice... As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe... We need to forge a new era for humanity — one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization..."

"Changing our civilization’s operating system to one that naturally leads to life-affirming policies and practices rather than rampant extraction and devastation. An ecological civilization is both a new and ancient idea. While the notion of structuring human society on an ecological basis might seem radical, Indigenous peoples around the world have organized themselves from time immemorial on life-affirming principles. Every year that we head closer to catastrophe—as greater climate-related disasters rear up, as the outrages of racial and economic injustice become even more egregious, and as life for most people becomes increasingly intolerable—the old narrative loses its hold on the collective consciousness. Waves of young people are looking for a new worldview—one that makes sense of the current unraveling, one that offers them a future they can believe in. It’s a bold idea to transform the very basis of our civilization to one that’s life-affirming. But when the alternative is unthinkable, a vision of a flourishing future shines a light of hope that can become a self-fulfilling reality. Dare to imagine it. Dare to make it possible by the actions you take, both individually and collectively—and it might just happen sooner than you expect."

"Despite claims of job creation, and the dominant message that business success helps all of us, the reality is that ultimately market gains, or profit, are contrary to the wellbeing of citizens — as one rises, the other decreases. Our current economic system is coercive, and this is the crucial political reality that mainstream economics hides. Even if we feel something is wrong when we get up in the morning to go to a job that means nothing to us, or when we struggle to find time to rest, such an instinctive realization is suffocated by the societal messages that this is the way it should be. The dissonance between our lived experience of daily economic life — that of alienation and struggle — and our acceptance of it, as if , is something constructed, predominantly by economic models that reinforce our surrender to an economic system that I call the "capital order". This term refers to, first, the concentration of decision making power in the hands of private investors; the second, the invisible subjugation of the majority, who are forced to work for someone else's profit."

"For decades, "experts" have been spreading this numbing story with academic theories spun from the elite circles of the most prestigious universities in the world. By hiding the true nature of the economic system, they atrophy our minds, blocking any possibility of transformative action. But it is possible to escape from capitalism."

"Most people have no alternative but to sell their ability to work for a wage and inevitably be paid less than the value they produce. This is the capital order, the backbone of our society that we do not criticize or even discuss. It is only through the lens of class that we can escape this trap and understand the functioning of our economic system and the policies implemented to govern it."

"If people no longer accept their condition as low-paid wage laborers without secure employment, our economic system collapses."

"The economic structure of the ideal society also resembles the structure of a healthy human body. Production, distribution and consumption should have an organic, interdependent relationship such as that which exists between the digestive, circulatory and metabolic systems. There should not be destructive competition due to overproduction; nor should there be excessive accumulation or overconsumption due to unfair distribution, which would be contrary to the welfare of all people. There should be adequate production of necessary and useful goods, fair distribution to supply what is sufficient for people's needs, and reasonable consumption in harmony with the purpose of the whole."

"Here's what I don't think works: An economic system that was founded in the 16th century and another that was founded in the 19th century. I'm tired of this discussion of capitalism and socialism; we live in the 21st century; we need an economic system that has democracy as its underpinnings and an ethical code."

"Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too - if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac."

"There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty."

"It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system."

"When Roosevelt came along, I approved of his program, generally. I figured an economic system should work for people, not vice versa."

"The fact that industries wax and wane is a reality of any economic system that wants to remain dynamic and responsive to people's changing tastes."

"But what I believe is that if a person's individual rights or right to be a part of our economic system is violated under statute, we aggressively go after it. But we don't issue mandates to businesses that you've got to do this and you've got to do that."

"Methods by which engineers stabilise their mechanisms suggest analogous possibilities for stabilising economic systems."

"An economic system is not a linear system, and... this fact stands in the way of the determination of the parameters of the system by methods that presume linearity, and... it introduces great difficulties in the extrapolation from past behaviour for purposes of prediction."

"Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out."

"Our economic system, run for profit and waste and based primarily on the extractive industries, is the cause of climate change. We have wasted the earth's treasure and we can no longer exploit it cheaply."

"The main message we want to get out there is that climate change is caused by the rotten economic system."

"[T]he most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain and safety."

"In the latter half of the last century the impact of the expanding influence of Western culture and economic system brought about in China a severe conflict."

"Capitalism is not an economic system, but a world-outlook, or rather, a part of a whole world-outlook."

"With lower start-up costs and a vastly expanded market for online services, the result is a global economy that for the first time will be fully digitally wired-the dream of every cyber-visionary of the early 1990s, finally delivered, a full generation later."

"The distribution of the world's resources and the settled unity of the peoples of the world are in reality one and the same thing, for behind all modern wars lies a fundamental economic problem. Solve that and wars will very largely cease. In considering, therefore, the preservation of peace, as sought for and emphasized by the United Nations at this time, it becomes immediately apparent that peace, security and world stability are primarily tied up with the economic problem. When there is freedom from want, one of the major causes of war will disappear. Where there is uneven distribution of the world's riches and where there is a situation in which some nations have or take everything and other nations lack the necessities of life, it is obvious that there is a trouble-breeding factor there and that something must be done. Therefore we should deal with world unity and peace primarily from the angle of the economic problem."

"It is essential for the future happiness and progress of humanity that there should be no return to the old ways, whether political, religious or economic. Therefore, in handling these problems we should search out the wrong conditions which have brought humanity to its present state of almost cataclysmic disaster. These conditions were the result... of economic systems which lay the emphasis upon the accumulation of riches and material possessions and which leave all the power and the produce of the earth in the hands of a relatively few men, while the rest of humanity struggle for a bare subsistence; and of political regimes run by the corrupt, the totalitarian-minded, the grafters and those who love place and power more than they love their fellowmen... Security, happiness and peaceful relations are desired by all. Until, however, the Great Powers, in collaboration with the little nations, have solved the economic problem and have realized that the resources of the earth belong to no one nation but to humanity as a whole, there will be no peace. The oil of the world, the mineral wealth, the wheat, the sugar and the grains belong to all men everywhere. They are essential to the daily living of the everyday man."

"The world economic council (or whatever body represents the resources of the world) must free itself from fraudulent politics, capitalistic influence and its devious scheming; it must set the resources of the earth free for the use of humanity. This will be a lengthy task but it will be possible when world need is better appreciated. An enlightened public opinion will make the decisions of the economic council practical and possible. Sharing and cooperation must be taught instead of greed and competition."

"I appreciate that in China, people are hungry to prosper in the global economy. What they need is a body of elected representatives who will widely debate and freely pass a strong national energy policy. Selling China an oil company will only take pressure off its rulers and further delay the arrival of democracy."

"Today, local economies are being destroyed by the "pluralistic," displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place."

"Without even entering into the question of the world economy’s ultimate dictation within narrow limits of everybody’s productive activity, it’s apparent that the source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is not the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade."

"A successful economic development strategy must focus on improving the skills of the area's workforce, reducing the cost of doing business and making available the resources business needs to compete and thrive in today's global economy."

"Luckily for the world economy, however, Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense. And they may have shown us the way through this crisis."

"History moves in contradictions. The skeleton of historic existence, the economic structure of society, also develops in contradictions. Forms eternally follow forms. Everything has only a passing being. The dynamic force of life creates the new over and over again — such is the law inherent in reality."

"If my theoretical studies have contained any subjective value judgment, then this has amounted at most to a preference for freedom and progress rather than state control of the economy and distribution of such scanty prosperity as may be available for distribution at a given moment. I have wanted to make it clear that this preference is a great common interest of all parties, both in the management of the world economy and in every individual nation. Such a position may be attacked, but it cannot be denominated as party-politics in the ordinary sense."

"I would remind you that in the United States we had an increasing gap between the rich and the poor for about 20 years, as we moved into this new economic phase. The same thing happened when we changed from being an agricultural economy to an industrial economy. In the last 2 or 3 years, we started to see the gap close again. And the answer is not to run away from globalization. The answer is to make change our friend. The answer is to have broad access to information and information technology, to have broad-based systems of education and health care and family supports in every country, and to continue to try to shape the global economy."

"Geographically, the global economy is now multi-polar, as new centres of production have emerged in parts of what had been, historically, the periphery of the world economy. The world is now more accurately described as a 'mosaic of unevenness in a continual state of flux'."

"The world economy is not yet a community--not even an economic community...Yet the existence of the "global shopping center" is a fact that cannot be undone. The vision of an economy for all will not be forgotten again."

"There are reasons to believe that the world economy is once again in the throes of a phase change. There are also reasons to believe that this phase change, like the preceding ones, will involve a paradigmatic shift in the organization of people around their work. If this is so, then our perceptions of what has happened in the past decade or more in the world of work may need to be modified; likewise our perceptions of where those changes are leading us"

"Investors should be cautiously positioned as the global economy and markets face major uncertainties. The downgrade will be a further headwind to growth and job creation in the U.S."

"We have a booming global economy but we don't have a global society. Markets reduce everything, including human beings and nature, to commodities. Societies need more than this to prosper — such goals as political freedom and social justice."

"If men can learn to be less defensive, more open to others, and more accepting of accountability, they will adapt well to the new global economy."

"Does the functioning of the world economy tend to concentrate wealth and power, or does it tend to diffuse it?"

"The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth."

"Structuralism argues that a liberal capitalist world economy tends to preserve or actually increase inequalities between developed and less developed economies."

"To take what might seem an "objective", macro-economic approach to the origins of the world economy would be to treat the behavior of early European explorers, merchants, and conquerors as if they were simply rational responses to opportunities—as if this were just what anyone would have done in the same situation. This is what the use of equations so often does: make it seem perfectly natural to assume that, if the price of silver in China is twice what it is in Seville, and inhabitants of Seville are capable of getting their hands on large quantities of silver and transporting it to China, then clearly they will, even if doing so requires the destruction of entire civilizations. Or if there is a demand for sugar in England, and enslaving millions is the easiest way to acquire labor to produce it, then it is inevitable that some will enslave them."

"We have to remember we're in a global economy. The purpose of fiscal stimulus is not simply to sustain activity in our national economies, but to help the global economy as well, and that's why it's so critical that measures in those packages avoid anything that smacks of protectionism."

"In short, I believe in an America that is on the march - an America respected by all nations, friends and foes alike - an America that is moving, doing, working, trying - a strong America in a world of peace. That peace must be based on world law and world order, on the mutual respect of all nations for the rights and powers of others and on a world economy in which no nation lacks the ability to provide a decent standard of living for all of its people. But we cannot have such a world, and we cannot have such a peace, unless the United States has the vitality and the inspiration and the strength. If we continue to stand still, if we continue to lie at anchor, if we continue to sit on dead center, if we content ourselves with the easy life and the rosy assurances, then the gates will soon be open to a lean and hungry enemy."

"And each of these perspectives comes to the same conclusion, which is that our global economy is out of control and performing contrary to basic principles of market economics."

"[An] epochal innovation [consisting of the] spreading application of science to processes of production and social organization."

"Plausible as the idea of the United States of Europe as a peace arrangement may seem to some at first glance, it has on closer examination not the least thing in common with the method of thought and the standpoint of social democracy . . . At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. Europe no more forms a special unit within world economy than does Asia or America."

"In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more necessary than ever for all companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises."

"The greatest thing to come out of this [the war in Iraq] for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country."

"We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender."

"In an updated and expanded version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified five "global shocks" that will destabilise the world economy with increasing frequency in coming years. Rather than the traditional perils of conquest, war, famine and death, the OECD identifies viral pandemics, cyber attacks, financial crises, socio-economic unrest and geomagnetic storms as the five "global shocks" that will have to be endured."

"The most pressing and significant problems in the global economy are unsustainable structural issues with regard to the E.U. - fiscal deficits and the structure of the E.U. itself."

"We know that to compete for the jobs of the 21st century and thrive in a global economy, we need a growing, skilled and educated workforce, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math."

""Populists" believe in conspiracies and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy."

"The challenge we face is how to integrate the Muslim world into the global economy. Asia has become part of it, but not Africa or the Middle East.One could realistically think about a Marshall Plan with respect to this part of the world, to succeed in integrating the Muslim and Arab world into the global economy as we did in Europe after World War II. For example, we’ve wasted hundreds of billions of dollars on the Iraq war. Had we taken a third of this money and invested it into a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, the benefits would have been ten times more than wasting it on a war."

"It is virtually impossible to compete in today's global economy without a college degree."

"We live in a global economy, but the political organization of our global society is woefully inadequate. We are bereft of the capacity to preserve peace and to counteract the excesses of the financial markets. Without these controls, the global economy, is liable to break down."

"The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the nation-state. International law and international institutions, insofar as they exist, are not strong enough to prevent war or the large-scale abuse of human rights in individual countries. Ecological threats are not adequately dealt with. Global financial markets are largely beyond the control of national or international authorities."

"It would be wrong to think that the Second World War broke out accidentally, or as a result of blunders committed by certain statesmen, although blunders were certainly committed. As a matter of fact, the war broke out as the inevitable result of the development of world economic and political forces on the basis of present-day monopolistic capitalism. Marxists have more than once stated that the capitalist system of world economy contains the elements of a general crisis and military conflicts, that, in view of that, the development of world capitalism in our times does not proceed smoothly and evenly, but through crises and catastrophic wars."

"The point is that the uneven development of capitalist countries usually leads, in the course of time, to a sharp disturbance of the equilibrium within the world system of capitalism, and that group of capitalist countries regards itself as being less securely provides with raw materials and markets usually attempts to change the situation and to redistribute “spheres of influence” in its own favor — by employing armed force. As a result of this, the capitalist world is split into two hostile camps, and war breaks out between them. Perhaps catastrophic wars could be avoided if it were possible periodically to redistribute raw materials and markets among the respective countries in conformity with their economic weight by means of concerted and peaceful decisions. But this is impossible under the present capitalist conditions of world economic development."

"A dynamic and open Indian economy would have an important impact on the world economy…China is already well integrated with the World economy."

"At issue is not whether the global economy will pass away. It is passing away. Rising populations and debt combined with depletion of freshwater sources and fossil fuel make the status quo untenable. The only question is whether civil society will survive the transition."

"Scientists and supercomputers have amplified our ability to look ahead. For decades, experts have warned us that human numbers, technology, hyper-consumption and a global economy are altering the chemical, geological, and biological properties of the biosphere."

"Yet in this global economy, no jobs are safe. High-speed Internet connections and low-cost, skilled labor overseas are an explosive combination."

"The main sources of tension in today's world economy could be grouped under the following categories:"

"The essential feature of a capitalist world-economy... is 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."

"Indonesia is one of the least exposed economies in the region, with a vast domestic market and a relatively small share of exports to gross domestic product, so it is insulated from volatility in the global economy,"

"China is a large economy, it’s growing larger, but remember, it’s still a third or a quarter the size of the American economy. The Indian economy’s even smaller. The Chinese economy’s still not that much of a consumer economy. The Indian one is, but it’s small. So, for all those reasons, nothing will ever quite replace the American economy in its kind of systemic role that it plays. The American consumer, even today, the weight of the American consumer in the global economy is China plus India doubled. So, it’s tough to replace that."

"Drawing a comparison to football, it could be said that the Spanish economy has, during this legislature, into the Champions League of the world economy, however bad that may seem to some.""

"The dictionary defines "economics" as "a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services." Here is another definition of economics which I think is more helpful in explaining how economics relates to software engineering."

"One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification have been developed by economists. One is the method of partial equilibrium analysis (or microeconomics), generally associated with the name of Alfred Marshall and the other is the method of aggregation (or macro-economics), associated with the name of John Maynard Keynes."

"Microeconomics and macroeconomics are closely intertwined. Because changes in the overall economy arise from the decisions of millions of individuals, it is impossible to understand macroeconomic developments without considering the associated microeconomic decisions."

"The field of economics is traditionally divided into two broad subfields. Microeconomics is the study of how households and firms make decisions and how they interact in specific markets. Macroeconomics is the study of economy wide phenomena. A microeconomist might study the effects of rent control on housing in New York City, the impact of foreign competition on the U.S. auto industry, or the effects of compulsory school attendance on workers’ earnings. A macroeconomist might study the effects of borrowing by the federal government, the changes over time in the economy’s rate of unemployment, or alternative policies to promote growth in national living standards. Microeconomics and macroeconomics are closely intertwined. Because changes in the overall economy arise from the decisions of millions of individuals, it is impossible to understand macroeconomic developments without considering the associated microeconomic decisions."

"When we approach the study of business cycle with the intention of carrying through an analysis that is truly dynamic and determinate in the above sense, we are naturally led to distinguish between two types of analyses: the micro-dynamic and the macro-dynamic types. The micro-dynamic analysis is an analysis by which we try to explain in some detail the behaviour of a certain section of the huge economic mechanism, taking for granted that certain general parameters are given. Obviously it may well be that we obtain more or less cyclical fluctuations in such sub-systems, even though the general parameters are given. The essence of this type of analysis is to show the details of the evolution of a given specific market, the behaviour of a given type of consumers, and so on."

"In a paper on business cycles, Frisch was the first to use the words “microeconomics” to refer to the study of single firms and industries, and “macroeconomics” to refer to the study of the aggregate economy."

"Microeconomics, including the study of individual choice and of group choice in market and nonmarket processes, has generally been considered a field science as distinct from an experimental science. Hence microeconomics has sometimes been classified as "non-experimental" and closer methodologically to meteorology and astronomy than to physics and experimental psychology... But the question of using experimental or nonexperimental techniques is largely a matter of cost, and generally the cost of conducting the most ambitious and informative experiments in astronomy, meteorology, and economics varies from prohibitive down to considerable. The cost of experimenting with different solar system planetary arrangements, different atmospheric conditions, and different national unemployment rates, each under suitable controls, must be regarded as prohibitive."

"With computers acting as the stimulus, the theory of war was assimilated into that of microeconomics. . . . Instead of evaluating military operations by their product –that is, victory – calculations were cast in terms of input–output and cost effectiveness. Since intuition was replaced by calculation, and since the latter wasto be carried out with the aid of computers, it was necessary that all the phenomena of war be reduced to quantitative form. Consequently everything that could be quantified was, while everything that could not be tended to be thrown onto the garbage heap."

"What is everybody's interest is nobody's interest."

"The physiocrats started a train of thought which was a powerful stimulus to the development of a labour theory of value and surplus value.They did not, however develop such a theory of value themselves. What attention they gave to the problem of exchange-value and price produced results of an altogether different character. Thus while one of their contributions finds its continuation in Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, the other leads to the post-classical supply and demand and utility theories of value."

"The agricultural systems of political economy will not require so long an explanation as that which I have thought it necessary to bestow upon the mercantile or commercial system. That system which represents the produce of land as the sole source of the revenue and wealth of every country has, so far as I know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning and ingenuity in France. It would not, surely, be worth while to examine at great length the errors of a system which never has done, and probably never will do, any harm in any part of the world. I shall endeavour to explain, however, as distinctly as I can, the great outlines of this very ingenious system."

"François Quesnay was the leading figure of the Physiocrats, generally considered to be the first school of economic thinking. The name “Physiocrat” derives from the Greek words phýsis, meaning “nature,” and kràtos, meaning “power.” The Physiocrats believed that an economy’s power derived from its agricultural sector. They wanted the government of Louis XV, who ruled France from 1715 to 1774, to deregulate and reduce taxes on French agriculture so that poor France could emulate wealthier Britain, which had a relatively laissez-faire policy. Indeed, it was Quesnay who coined the term “laissez-faire, laissez-passer.”"

"The utility of many useful things is not at first very manifest, — as poetry, for instance. Yet its uses are as many and as sweet as those of adversity. When the first kettle boiled, who imagined the manifold uses of steam?"

"Utility then is not the measure of exchangeable value, although it is absolutely essential to it."

"Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them."

"One of the most important axioms is, that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance, plain food, which a man has to consume, increases, so the utility or benefit derived from the last portion used decreases in degree. The decrease in enjoyment between the beginning and the end of a meal may be taken as an example."

"Repeated reflection and inquiry have led me to the somewhat novel opinion, that value depends entirely upon utility."

"The calculus of utility aims at supplying the ordinary wants of man at the least cost of labour."

"My principal work now lies in tracing out the exact nature and conditions of utility. It seems strange indeed that economists have not bestowed more minute attention on a subject which doubtless furnishes the true key to the problems of economics."

"The difficulties of economics are mainly the difficulties of conceiving clearly and fully the conditions of utility."

"The general theory of economic equilibrium was strengthened and made effective as an organon of thought by two powerful subsidiary conceptions — the Margin and Substitution. The notion of the Margin was extended beyond [Utility]] to describe the equilibrium point in given conditions of any economic factor which can be regarded as capable of small variations about a given value,or in its functional relation to a given value."

"Thus public works even of doubtful utility may pay for themselves over and over again at a time of severe unemployment, if only from the diminished cost of relief expenditure."

"No human being has the faculty of originally creating matter, which is more than nature itself can do. But any one may avail himself of the agents offered him by nature, to invest matter with utility."

"A man who applies his labour to the investing of objects with value by the creation of utility of some sort, can not expect such a value to be appreciated and paid for, unless where other men have the means of purchasing it. Now, of what do these means consist? Of other values of other products, likewise the fruits of industry, capital, and land. Which leads us to a conclusion that may at first appear paradoxical, namely, that it is production which opens a demand for products."

"Morality has always had a difficult time of it; utility and legality even begrudge the fact of its existence."

"I am not against migration. It is simply pragmatic to restrict migration, while at the same time encouraging integration and fighting discrimination. I support the idea of the free movement of goods, people, money and jobs in Europe."

"In the sensorimotor area on top of the cortex there are four maps of a little upside down person, distorted I shape with every bit of skin and muscle represented in detail. This upside map is called the sensorimotor homunculus, the little human. The nervous system abounds in such maps, some of which appear to serve as 'self systems', organizing and integrating vast amounts of local bits of information."

"If the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it."

"...worldview, a new paradigm of perception and explanation, which is manifested in integration, holistic thinking, purpose-seeking, mutual causality, and process-focused inquiry"

"The aims of General Systems Theory: a) There is a general tendency towards integration in the various sciences: natural and social. b) Such integration seems to be centered in a general theory of systems. c) Such theory may be an important means for aiming at exact theory in the non-physical fields of science.(1956, d) Developing unifying principles running “vertically” through the universes of the individual sciences, this theory brings us nearer to the goal of unity of science."

"But no one expected he had ever get very far, because I don’t suppose he could even integrate e to the x. Is such ignorance possible gasped someone?"

"The formation of the differential equations proper to the phenomena is, independent of their integration, a very important acquisition, on account of the approximations which mathematical analysis allows between questions, otherwise heterogeneous."

"Mathematical analysis branch of mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration, measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functions. These theories areoften studied in the context of real numbers, complex numbers, and real and complex numbers and functions. Analysis evolved from calculus, which involves the elementary concepts and technique of analysis."

"Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources"

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."

"There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title."

"In order to consolidate the euro we need to harmonise our economic, fiscal and social policies, hence we are going toward greater integration.We are going to put in place an economic system of governance of the Eurozone. Great Britain is not part of Eurozone; t at the same time the decisions we will take will have great importance to Britain"

"By partnering with Apple, we have the opportunity to add value by integrating the world’s best digital music [iPod music player and iTunes music] offering into HP’s larger digital entertainment"

"He had the charm of all people who believe implicitly in themselves, that of integration."

"Some people pursue wholeness and integration; others get smashed up, and fragments are rescued from the smash of an intensity that the wholeness and integration people do not reach. Then too, the prophetic aspect of the arts is reflected"

"The Internet is ultimately about innovation and integration, but you don't get the innovation unless you integrate Web technology into the processes by which you run your business."

"Secular humanism contrasts with religious humanism, which is an integration of humanist ethical philosophy with religious rituals and beliefs that center on human needs, interests, and abilities."

"...to 'integrate the study of international economics with the study of international politics to deepen our comprehension of the forces at work in the world."

"Surely the mitochondrion that first entered another cell was not thinking about the future benefits of cooperation and integration; it was merely trying to make its own living in a tough Darwinian world."

"An effective information infrastructure must build on enabling technologies to create an integrated and adaptive system that is accessible to all potential users."

"Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane."

"From a fundamental point of view, integration is less demanding than differentiation, as far as the conditions imposed on the class of functions. As a consequence, numerical integration is a lot easier to carry out than numerical differentiation."

"There are a number of standard procedures which can enable a large number of common integrals to be evaluated explicitly. The simplest strategy is integration by substitution which means changing the variable of integration."

"Integration is the annual technocultural fest of Indian Statistical Institute, usually held during the first and second weekend of January each year. It is one of the biggest fests in Kolkata, and attracts participation from all over the world. Integration is relatively a new addition to the set of Calcutta fests, and yet, it has carved out a niche for itself."

"Integrated circuit (IC) is a circuit in which all or some of the circuit elements are inseparably associated and electrically interconnected so that it is considered to be indivisible for the purposes of construction and commerce."

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular."

"Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love."

"The most highly satisfactory use of the reverse-curve sign of integration used in calculus is for those two S-openings in the top of a violin"

"Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. ... What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?"

"An integrated Approach is a holistic christological approach to exploring and reconsidering the gifts and graces of God for healing the various aspects of human person.An integrated approach will include a biblically based analysis and synthesis of historical Christian traditions pertaining to healing and deliverance as they relate to the practice of counseling."

"We're moving to this integration of biomedicine, information technology, wireless and mobile now - an era of digital medicine. Even my stethoscope is now digital. And of course, there's an app for that."

"The integration of exponentially growing technologies is beginning to empower the patient, enable the doctor, enhance wellness and begin to cure the well before they get sick."

"People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a people like the White Race who are now a small minority in the world."

"I see with much pleasure that you are working on a large work on the integral Calculus [ … ] The reconciliation of the methods which you are planning to make, serves to clarify them mutually, and what they have in common contains very often their true metaphysics; this is why that metaphysics is almost the last thing that one discovers. The spirit arrives at the results as if by instinct; it is only on reflecting upon the route that it and others have followed that it succeeds in generalising the methods and in discovering its metaphysics."

"Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration."

"The key distinctive of a truly Christian education is the effective practice of worldview integration that is, an approach to biblical integration that leads to a Christian worldview.”"

"Overcoming the Cold War required courage from the people of Central and Eastern Europe and what was then the German Democratic Republic, but it also required the steadfastness of Western partner over many decades when many had long lost hope of integration of the two Germanys and Europe."

"In a life-long partnership with his wife Jessie, James Grier Miller contributed substantially to the development of behavioural science and to the integration of disciplines through general systems theory, remaining actively engaged in these areas throughout his working life."

"In particular to perform integration — you have to be smart about which integration technique should be used: integration by partial fractions, integration by parts, and so on"

"Common integration is only the memory of differentiation... The artifices by which it [integration] is effected, are changes, not from the unknown to the known, but from the forms in which memory will not serve to those in which it will"

"[Malcolm X] in keeping with the Nation's teachings he espoused black supremacy, advocated the separation of black and white Americans and scoffed at the civil rights movement's emphasis on integration."

"The Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology is about those methods, models and tools which are needed to build the integrated enterprise. The architecture is generic because it applies to most, potentially all types of enterprise."

"If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.”"

"...way a knowledge-system is knit together is to learn at least a minimum knowledge-of-knowledge, until someday — someday, or some century — an Integrator would come, and things would be fitted together again. So time mattered not at all"

"Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly."

"The powers which tend to preserve, and those which tend to change the condition of the earth's surface, are never in equilibrio; the latter are, in all cases, the most powerful, and, in respect of the former, are like living in comparison of dead forces. Hence the law of decay is one which suffers no exception: The elements of all bodies were once loose and unconnected, and to the same state nature has appointed that they should all return... TIME performs the office of integrating the infinitesimal parts of which this progression is made up; it collects them into one sum, and produces from them an amount greater than any that can be assigned."

"Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way … Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science."

"The success and originality of American integration stem precisely from the fact that immigrants' descendants can perpetuate their ancestral cultures while thinking of themselves as Americans in the fullest sense, sharing basic ideals across racial and ethnic barriers. In France, the characteristic attitude of newcomers from North Africa, Turkey, and sub-Saharan Africa is predominantly one of alienation, confrontation, rejection, and hatred."

"It's in the black players and it remains there. The National League was the first to sign black players and remained ahead all these years. And so many outstanding players are black that it's hard to have an outstanding team without your share of black players. It seemed like the National League teams were willing to sign any promising prospect regardless of color, while the American League was only interested in the outstanding, can't-miss black prospect. And if you don't sign the raw talent that needs a few years to develop, you lose out on some outstanding players."

"There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges facing our cities or to the housing crisis, but the two issues need to be considered together. From an urban design and planning point of view, the well-connected open city is a powerful paradigm and an engine for integration and inclusivity."

"This integrative action in virtue of which the nervous system unifies from separate organs an animal possessing solidarity, an individual, is the problem before us."

"It may appear as a superficial inequality, one that can be solved by merely a few reforms, or perhaps by the full integration of women into the labour force. But the reaction of the common man, woman, and child."

"The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is - a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter."

"A true balance between work and life comes with knowing that your life activities are integrated, not separated."

"Globalization (or Globalisation) is the increasing interdependence, integration and interaction among people and corporations in disparate locations around."

"The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition."

"Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it actually takes into account and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their primordial nature."

"It is vision-logic with its centauric/planetary worldview that, in my opinion, holds the only hope for the integration of the biosphere and noosphere, the supranational organization of planetary consciousness, the genuine recognition of ecological balance…"

"It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”"

"I believe in recognising every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family, there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being."

"We who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad feel that when you try and pass integration laws here in America, forcing white people to pretend that they are accepting black people, what you are doing is making white people act in a hypocritical way."

"Of psychics were truly successful and if their results were not simply the consequence of trickery at worse or good interviewing skills (at best), then why don't law enforcement agencies have psychic detective squads, a real X-Files Unit, or other ways to integrate these paranormal investigative capabilities."

"One troublesome aspect is the place of rational expectations macroeconomics in the often political debate over Keynesian economics. At least implicitly, many people feel that what's bad for the rational expectations viewpoint is good for the Keynesian one, and vice versa. But it is hard to see how the problems in using the rational expectations approach to explain monetary nonneutrality can alleviate the theoretical and empirical shortcomings of the Keynesian model."

"Using the popular macroeconomic models of the time, Lucas and Sargent showed how replacing traditional assumptions about expectations formation by the assumption of rational expectations could fundamentally alter the results. … Most macroeconomists today use rational expectations as a working assumption in their models and analyses of policy. This is not because they believe that people always have rational expectations. Surely there are times when people, firms, or financial market participants lose sight of reality and become too optimistic or too pessimistic. … But these are more the exception than the rule, and it is not clear that economists can say much about those times anyway. When thinking about the likely effects of a particular economic policy, the best assumption to make seems to be that financial markets, people, and firms will do the best they can to work out the implications of that policy. Designing a policy on the assumption that people will make systematic mistakes in responding to it is unwise."

"So monetary policy decisions tend to regress toward the mean and to be inertial—and hence biased in just the same way that adaptive expectations are biased relative to rational expectations. But errors like that, while systematic, will generally be small and will tend to shrink over time. And, in return, the system builds in natural safeguards against truly horrendous mistakes."

"Most mainstream macroeconomic theoretical innovations since the 1970s (the New Classical rational expectations revolution associated with such names as Robert E. Lucas Jr., Edward Prescott, Thomas Sargent, Robert Barro etc, and the New Keynesian theorizing of Michael Woodford and many others) have turned out to be self-referential, inward-looking distractions at best. Research tended to be motivated by the internal logic, intellectual sunk capital and esthetic puzzles of established research programmes rather than by a powerful desire to understand how the economy works – let alone how the economy works during times of stress and financial instability. So the economics profession was caught unprepared when the crisis struck."

"Its development of Mises’s theory of action anticipated much of the rational expectations idea that would later win Robert Lucas a Nobel Prize."

"The current macroeconometrics literature has proposed two ways to confront general equilibrium rational expectations models with data. The first, an estimation approach, is the direct descendant of the econometric methodology proposed 50 years ago by Haavelmo (1944). The second, a calibration approach, finds its justification in the work of Frisch (1933) and is closely linked to the computable general equilibrium literature surveyed e.g. in Shoven and Whalley (1984)."

"The reason is that the second order properties induced by similar general equilibrium models are, in general, so different from those of actual data that some authors (e.g. Campbell and Shiller 1987, Frankel and Froot 1987) have concluded that the simple version of the rational expectations-efficient market hypothesis is severely flawed."

"The Keynesian econometric methodology developed by Klein and associates was criticized by Lucas in his 1976 “Critique of Econometric Policy Evaluation” on the grounds that microfounded structural equations should contain expectations of future variables. Since the parameters of these expectations should depend on the parameters of the rules followed by the policy authorities, Lucas argued that the rational expectations assumption would invalidate the practice of using fixed parameter models as policy guides. The profession responded to the Lucas critique in two different ways. The first, introduced to economists in the book Rational Expectations and Econometric Practice, was to develop appropriate econometric methods to estimate parameters in rational expectations environments. The second, explained most clearly in Kydland and Prescott’s (1996) article, “The Computational Experiment,” was to develop a new methodology,calibration, that lowered the standards of what it means for a model to be successful by requiring that a good model should explain only a limited set of empirical moments."

"The rational expectations revolution of the 1970s threw out the textbook Keynesian apparatus because it did not cope well with the simultaneous appearance of high inflation and high unemployment in the 1970s. But the model could not have been rejected so quickly on empirical grounds if it was not already on weak theoretical foundations."

"In the early 1970s,... economists began to embrace the Rational Expectations Hypothesis (REH), according to which market participants’ expectations are “essentially the same as the predictions of the relevant economic theory” (Muth 1961: 316). What has been largely overlooked is that, … REH theorists presume that the role of market participants’ expectations in driving outcomes is not autonomous from the other components of the model. … Because REH models, by design, rule out an autonomous role for expectations, they are best viewed as derailing, rather than developing, the microfoundations approach."

"Nonetheless, as Paul Krugman’s popular writings have indicated,economists’ confidence in their ability to guide the economy and to advance the commonweal had significantly weakened after Heller’s 1965 Godkin Lectures, mentioned earlier. The discovery of the “natural rate of unemployment” and development of the theory of rational expectations revealed the limitations of economists’ macroeconomic policy tools.[The doctrine of rational expectations posits that the market will always anticipate government policy and will neutralize its intended effects.] Moreover, Krugman bemoaned the fact that “policy entrepreneurs” frequently displaced economists in providing economic advice to society. Referring to supply-side economics and other questionable economic doctrines, Krugman, using less than elegant words, suggested that a major task for economists must be “to flush such economic cockroaches down the toilet."

"The attack on Keynesian economics in the 1960s and 1970s by monetarists and by the theory of rational expectations undermined the intellectual foundations of development economics. The essence of this criticism was that there is only one economics, and that economics is a universal science equally applicable to all societies."

"The original Lucas version of the new-classical macroeconomics combined the undeniable appeal of rational expectations with two more dubious assumptions inherited from Friedman (1968), that is, continuous market clearing and imperfect information, to form the foundation of the famous “Lucas supply function” (more justly, the Friedman-Lucas supply function). Soon Sargent and Wallace (1975) extracted from Lucas’s model its implication for monetary policy, the famous “policy-ineffectiveness proposition.” The demonstration by Barro (1977) that one could interpret historical U.S. data to be consistent with the proposition and the theory brought new-classical economics to its shortlived period of peak influence."

"A contrast with John Taylor’s approach to investigating the properties of models is instructive. Taylor’s research program includes the use of computational experiments. It is well summarized in his recent book (Taylor, 1993). Like Kydland and Prescott, Taylor relies on fully specified dynamic models and imposes rational expectations when computing stochastic equilibria. However, in fitting linear models he uses all of the information on first and second moments available in the macro data when it is computationally possible to do so. The econometric methods used in parameter estimation are precisely described. Multiple sources of business cycle shocks are admitted into the model at the outset, and rigorous empirical testing of models appears throughout his analyses."

"Friedman’s monetarist model is distinguished from Lucas’s new classical monetary model in that Friedman imagines that people can be systematically mistaken about the true state of real wages for relatively long periods, while Lucas argues that people have rational expectations (i.e., they make only unsystematic mistakes) and, therefore, correct their judgments about the real wage quickly."

"Unlike in the Solow model, the factors important to the savings decision now enter separately from those important to the investment decision. Aggregate demand pathologies are, nonetheless, impossible, because in Lucas’s model the same agents make both the savings and the investment decision, which insures ex ante coordination, and the agents have rational expectations, which insures that mistakes about the future course of the economy are necessarily unsystematic. Furthermore, the supply of labor responds elastically to temporarily high real wages: workers make hay while the sun shines."

"Households’ decisions are more complicated: given their initial capital stock, agents determine how much labor to supply and how much consumption and investment to purchase. These choices are made in order to maximize the expected value of lifetime utility. Households must forecast the future path of wages and the rental rate of capital. It is assumed that these forecasts are made rationally. A rational expectations equilibrium consists of sequences for consumption, capital, labor, output, wages, and the rental rate of capital such that factor and output markets clear."

"I could tell you a story about my friend and colleague Milton Friedman. In the nineteen-seventies, we were sitting in the Ph.D. oral examination of a Chicago economist who has gone on to make his mark in the world. His thesis was on rational expectations. After he’d left, Friedman turned to me and said, “Look, I think it is a good idea, but these guys have taken it way too far.”It became a kind of tautology that had enormously powerful policy implications, in theory. But the fact is, it didn’t have any empirical content. When Tom Sargent, Lard Hansen, and others tried to test it using cross equation restrictions, and so on, the data rejected the theories. There were a certain section of people that really got carried away. It became quite stifling."

"In models of the use of information by rational agents, it is generally assumed that all will interpret the same signals in the same way. In the extreme case of the ‘rational expectations hypothesis’, it is held that through mere data-gathering, agents will become aware of the basic, underlying structure and mechanisms of the economy. This hypothesis likewise neglects the conceptual framing involved in the perception of data and the theory-bound character of all observation."

"The whole of academic macroeconomics is touched by the rational expectations hypothesis. Althought it has been criticized on conceptual grounds and as emprically inadequate, the rational expectations hypothesis sets a noncontroversial standard for modeling expectations in macroeconomics."

"Muth is the Rosseau of the rational expectations revolution; Lucas is its Robespierre."

"Along with the shift in focus to investigating the sources and nature of business cycles, aggregate analysis underwent a methodological revolution. Previously, empirical knowledge had been organized in the form of equations, as was also the case for the early rational expectations models. Muth (1960), in his pioneering work on rational expectations, did not break with this system-of-equations tradition. For that reason, his econometric program did not come to dominate. Instead, the program which has prevailed is the one that organizes empirical knowledge around preferences, technology, information structure, and policy rules or arrangements. Sargent (1981) has led the development of tools for inferring values of parameters characterizing these elements, given the behavior of the aggregate time series. As a result, aggregate economics is no longer a separate and entirely different field from the rest of economics; it now uses the same tools and empirical knowledge as other branches of economics, such as finance, growth theory, public finance, and international economics. With this development, measurements and quantitative findings in those other fields can be used to restrict models of business cycles and make our knowledge about the quantitative importance of cyclical disturbances more precise."

"Under perfect foresight (rational expectations), a regime of sequential loan markets and spot markets in labor services also supports the optimal solution as a competitive equilibrium."

"At this point, readers may want to take a deep breath. Lucas's conclusions are far more sweeping than anything Friedman proposed, and his chain of logic seems much longer. Is it necessarily right? The short answer is, of course, no. There are at least two weak links in the chain. The first is the proposition that a recession lasts only as long as firms are confused about the actual economic situation—in effect, that you can have a recession only as long as most people don't notice. This idea was implicit in the way that Friedman presented his natural rate argument, but it is something that few people other than economists find plausible (and it is possible to accept Friedman's views about stagflation without fully buying his notion that monetary policy works only by fooling people). The second weak link is the whole idea that firms set their prices by closely watching monetary policy or, worse yet, macroeconomic indicators that might help predict monetary policy."

"In the late 1970s Lucas and his disciples worked feverishly, attempting to produce theoretical models in which firms and households can observe stock prices and interest rates, yet still be subject of the kind of rational confusion needed to create booms and slumps. They failed. The theory underlying a rational expectations business cycle just didn't work out. At the same time, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the rational expectation story didn't work in practice either. Here the difficulty is easier to explain: economic slumps last too long."

"The hypothesis was more or less buried during the '60s. Arrow used it in his paper on learning-by-doing in the '60s. Prescott and I used it in that paper of ours on investment. People were aware of it, I didn't understand then how fundamental a difference it mad econometrically. I didn't realize that if you took it seriously you had to rethink the whole question of testing and estimation. I guess no one else did either, except for Muth."

"Leonard Rapping’s and my contribution to that volume was a partial equilibrium model of the labor market only. The idea was that agents had to base production and employment decisions on partial information and that this could lead them to decisions that to an omniscient observer would appear pathological. The new elements in my paper, relative to Phelps’s outline, were its mathematical explicitness and its use of rational expectations. The example developed in the paper made it clear that the possibility of using monetary policy to stimulate production would depend on the information people have and could not be reliably described by a stable Phillips curve. But attempts to construct quantitative models of recessions based on this feature alone have not succeeded."

"The "rational expectations" school holds that agents do not know the future, but they formulate their expectations on the basis of a satisfactory knowledge (i.e., a theory) of how the economy functions. If we add propositions to the effect that each agent's decisions are based on its maintained theory of system behavior, that general equilibrium theory is an apt representation of the world, and that those whose behavior is consistent with this apt theory will be successful, then an equilibrium and equilibrating view of the economy emerges. … If the economy does not conform to the general equilibrium theory, if it is endogenously unstable, and if units behave accordingly, then rational expectations will exacerbate instability."

"Macro rational expectations, as I have labeled the hypothesis, seems to say that expectations in an economist's model must be perfectly consistent with his model that embodies these expectations. In other words, the agents of his model must all share his views of the relevant economic mechanisms, as well as his data. Why? Because if he holds them they must believe they are God's truth and, if so, rational people can have no other views (and of course we should never ask how they would come by these views and data, that not even other specialists may have heard of yet, let alone accepted). I submit that this view is pretty absurd--I would almost say offensive! I certainly believe that I know more about economics and the economy than (almost) everybody else, and i can even prove it: If everybody shared my vies, then the economy could not be in today's troubles (though it might conceivably be in some different ones!)."

"Interestingly, recent research shows that herd behavior is consistent with rational expectations when information is imperfect, though the extent of the herd behavior may well be greater than can be explained by these models. The essential reason for volatility in financial markets, as emphasized by Keynes, is that market players respond to expectations. The value of any asset today depends on what others are expected to be willing to pay for it tomorrow, and that depends in turn (in a never ending chain) on what others are expected to be willing to pay the day after. These expectations are based on information about current conditions. Such information is inherently incomplete and costly to process. This makes it rational for everyone to glean information about the desirability of investing from the opinions and actions of others."

"Without capital markets extending infinitely far into the future, the economy will not necessarily converge to the long run equilibrium. There are paths which are dynamically consistent with rational expectations in the short run. While herding behavior is often attributed to investor myopia, these results suggest that bubbles may arise so long as investors do not look infinitely far into the future. However, even when investors look infinitely far into the future, it may not be possible for them to predict (on the basis of rational expectations alone) how the economy will evolve, if, for instance, there are multiple paths consistent with rational expectations."

"The stampede toward “rational expectations”—widely thought to be a “revolution,” though it was only a generalization of the neoclassical idea of equilibrium—derailed the expectations-driven model building that had just left the station. In the end, this way of modeling has not illuminated how the world economy works."

"A still more extreme thesis is proposed by rational expectations theoreticians, among whom is the American Robert Lucas (b. 1937, Nobel prize in 1995). In a 1972 article, Lucas joined the assumption of markets in continuous equilibrium with that of rational expectations, originally formulated by Muth (1961), according to which ‘expectations [...] are essentially the same as the predictions of the relevant economic theory’. As a consequence, economic agents learn to take account of public intervention in the economy, discounting its effects beforehand. Thus, for instance, deficit public expenditure, that is not financed by a contemporary increase in taxation, adopted by the government to stimulate aggregate demand, is counterbalanced by a reduction in private consumption, decided by private economic agents to put aside the savings with which to pay for the taxes which sooner or later will have to be introduced to pay for the public debt with which public expenditure is financed. In this context, the Phillips curve turns out to be vertical also in the short run: expansionary monetary and fiscal policy interventions may only produce an increase in the rate of inflation, not in the level of employment. … The rational expectations assumption, in the usual context of a one commodity model, also underlies a new theory of the trade cycle, the ‘real cycle theory’. After dominating the scene in the 1980s, in the following decade rational expectations theory gradually lost ground, even if in the theoretical confrontation with representatives of the neoclassical synthesis the shaky nature of its theoretical foundations – the one-commodity model, common to their rivals too – has not been stressed."

"These ideas have implications not only for theoretical and econometric practices but also for the ways in which policymakers and their advisers think about the choices confronting them. In particular, the rational expectations approach directs attention away from particular isolated actions and toward choices among feasible rules of the game, or repeated strategies for choosing policy variables. While Keynesian and monetarists macroeconomic models have been used to try to analyze what the effects of isolated actions would be, it is now clear that the answers they have given have necessarily been bad, if only because such questions are ill-posed."

"I was reminded of how much I had misjudged the potential the profession would see in the time series rational expectations models. When I, as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) around 1970 did some work on the econometrics of rational expectations time series models, I felt rather apologetic about the extreme assumptions in the models. I did not expect others to regard them as anything more than a passing gimmick. Richard Sutch had just written in his MIT doctoral dissertation (1968) an exposition of the coefficient restrictions implied for time series representations of long-term and short-term interest rates, but he never bothered to publish this work. I remember conversations with him and others about rational expectations models, and I did not come away thinking they were the wave of the future."

"Neither historical experiences nor rational expectations models provide much guidance as to how market participants’ expectations will respond in any particular situation. Each situation has its own distinctive characteristics, and there is ample evidence that many market participants’ expectations do not conform to the strictures of the rational expectations hypothesis, whatever they might imply in these situations, each of which appear to be sui generis."

"Market valuations can differ substantially and persistently from the rational expectation of the present value of cash flows without leaving statistically discernible traces in the pattern of ex-post returns."

"I conclude by listing several main points of this essay: 1. Human capital is of great importance in the modern economy. 2. Human capital has become of much greater significance during the past two decades. 3. Human capital is crucial to the international division of labor. 4. Much unmeasured learning goes on in companies and by adults. 5. People need to invest in themselves during their whole lives. 6. Distance learning will become of crucial importance to the teaching and learning process. 7. Human capital stimulates technological innovations and the high-tech sector."

"While human capital can take many forms, there is a tendency of some to equate it with formal education. However, not only may many other valuable forms of human capital be overlooked this way, the value of formal schooling may be exaggerated and its counterproductive consequences in some cases not understood."

"A gain in social science is now the richness and variety of the types of inquiry that we undertake, and the fact that it is a worldwide discipline, which is enormously enriching this field. The cost of all of this is that as we grow more specialized, it becomes more and more difficult for anybody to grasp broad areas of the field. As we grow more specialized we may be less and less sensitive to aspects of the world that are outside of our speciality. Much as I respect aspects of rational choice theory, to see that as somehow a dominant way of thinking would be a terrible blunder, because, as I say, it’s important, but it cannot encompass the empirical variety and complexity of the world. Nothing can. But it can’t be done by rational choice. That can be a part, it should be a part, but social science is a much broader enterprise. It’s got to be."

"The theory of rational action may therefore fail, because it is unable to produce unique prescriptions and predictions. It may also fail if the agents’ behavior does not conform to predictions, whether these are unique or not; that is, if the agents are irrational. There are multiple sources of irrationality, hot or cold."

"We too are confused. Conventional economic reasoning today—ostensibly bloodied but apparently quite unbowed by its inability either to foresee or prevent the banking collapse—describes human behavior in terms of ‘rational choice’. We are all, it asserts, economic beings. We pursue our self-interest (defined as maximized economic advantage) with minimal reference to extraneous criteria such as altruism, self-denial, taste, cultural habit or collective purpose. Supplied with sufficient and correct information about ‘markets’—whether real ones or institutions for the sale and purchase of stocks and bonds—we shall make the best possible choices to our separate and common advantage."

"In general, social scientists overestimate the role of intentional human design in human affairs. This is especially true among economists and political scientists who employ the rational choice models economists have developed over the last century or so."

"Making movies has become such a golden ring, and it's all such a big business, that the rewards system has gotten totally out of whack. Suddenly, you're treated in a manner befitting someone who is actually an important person."

"War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels."

"Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes."

"Big business' was a bad phrase in India. To be accused of being big business was the worst accusation you could make. All that has gone now. The whole mindset has changed."

"Increasingly, our large corporations have been abusing the awesome power that they have amassed. [...] This abuse of power shows itself in many ways. Particularly disturbing have been the efforts of the corporations to conscript the political process for their own benefit through their large financial contributions, both legal and illegal. Although corporate political influence became more pronounced under President Ronald Reagan, it has long exercised a heavy hand over the , the Congress, and the state governments. Former top corporate executives often hold many of the most powerful cabinet and top agency positions in the executive branch of government. Politicians listen when large corporations speak. They have enormous advantages in influencing political decision-makers."

"We will not have our loved ones killed to protect big business. We will not tolerate their lies, cover-ups and negligence."

"We believe that there is one economic lesson which our twentieth century experience has demonstrated conclusively—that America can no more survive and grow without big business than it can survive and grow without small business…. the two are interdependent. You cannot strengthen one by weakening the other, and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the legs of a giant."

"While big business gain subsidies and political access, small businesses drown in red tape, and individuals now risk being classified as terrorists for complaining about it. Economic globalisation is about homogenising differences in the worlds' markets, cultures, tastes and traditions. It's about giving big business access to a global market."

"The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business."

"Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before, it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill, and now hacking is big business."

"Big business increasingly likes to portray itself as socially concerned, adopting the style of civic action through 'campaigns' of varying degrees of cynicism."

"Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret."

"We demand that big business give people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right, he shall himself be given a square deal."

"Big businesses can be big in different ways. They can be big absolutely, like Wal-Mart— with billions of dollars in sales annually, making it the biggest business in the nation— without selling more than a modest percentage of the total merchandise in its industry as a whole. Other businesses can be big in the sense of making a high percentage of all the sales in its industry, as Microsoft does with sales of operating systems for personal computers around the world. There are major economic differences between bigness in these two senses. An absolute monopoly in one industry may be smaller in size than a much larger company in another industry where there are numerous competitors."

"Most big businesses are not monopolies and not all monopolies are big business. In the days before the automobile and the railroad, a general store in an isolated rural community could easily be the only store for miles around, and was as much of a monopoly as any corporation on the Fortune 500 list, even though the general store was usually an enterprise of very modest size. Conversely, today even multi-billion-dollar nationwide grocery chains like Safeway or Kroger have too many competitors to be able to set prices on the goods they sell the way a monopolist would set prices on those goods."

"The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses."

"The Internet is the Viagra of big business."

"Government or politics in America today is big business. Everybody makes money involving themselves in one way or the other, whether it's pollsters, whether they are policy wonks, whether they are pundits, whether they are those who believe that they must call it as they see it and then to be fair about it."

"The motives of the men who fostered the English ... granted the national egotism of mercantilist policy, perfectly proper: they were designated to impede the carrying trade of Britain's rivals, expand English carrying trade, foster a larger navy, and make of England an entrepôt for colonial goods. ...Viewed from the American angle, the Navigation Acts forced our ships to stop in England and transship their cargoes onto British vessels, wherever we had destined the cargoes and whatever the costs and inconvenience... Steps were taken to impede the construction of American ships. When they were built, other regulations hindered their trade in the ports of other British colonies. To the English, all was quite fair, since the role assigned to the colony was the production of raw materials, not an independent merchant marine or its own finished goods. ...The American Revolution was as much a war against mercantilism as a war for freedom."

"Here then we may learn the fallacy of the remark... that any particular state is weak, though fertile, populous, and well cultivated, merely because it wants money. It appears that the want of money can never injure any state within itself: For men and commodities are the real strength of any community. It is the simple manner of living which here hurts the public, by confining the gold and silver to few hands, and preventing its universal diffusion and circulation. On the contrary, industry and refinements of all kinds incorporate it with the whole state, however small its quantity may be: They digest it into every vein, so to speak; and make it enter into every transaction and contract."

"The purposes of the mercantilists were not the same as those of modern economists. Mercantilists were concerned with increasing the power of their own respective nations relative to that of other nations. Their goal was not the allocation of scarce resources in a way that would maximize the standard of living of the people at large. Their goal was gaining or maintaining a national competitive advantage in aggregate wealth and power over other nations, so as to be able to prevail in war, if war occurred, or to deter potential enemies by one’s obvious wealth that could be turned to military purposes. A hoard of gold was ideal for their purposes."

"Mercantilists were by no means focused on the average standard of living of the population as a whole. Thus the repression of wages by imposing government control was considered by them to be a way of lowering the costs of exports, creating a surplus of exports over imports, which would bring in gold. The promotion of imperialism and even slavery was acceptable to some mercantilists for the same reason. The “nation” to them did not mean a country’s whole population. Thus Sir James Steuart could write in 1767 of “a whole nation fed and provided for gratuitously” by means of slavery. Although slaves were obviously part of the population, they were not considered to be part of the nation."

"If there were an Economist's Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations 'I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage' and 'I advocate Free Trade'"

"The idea of comparative advantage—with its implication that trade between two nations normally raises the real incomes of both—is, like evolution via natural selection, a concept that seems simple and compelling to those who understand it. Yet anyone who becomes involved in discussions of international trade beyond the narrow circle of academic economists quickly realizes that it must be, in some sense, a very difficult concept indeed."

"Comparative advantage is not just a theory but a very important fact in the history of many nations. It has been more than a century since Great Britain produced enough food to feed its people. Britons have been able to get enough to eat only because the country has concentrated its efforts on producing those things in which it has had a comparative advantage, such as manufacturing, shipping, and financial services— and using the proceeds to buy food from other countries. British consumers ended up better fed and with more manufactured goods than if the country grew enough of its own food to feed itself. Since the real costs of anything that is produced are the other things that could have been produced with the same efforts, it would cost the British too much industry and commerce to transfer enough resources into agriculture to become self-sufficient in food. They are better off getting food from some other country whose comparative advantage is in agriculture,even if that other country’s farmers are not as efficient as British farmers."

"The key to Public Choice, as you said earlier, is common sense. And common sense tells you that a politician is very much like the rest of us. A politician who's seeking office or seeking to remain in office is responsible, as he should be, to constituents. He wants to go back to a constituency and tell them that he's either lowered their taxes, or he's brought them program benefits. You plug that into politics and you have a natural proclivity of a politician to create deficits."

"Public choice did not emerge from some profoundly new insight, some new discovery, some social science miracle. Public choice, in its basic insights into the workings of politics, in corporates an understanding of human nature that differs little, if at all, from that of James Madison and his colleagues at the time of the American Founding. The essential wisdom of the 18th century, of Adam Smith and classical political economy and of the American Founders, was lost through two centuries of intellectual folly. Public choice does little more than incorporate a rediscovery of this wisdom and its implications into economic analyses of modern politics."

"[Economic thinking] influenced it in the sense that that kind of abstract thinking and models, while I felt they often bore too little relation to the reality and the complexity of economic life, they provided a degree of rigor. Political systems are I think more complicated than economics, and political behavior is more complicated than economic behavior; nevertheless, economics provided the kind of model or hope of a model that we could make use of for increased rigor in political science."

"Public Choice and Classical Marxism have very similar theories of the state, and very similar predictions about the actions of those who seek to control it."

"Public Choice theory is really the Marxist theory of the state, and the associated political program is really Leninism."

"The Principle of Legitimacy tells us that the sum of these deadweight losses is less than the legislature's estimate of the gains from the redistribution of income, but Legitimacy does not tell us that these are desirable transfers, i.e, that one dollar taken from the general consumer and given to a well-paid employee of the merchant marine constitutes a net increase in the utility of the nation. If I challenge this interpretation, all that I will be doing is asserting that George Stigler's tastes are not those of the Congress, and who, besides myself, cares about that? Indeed, even I have become reconciled to the fact that American society does not fully share my preferences."

"Higher labor costs reduce employment. That is why President Clinton's proposal to raise the federal minimum wage should be rejected. A higher minimum will further reduce the employment opportunities of workers with few skills."

"Nearly 50 years ago, George Stigler implored economists to be “outspoken and singularly agreed” that increases in the minimum wage reduce employment. The reasoning behind this prediction is simple and compelling. According to the model presented in nearly every introductory economics textbook, an increase in the minimum wage lowers the employment of minimum-wage workers. This logic has convinced most economists: polls show that more than 90 percent of professional economists agree with the prediction that a higher minimum wage reduces employment. Such a high degree of consensus is remarkable among a profession renowned for its bitter disagreements. But there is one problem: the evidence is not singularly agreed that increases in the minimum wage reduce employment. This book presents a new body of evidence showing that recent minimum wage increases have not had the negative employment effects predicted by the textbook model. Some of the new evidence points toward a positive effect of the minimum wage on employment; most shows no effect at all. Moreover, a reanalysis of previous minimum wage studies finds little support for the prediction that minimum wages reduce employment. If accepted, our findings call into question the standard model of the labor market that has dominated economists’ thinking for the past half century."

"Women, teen-agers, Negroes and particularly Negro teen-agers, will be especially hard hit. I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect not its intent. It is a tragic but undoubted legacy of the past—and one we must try to correct—that on the average Negroes have lower skills than whites. Similarly, teen-agers are less skilled than older workers. Both Negroes and teen-agers are only made worse off by discouraging employers from hiring them. On the-job training—the main route whereby the unskilled have become skilled—is thus denied them."

"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..."

"June 19, 2013, Bloomberg published an article I wrote called "The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage." The good people at Forbes magazine, among my biggest admirers, called it "Nick Hanauer's near-insane proposal." And yet, just 350 days after that article was published, Seattle's Mayor Ed Murray signed into law an ordinance raising the minimum wage in Seattle to 15 dollars an hour, more than double what the prevailing federal $7.25 rate is. How did this happen, reasonable people might ask. It happened because a group of us reminded the middle class that they are the source of growth and prosperity in capitalist economies. We reminded them that when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, and need more employees. We reminded them that when businesses pay workers a living wage, taxpayers are relieved of the burden of funding the poverty programs like food stamps and medical assistance and rent assistance that those workers need. We reminded them that low-wage workers make terrible taxpayers, and that when you raise the minimum wage for all businesses, all businesses benefit yet all can compete."

"I know that most people think that the $15 minimum wage is this insane, risky economic experiment. We disagree. We believe that the $15 minimum wage in Seattle is actually the continuation of a logical economic policy. It is allowing our city to kick your city's ass. Because, you see, Washington state already has the highest minimum wage of any state in the nation. We pay all workers $9.32, which is almost 30 percent more than the federal minimum of 7.25, but crucially, 427 percent more than the federal tipped minimum of 2.13. If trickle-down thinkers were right, then Washington state should have massive unemployment. Seattle should be sliding into the ocean. And yet, Seattle is the fastest-growing big city in the country. Washington state is generating small business jobs at a higher rate than any other major state in the nation. The restaurant business in Seattle? Booming. Why? Because the fundamental law of capitalism is, when workers have more money, businesses have more customers and need more workers. When restaurants pay restaurant workers enough so that even they can afford to eat in restaurants, that's not bad for the restaurant business. That's good for it, despite what some restaurateurs may tell you."

"Neoliberal economic assumption number one is that the market is an efficient equilibrium system, which basically means that if one thing in the economy, like wages, goes up, another thing in the economy, like jobs, must go down. So for example, in Seattle, where I live, when in 2014 we passed our nation's first 15 dollar minimum wage, the neoliberals freaked out over their precious equilibrium. "If you raise the price of labor," they warned, "businesses will purchase less of it. Thousands of low-wage workers will lose their jobs. The restaurants will close." Except ... they didn't. The unemployment rate fell dramatically. The restaurant business in Seattle boomed. Why? Because there is no equilibrium. Because raising wages doesn't kill jobs, it creates them; because, for instance, when restaurant owners are suddenly required to pay restaurant workers enough so that now even they can afford to eat in restaurants, it doesn't shrink the restaurant business, it grows it, obviously."

"Over the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world. And yet, as middle class families struggle to get by on wages that have not budged in about 40 years, neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization."

"I... use my money to build narratives and to pass laws that will require all the other rich people to pay taxes and pay their workers better. And so, for example, the 15-dollar minimum wage that we cooked up has now affected 30 million workers. So that works better."

"What could be crueler than denying someone just starting out in life the chance to work, to learn skills, and to open new horizons? The disastrous results of minimum wage laws are used by enemies of the free market to discredit the free market. Minimum wage laws help no one. They harm the economy, they spread poverty, and they kill dreams. Minimum wage laws are cruel, and they are a fraud on the poor and the disadvantaged. They must be abolished."

"Even though most studies show that unemployment tends to increase as minimum wages are imposed or increased, those few studies that seem to indicate otherwise have been hailed in some quarters as having “refuted” this “myth.” However, one common problem with some research on the employment effects of minimum wage laws is that surveys of employers before and after a minimum wage increase can survey only those particular businesses which survived in both periods. Given the high rates of business failures in many industries, the results for the surviving businesses may be completely different from the results for the industry as a whole. Using such research methods, you could interview people who have played Russian roulette and “prove” from their experiences that it is a harmless activity, since those for whom it was not harmless are unlikely to be around to be interviewed. Thus you would have “refuted” the “myth” that Russian roulette is dangerous."

"The minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards act of 1938 have been repealed by inflation. Many voices are now taking up the cry for a higher minimum, say, of 60 to 75 cents per hour. Economists have not been very outspoken on this type of legislation. It is my fundamental thesis that they can and should be outspoken, and singularly agreed. The popular objective of minimum wage legislation-the elimination of extreme poverty-is not seriously debatable. The important questions are rather (1) Does such legislation diminish poverty? (2) Are there efficient alternatives? The answers are, if I am not mistaken, unusually definite for questions of economic policy. If this is so, these answers should be given."

"Allegedly, it is the mathematical elegance of the New-Classical economists that accounts for their widespread appeal to the mainstream of technically trained young economists. This observation is entirely correct but ironic. The cult of admiration for mathematically elegant economic models is the product of the so-called Keynesian revolution. Rivals to Keynesian orthodoxy had always been scoffed at because they lacked such mathematical rigor. It seems that Orthodox Keynesianism has died upon the sword by which it once lived. To Austrian economists, of course, the irony is hardly comforting: the Rational-Expectations/New-Classical school may have beaten the Orthodox Keynesians at their own game, but the game was not worth playing. Moreover, the game itself distracts from the serious task of building an understanding of economic events."

"It seems that the New-Classical economists have shown us that the world of human action is not as simple as Orthodox Keynesians saw it, while the Neo-Keynesians have shown us that the world is not as simple as the New-Classical economists see it."

"Some of the new classical economists are extremely ideological. If you give them evidence, for example, that fully anticipated money matters, evidence counter to their world view, they say that you're wrong. And if you say that their evidence is wrong, they'll say you're wrong again. I give up! Barro once said to me that there isn't any evidence in the world that fiscal policy is effective. Just open your eyes and see episodes of tax cutting and government-spending increases. How about World War II? That had big effects on real output. His response? ... He sometimes shrugs, he sometimes gives a clearer alternative explanation. Sargent is much more serious. He doesn't come to these economic views from a rigidly maintained ideological position. He's a sort of tinkerer, playing an intellectual game. He looks at a puzzle to see if he can solve it in a particular way, exercising these fancy techniques. That's his thing, so to speak. I think Lucas is a blend of those two, actually. He's not extreme as Barro, he's more open. And he's not quite as technical as Sargent."

"For a period of roughly 35 years, Keynesian theory provided a central paradigm for macroeconomists, and considerable progress was made on several empirical fronts. It was widely recognized that some of the ingredients of Keynesian economics (e.g. money illusion and/or nominal wage rigidity) rested on slender to non-existent microtheoretic foundations; and there were always dissenters. But, thought of as a collection of empirical regularities that fit together into a coherent whole, the theory worked tolerably well. In the 1970s, however, the Keynesian paradigm was rejected by a great many academic economists, especially in the United States, in favour of what we now call new classical economics. By about 1980, it was hard to find an American academic macroeconomist under the age of 40 who professed to be a Keynesian. That was an astonishing intellectual turnabout in less than a decade, an intellectual revolution for sure."

"The recent flourishing of New Classical economics, and especially its Equilibrium Business Cycle Theory (EBCT), has given a fresh hearing to the Old—but still developing—Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). While the New and the Old differ radically in both substance and methods, they exhibit a certain formal congruency that has captured the attention of both schools. The formal similarities between EBCT and ABCT invites a point-by-point comparison, but the comparison itself dramatizes differences between the two views in a way that adds to the integrity and plausibility of the Austrian theory."

"Since the late 1960s macroeconomic debates in the United States have centered on the competing interpretations of the new classical and new Keynesian macroeconomics. The initial new classical model developed in the early 1970s by Robert E. Lucas, Jr., combined market-clearing, imperfect information, and rational expectations. After much testing, it was eventually rejected in the late 1970s for failing to explain why business cycles lasted on average four years while information delays lasted only a few weeks. It was soon replaced by a second new classical approach, the Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, which was also based on continuous market clearing and competitive equilibrium, but now generated the business cycle through serially correlated procyclical technology shocks."

"Of course the Keynesians did not sit still for these developments. They recognized and accepted many of the counterarguments made by Friedman and the New Classicals. However, the general strategy of the socalled New Keynesians was to point out that various informational limitations and rigidities inherent in real-world markets prevent markets from achieving the equilibria that the New Classical models were built upon. As a result, argued the New Keynesians, government intervention might improve upon the free market by virtue of government's supposedly superior information and ability to take advantage of those rigidities and push the economy closer to that equilibrium. So New Keynesians share many of the same underlying assumptions as the New Classicals, they simply believe that in some (if not many) cases markets alone are unable to reach the equilibrium that the New Classicals believe they can."

"I don't think that monopolistic behavior] is crucial to business cycles. I'll give you an example: In a competitive model, prices are never a decision variable; they're always parameters in people's decision problems. When you're informally telling these rational expectations stories, thought, it's much more natural to think of prices being a decision variable. So somebody sets a price, and then inventories or sales give them the signal as to what's happening to demand. You put some goods on the shelf at a particular price, and if demand is high you hear about that because you sell a lot more at that price than you expected to. So it would be nice to write down formal models in which price is a decision variable."

"An anonymous referee for another journal severely criticized my inclusion of Say's Law as a key explanatory component of the macroeconomic problem as currently understood. He/she characterized Say's Law as a "worthless piece of economic dogma," adding that "the only way in which Say's Law has shaped the corpus of macro theory is by being comprehensively rejected by Keynes and everyone else to come since." Nevertheless, a modern-day disciple of Keynes recently conceded that "mainstream macroeconomics remains conflicted about the reintroduction of Say's Law" (Lance Taylor, in Epstein, p. 540), a statement that indirectly seems to concede that the New Classicals (Barro, Lucas, Sargent, etc.) have had an impact that is displeasing to those who, like the aforementioned anonymous referee, would prefer to throw Say's Law down George Orwell's knowledge-eradicating "memory hole" (from 1984)."

"An offshoot of the Chicago school is the New Classical school, which uses the concept of "rational expectations" to argue that government policies are ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. Leaders of the New Classical macroeconomics include Robert E. Lucas at the University of Chicago and Thomas J. Sargent at the University of Minnesota. They contend that Keynesians and other proponents of interventionism fail to take into account the reaction of businesses and individuals to their policies. When the expectations of these market participants are taken into account, the impact of systematic government policies is less likely to be felt, while unsystematic government behavior is likely to be deleterious (Lucas and Sargent 1978: 69-70)."

"You could say that [new classical revolution] is as much a revolution against old monetarism as it is against Keynesianism. The disagreement between monetarists and Keynesians was about the value of some parameters. It is not as fundamental a split as we experience now."

"Rational expectations by itself seems to me separable from the assumption of price-cleared markets. It could be used in a model in which quantity adjustments were helping to equate supply and demand. Lucas himself says that he adopts the market clearing assumption because it is convenient, not because it is realistic. [...] The new classicals will also say that if you observe long-term contracts, which on the surface seem to depart from market clearing prices, you can simply reinterpret what market clearing prices are. You reinterpret the demand and supply functions under the constraint of the contracts. But then, they are not able to maintain the strong propositions that they were able to derive from their other models, notably about policy-ineffectiveness."

"The New Classicists are my particular bugabear. They are always telling us that we must suppose that markets are always clearing, that we've got to interpret the business cycle as if markets are always clearing, that we've got to see unemployment as voluntary withholding of labor from the market. But this notion that all markets are clearing, or are close enough to clearing so that we are required to do our reasoning as if they were clearing, has no more merit than a methodology which hardly gets explicitly discussed. … [I]f we are doing macroeconomics—which is concerned with lapses from full coordination, and what accounts for the greater or lesser degree of full coordination in the economy—then these transitional obstacles are the center of the topic. What might be merely a fringe complication set aside in a micro analysis are moved to the very center when we are doing macroeconomics. Yet New Classical economists dismisses all concerns with lapses of coordination and the failure of market so clear completely. It simply wipes away the problem."

"[New classical economics] was the starting point for a rightward shift in economics that went against the idea that monetary policy can improve macroeconomic outcomes."

"There was, however, another approach to justice that also emerged at about the same time in the works of other Enlightenment thinkers – other than the social contract theorists of that period. These theorists did not erect a fully developed structure of a theory of justice, but the ingredients of a different approach – different from the social contract theory – which they helped to identify, can be developed from their alternative understanding of the demands of justice. These theorists (including Adam Smith, the Marquis de Condorcet and Mary Wollstonecraft in the eighteenth century, and extended later to John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, among others) took a variety of approaches that differed in many ways from each other, but shared a common interest in making comparisons between different ways in which people’s lives may go, jointly influenced by the working of institutions, people’s actual behaviour, their social interactions and other factors that significantly impact on what actually happens. My attempt at advancing a theory of justice closely relates to this alternative foundation. The analytical – and rather mathematical – discipline of ‘social choice theory’, which had its origin in the works of French mathematicians in the eighteenth century, in particular the Marquis de Condorcet, but also others like Borda, and which has been revived and reformulated in our times by Kenneth Arrow, also belongs to this second line of investigation."

"In contrast with the ‘social contract’ tradition, a ‘social choice’ approach is concerned with public reasoning – and that can go well beyond national boundaries. There is a strong case for an inclusive effort to bring in the perspectives and values of other people, even when they live far away. Indeed, the inputs into the exercise of invoking of the ‘impartial spectator’ can come from far as well as near, as Smith explained."

"Colander: What’s your view of the New Keynesian approach? Tobin: I’m not sure what that means. If it means people like Greg Mankiw, I don’t regard them as Keynesians. I don’t think they have involuntary unemployment or absence of market clearing. It is a misnomer to call Mankiw any form of Keynesian. Colander: How about real-business-cycle theorists? Tobin: Well, that’s just the enemy."

"Real business cycle theory never got close to the world of policy—not even the most extreme conservative politicians were prepared to tell the American people to welcome recessions as part of the natural and optimal course of events. And instead of spreading its intellectual range, the movement became increasingly ingrown over time. Indeed, one observer described it as becoming like a fringe political movement that successively purges itself of the ideologically impure until only a handful of members are left."

"The other response [to the failure of the Lucas project], by those who had already invested vast effort and their careers in the Lucas project, was to drop the whole original purpose of the project, which was to explain why demand shocks matter. They turned instead to real business cycle models, which asserted that the ups and downs of the economy are caused by technological shocks magnified by rational labor supply responses. Full disclosure: this has always seemed absurd to me; as many have pointed out, the idea that the unemployed during a recession are voluntarily choosing to take time off is something only a professor could believe. But the math was impressive, and RBC became a self-contained, self-replicating intellectual world. [...] The Lesser Depression arrives. It’s clearly not a technological shock; clearly, also, nobody is confused about whether we’re in a slump, as the old Lucas model required."

"Iowa had a Depression too but I don't know if the money supply in Iowa fell during that period. But I guess I'd have to have better reasons man that for giving up on the monetary explanation. The timing and the magnitudes are just right, totally convincing, if you go back and read the Friedman and Schwartz chapter on the Great Depression. But how did it work? We should be able to write down an economic model that kind of explains the workings. How did it happen that bank failures and monetary declines translated into huge movements in employment and production? We just don't have a decent theoretical model. Maybe Rapping and I thought we had, but I don't think we did and I don't think anyone else does now either. I think that has been the problem right along. Is there some other explanation for the 1930s? I don't know. I told Prescott I’d hate to have to rewrite the Friedman and Schwartz book where the role Friedman and Schwartz assigned to monetary collapses is assigned instead to productivity shocks. Where is the productivity shock that cuts output in half in that period? Is it a flood or a hurricane? If it really happened, shouldn’t we be able to see it in the data?"

"Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass. A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. Th shopkeeper runs out, furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begihn to think of this, they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so on, ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in an ever widening circle. The theological conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor. Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little ct of vandalism will, in the first instance, man more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer. The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No one “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involvd, the tailor. They fogot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye"

"So we have finished with the broken window. An elementary fallacy. Anybody, one would think, would be able to avoid it after a few moments’ thought. Yet the broken-window fallacy, under a hundred disguises, is the most persistent in the history of economics. It is more rampant now than at any time in the past. It is solemnly reaffirmed every day by great captains of industry, by chambers of commerce, by labor union leaders, by editorial writers and newspaper columnists and radio commentators, by learned statisticians using the most refined techniques, by professors of economics in our best universities. In their various ways they all dilate upon the advantages of destruction."

"Though some of them would disdain to say that there are net benefits in small acts of destruction, they see almost endless benefits in enormous acts of destruction. They tell us how much better off economically we all are in war than in peace. They see “miracles of production” which it requires a war to achieve. And they see a postwar world made certainly prosperous by an enormous “accumulated” or “backed up” demand. In Europe they joyously count the houses, the whole cities that have been leveled to the ground and that “will have to be replaced.” In America they count the houses that could not be built during the war, the nylon stockings that could not be supplied, the worn-out automobiles and tires, the obsolescent radios and refrigerators. They bring together formidable totals. It is merely our old friend, the broken-window fallacy, in new clothing, and grown fat beyond recognition. This time it is supported by a whole bundle of related fallacies. It confuses need with demand."

"We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race."

"But you have one thing that may save you, and that is your youth. This is your great strength. It is also why I hate and fear you. Hear me out. It has been said that children are our future. But does that not also mean that we are their past? You are here to replace us. I don't understand why we're here helping and honoring them. You do not see union workers holding benefits for robots."

"Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment. Destroyed a thousand times, it has risen a thousand times out of its own ashes as hardy and vigorous as ever. Whenever there is long-continued mass unemployment, machines get the blame anew. This fallacy is still the basis of many labor union practices. The public tolerates these practices because it either believes at bottom that the unions are right, or is too confused to see just why they are wrong. The belief that machines cause unemployment, when held with any logical consistency, leads to preposterous conclusions. Not only must we be causing unemployment with every technological improvement we make today, but primitive man must have started causing it with the first efforts he made to save himself from needless toil and sweat."

"Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women’s overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force. This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it. So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to “pay for itself.” After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment."

"In brief, on net balance, machines, technological improvements, economies and efficiency do not throw men out of work."

"Obama: [M]ost people aren’t spending a lot of time right now worrying about singularity—they are worrying about “Well, is my job going to be replaced by a machine?” I tend to be on the optimistic side—historically we’ve absorbed new technologies, and people find that new jobs are created, they migrate, and our standards of living generally go up. I do think that we may be in a slightly different period now, simply because of the pervasive applicability of AI and other technologies. High-skill folks do very well in these systems. They can leverage their talents, they can interface with machines to extend their reach, their sales, their products and services. Low-wage, low-skill individuals become more and more redundant, and their jobs may not be replaced, but wages are suppressed. And if we are going to successfully manage this transition, we are going to have to have a societal conversation about how we manage this. How are we training and ensuring the economy is inclusive if, in fact, we are producing more than ever, but more and more of it is going to a small group at the top? How do we make sure that folks have a living income? And what does this mean in terms of us supporting things like the arts or culture or making sure our veterans are getting cared for? The social compact has to accommodate these new technologies, and our economic models have to accommodate them."

"Ito: It’s actually nonintuitive which jobs get displaced, because I would bet if you had a computer that understood the medical system, was very good at diagnostics and such, the nurse or the pharmacist is less likely than the doctor to be replaced—they are less expensive. There are actually very high-level jobs, things like lawyers or auditors, that might disappear. Whereas a lot of the service businesses, the arts, and occupations that computers aren’t well suited for won’t be replaced. I don’t know what you think about universal basic income, but as we start to see people getting displaced there’s also this idea that we can look at other models—like academia or the arts, where people have a purpose that isn’t tied directly to money. I think one of the problems is that there’s this general notion of, how can you be smart if you don’t have any money? In academia, I see a lot of smart people without money."

"The spread-the-work schemes, in brief, rest on the same sort of illusion that we have been considering. The people who support such schemes think only of the employment they would provide for particular persons or groups; they do not stop to consider what their whole effect would be on everybody. The spread-the-work schemes rest also, as we began by pointing out, on the false assumption that there is just a fixed amount of work to be done. There could be no greater fallacy. There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied. In a modern exchange economy, the most work will be done when prices, costs, and wages are in the best relations to each other."

"This is not the time for trickle-down solutions. We know that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises."

"Tonight -- tonight, I want to talk about the future of possibilities that we can build together -- a future where the days of trickle-down economics are over and the wealthy and the biggest corporations no longer get the -- all the tax breaks. And, by the way, I understand corporations. I come from a state that has more corporations invested than every one of your states in the state -- the United States combined. And I represented it for 36 years. I'm not anti-corporation. But I grew up in a home where trickle-down economics didn't put much on my dad's kitchen table. That's why I'm determined to turn things around so the middle class does well. When they do well, the poor have a way up and the wealthy still do very well. We all do well. And there's more to do to make sure you're feeling the benefits of all we're doing"

"Now, I don't have all the answers, but I do know the old ways don't work. Trickledown economics has sure failed. And big bureaucracies, both private and public, they've failed too. That's why we need a new approach to government, a government that offers more empowerment and less entitlement. More choices for young people in the schools they attend- in the public schools they attend. And more choices for the elderly and for people with disabilities and the long-term care they receive. A government that is leaner, not meaner; a government that expands opportunity, not bureaucracy; a government that understands that jobs must come from growth in a vibrant and vital system of free enterprise."

"Along came the Republicans, trickle-down economics — one of the worst ideas since snake oil — was put back into place. And we ended up with the great recession. President Obama had to rescue the economy. And I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves for doing that."

"The kind of plan that Donald (Trump) has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. In fact, it would be the most extreme version, the biggest tax cuts for the top percent of the people in this country than we've ever had. I call it trumped-up trickle-down, because that's exactly what it would be. That is not how we grow the economy."

"We've looked at your [Trump's] tax proposals. I don't see changes in the corporate tax rates or the kinds of proposals you're referring to that would cause the repatriation, bringing back of money that's stranded overseas. I happen to support that. I happen to support that in a way that will actually work to our benefit. But when I look at what you have proposed, you have what is called now the Trump loophole, because it would so advantage you and the business you do. ... Trumped-up trickle-down. Trickle-down did not work. It got us into the mess we were in, in 2008 and 2009. Slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn't worked. And a lot of really smart, wealthy people know that. And they are saying, hey, we need to do more to make the contributions we should be making to rebuild the middle class. I don't think top-down works in America. I think building the middle class, investing in the middle class, making college debt-free so more young people can get their education, helping people refinance their debt from college at a lower rate. Those are the kinds of things that will really boost the economy. Broad-based, inclusive growth is what we need in America, not more advantages for people at the very top."

"We justify the greater and greater accumulation of capital because we believe that therefrom flows the support of all science, art, learning, and the charities which minister to the humanities of life, all carrying their beneficent effects to the people as a whole."

"Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system."

"As it turns out, making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer. Nor does it stimulate economic growth, which is the sole justification of . In fact, quite the opposite is true: since the onset of neoliberalism, the rich countries of the have seen growth rates fall from an average of 3.5 per cent during the 1960s and 1970s down to an average of 2 per cent during the 1980s and 1990s As the numbers show, neoliberalism has failed as a tool for - but it has worked brilliantly as a tool for restoring power to the wealthy elite."

"This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue."

"In short, the sequence of payments is directly the opposite of what is assumed by those who talk about a “trickle-down” theory. The workers must be paid first and then the profits flow upward later— if at all."

"We're the richest country, but if you're living in a shed When does the economy trickle down Through the corrugated roof above your head?"

"After . . . drawing on independent research on donor expectations, . . . assistance from a variety of philanthropic experts, and numerous comments from donors and charities, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance issued the [following] BBB Standards for Charity Accountability. . . . These standards apply to publicly-soliciting organizations that are tax exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and to other organizations conducting charitable solicitations. . . . The overarching principle of the BBB Standards for Charity Accountability is full disclosure to donors and potential donors at the time of solicitation and thereafter. . . . GOVERNANCE AND OVERSIGHT [Standards 1 - 5] The governing board has the ultimate oversight authority for any charitable organization. This section of the standard seeks to ensure that the volunteer board is active, independent and free of self-dealing. . . . MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS [Standards 6 - 7] The effectiveness of a charity in achieving its mission is of the utmost importance. . . . This is why a section of our standards require that charities set defined, measurable goals and objectives . . . and report on the organization’s progress. . . . FINANCES [Standards 8 - 14] While we believe that a charity’s finances only tell part of the story of how they are performing, they can identify organizations that may be demonstrating poor financial management and/or questionable accounting practices. . . . [T]hese standards . . . seek to ensure that the charity is financially transparent and spends its funds in accordance with its mission and donor expectations. . . . SOLICITATIONS AND INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS [Standards 15 - 20] A fundraising appeal is often the only contact a donor has with a charity and may be the sole impetus for giving. This section of the standards seeks to ensure that a charity’s representations to the public are accurate, complete and respectful."

"The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4 percent of donations raised to direct cash aid. . . . Even as they plead for financial support, operators at many of the 50 worst charities have lied to donors about where their money goes, taken multiple salaries, secretly paid themselves consulting fees or arranged fundraising contracts with friends. . . . Some nonprofits are little more than fronts for fundraising companies . . . . To disguise the meager amount of money that reaches those in need, charities use accounting tricks and inflate the value of donated dollar-store cast-offs . . . ."

"I don't think that corporations are these big bogeymen that a lot of people paint them to be. … A corporation is a group of people, and if you want to come together for profit or nonprofit, that's your business—whatever you want to do."

"A budget deficit occurs when the government spends more than the revenue it collects. Currently, the US government is running a $1.5 trillion budget deficit, according to Treasury Department data. The nonpartisan Penn-Wharton Budget Model projects it will increase to $2.1 trillion by 2034 if the status quo is maintained. The size of the deficit has big implications for Americans. The higher the deficit, the riskier it becomes to hold US debt, which tends to grow when the deficit does. As a result, the government could have to pay higher interest rates to borrow money. That can reduce the amount of investment in other programs the government can make. Higher interest rates on government debt, typically sold off in bonds and Treasury notes, could also cause borrowing costs to increase for Americans since the interest rates are connected to interest rates paid to invest in government debt."

"All during this last 12 years the Federal deficit has roared out of control. Look at this: The big tax cuts for the wealthy, the growth in Government spending, and soaring health care costs all caused the Federal deficit to explode. Our debt is now 4 times as big as it was in 1980. That's right. In the last 12 years we piled up 4 times as much debt as in the previous 200. Now, if all that debt had been invested in strengthening our economy, we'd at least have something to show for our money: more jobs, better educated people, a health care system that works. But as you can see, while the deficit went up, investments in the things that make us stronger and smarter, richer and safer, were neglected: less invested in education, less in our children's future, less in transportation, less in local law enforcement. An awful lot of that money was just wasted. This matters. When you don't invest in jobs and education and economic opportunity, unemployment goes up and our incomes go down. And when the deficit gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the Government takes more of your money just for interest payments. And then it's harder for you to borrow money for your own business or to afford a new home or to send a child to college."

"Surging budget deficits have been driving the debt, and the CBO only expects that to get worse. The agency forecasts a $1.6 trillion shortfall in fiscal 2024 — it is already at $855 billion through the first seven months — that will balloon to $2.6 trillion by 2034. As a share of GDP, the deficit will grow from 5.6% in the current year to 6.1% in 10 years. “Since the Great Depression, deficits have exceeded that level only during and shortly after World War II, the 2007–2009 financial crisis, and the corona­virus pandemic,” the report stated. In other words, such high deficit levels are common mostly in economic downturns, not the relative prosperity that the U.S. has enjoyed for most of era following the brief plunge after the pandemic declaration in March 2020. From a global perspective, European Union member nations are required to keep deficits to 3% of GDP."

"In 1931 more than forty countries had been on the gold standard; by 1937 virtually none were. Both the United Kingdom and then the United States, the two anchors of the international monetary system, were forced to float their currencies, allowing their central banks to focus on lowering domestic interest rates without worrying about how changes in their gold reserves or capital flows would affect the exchange rate. At the same time, government deficits rose, as a result of increased public spending and collapsing revenues; this happened well in advance of the breakthrough in economic theory represented by Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), though only two countries ran deficits sufficiently large to provide an economic stimulus."

"The only way you can finance a deficit is by inflation. You cannot raise this amount of money by genuine borrowing. You borrow from the banks, which create credit for the purpose. A large government deficit is a certain way to inflation."

"But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents our of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations in the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value."

"But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today."

"Hayek had his greatest impact in the area of the division of knowledge. He first put forward his concept of the division of knowledge in his November 10, 1936, presidential address to the London Economic Club, “Economics and Knowledge.” Here he drew attention to the fact that knowledge is divided among the minds of all humanity. Economic systems that build on divided knowledge prosper. Those that attempt to centralize decision-making, on the assumption of centralized knowledge, falter. Decentralized knowledge implies decentralized decision-making."

"[Hayek] thought that much knowledge is not verbally or explicitly known to the individual. This idea—of tacit (as opposed to explicit) knowledge—is difficult but important. It underlies to a considerable extent the idea of the entrepreneur—the individual who can make a profit but who cannot necessarily say how he does it."

"When I look back, it seems so have all begun, nearly thirty years ago, with an essay on “Economics and Knowledge” in which I examined what seemed to me some of the central difficulties of pure economic theory, Its main conclusion was that the task of economic theory was to explain how an overall order of economic activity was achieved which utilized a large amount of knowledge which was not concentrated in any one mind but existed only as the separate knowledge of different individuals. But it was still a long way from this to an adequate insight into the relations between the abstract rules which the individual follows in his actions and the abstract overall order which is [thereby] formed....It was only through a reexamination of the age-old concept of freedom under the law, the basic conception of traditional liberalism, and of the problems of the philosophy of the law which this raises, that I have reached a tolerably clear picture of the nature of the spontaneous order of which liberal economists have so long been talking."

"The dilemma of a socialized system is that the information flow overwhelms a centralized system if it is open to new ideas and data, that closing the system and forcing the plan to work forecloses alternatives and risks unhedged mistakes, and that decentralizing without real markets poses the problems discussed by Hayek. These information problems permeate virtually all economic processes."

"Knowledge is one of the most scarce of all resources and a pricing system economizes on its use by forcing those with the most knowledge of their own particular situation to make bids for goods and resources based on that knowledge, rather than on their ability to influence other people in planning commissions, legislatures, or royal palaces."

"Knowledge is one of the most scarce of all resources, so that one of the most important differences among alternative ways of organizing an economy is in how effectively they use what knowledge exists. In a market economy, it is not necessary that the innumerable decision-makers understand the costs entailed by their decisions. It is only necessary that they be confronted with those costs in the prices charged. In a “planned” economy, however, those who plan the production and distribution have to be able to understand and quantify the costs their decisions entail— a far more formidable task, if actually done, but a task that can be evaded with rhetoric or with estimates whose validity the public is usually unable to judge at the time, and which will usually be forgotten by the time the real costs become clear, often years later."

"Knowledge is one of the scarcest of all resources in any economy, and the insight distilled from knowledge is even more scarce. An economy based on prices, profits, and losses gives decisive advantages to those with greater knowledge and insight. Put differently, knowledge and insight can guide the allocation of resources, even if most people, including the country’s political leaders, do not share that knowledge or do not have the insight to understand what is happening. Clearly this is not true in the kind of economic system where political leaders control economic decisions, for then the limited knowledge and insights of those leaders become decisive barriers to the progress of the whole economy. Even when leaders have more knowledge and insight than the average member of the society, they are unlikely to have nearly as much knowledge and insight as exists scattered among the millions of people subject to their governance."

"Knowledge and insight need not be technological or scientific for it to be economically valuable and decisive for the material well-being of the society as a whole. Something as mundane as retailing changed radically during the course of the twentieth century, revolutionizing both department stores and grocery stores— and raising the standard of living of millions of people by lowering the costs of delivering goods to them."

"Knowledge is one of the scarcest of all resources. Glib generalities abound, but specific hard facts about particular places and particular things at particular times that are relevant to economic decisions are something entirely different and much more scarce. In some respects, governments are better able to assemble vast amounts of knowledge, but the kind of knowledge involved is often in the form of statistical or verbal generalities known as “expertise,” which is no substitute for the kind of concrete knowledge that someone in the middle of a particular economic situation has. Just picking the right location for a particular business in a particular community can be the difference between profits and bankruptcy, even though that kind of knowledge may not be exciting from an intellectual standpoint. Experts may indeed have far more knowledge than the average amount of knowledge among individuals in the general population but the total amount of knowledge among millions of people in the general population vastly exceeds the total knowledge that any group of experts can assemble."

"To understand the economy then is to comprehend how it is driven by the animal spirits. Just as Adam Smith’s invisible hand is the keynote of classical economics, Keynes’ animal spirits are the keynote to a different view of the economy — a view that explains the underlying instabilities of capitalism."

"Writers after Coase have referred to the authority structure of the firm as a "visible hand" that works in combination with Smith's invisible hand. The everyday fact that employers exercise power over their employees — not news to most employees — had been a central theme in Marx's economics, but it was (and generally continues to be) overlooked by most neoclassical economists. Early in his studies Coase noted the similarity between the hierarchical organization of capitalist firms, with their reliance on command relations, and the then-existing system of centralized economic planning in the Communist countries, where production was carried out in accordance with orders from higher authorities and where market competition played little role."

"...that every individual spontaneously tries to find the place and the trade in which he can best increase National gain, if laws do not prevent him from doing so."

"A man is of no use to this world, of no use to society or the neighborhood in which he lives, who has no other object in view than making a fortune for himself and his family, little caring what becomes of those around him."

"The net effect of increasing scale, centralization of capital, vertical integration and diversification within the corporate form of enterprise has been to replace the 'invisible hand' of the market by the 'visible hand' of the managers."

"Adam Smith was the first to perceive that we have stumbled upon methods of ordering human economic cooperation that exceed the limits of our knowledge and perception. His `invisible hand' had perhaps better have been described as an invisible or unsurveyable pattern. We are led - for example by the pricing system in market exchange - to do things by circumstances of which we are largely unaware and which produce results that we do not intend. In our economic activities we do not know the needs which we satisfy nor the sources of the things which we get."

"When the classical worldview was applied to social science, the dominant notions turned out to be struggle for survival, the profit of the individual, with at best an assumed automatic coincidence of individual and societal good (through Adam Smith's "invisible hand"). When the systemic vision inspires the theories of social science, the values of competition are mitigated by those of cooperation, and the emphasis on individualistic work ethos is tempered with a tolerance of diversity and of experimentation with institutions and practices that foster man-man and man- nature adaptation and harmony."

"Suppose our social planner tried to choose an efficient allocation of resources on his own, instead of relying on market forces. To do so, he would need to know the value of a particular good to every potential consumer in the market and the cost of every potential producer. And he would need this information not only for this market but for every one of the many thousands of markets in the economy. The task is practically impossible, which explains why centrally planned economies never work very well. The planner’s job becomes easy, however, once he takes on a partner: Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the marketplace. The invisible hand takes all the information about buyers and sellers into account and guides everyone in the market to the best outcome as judged by the standard of economic efficiency. It is, truly, a remarkable feat. That is why economists so often advocate free markets as the best way to organize economic activity."

"This it is that gives a majesty so pure and touching to the historic figure of Christ; self-abandonment to God, uttermost surrender, without reserve or stipulation, to the guidance of the Holy Spirit from the Soul of souls; pause in no darkness, hesitation in no perplexity, recoil in no extremity of anguish; but a gentle unfaltering hold of the invisible Hand, of the Only Holy and All Good; — these are the features that have made Jesus of Nazareth the dearest and most sacred image to the heart of so many ages."

"I am very liberal on social issues, but I don’t believe we can have personal liberty, which is what that means, without having economic liberty. We have economic tyranny when you add in Obamacare, we have about 50 percent of the U.S. GDP in the public sector. That means that you have a tyrannical and overregulating, and politicized economy, not a market economy, not the invisible hand."

"Honor sets all the parts of the body politic in motion, and by its very action connects them; thus each individual advances the public good, while he only thinks of promoting his own interest."

"Hayek’s theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ‘‘maladaptation,’’ which is the normal prelude to extinction."

"[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity...they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species."

"Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. ... By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."

"What Galbraith understood, and what later researchers (including this author) have proved, is that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" – the notion that the individual pursuit of maximum profit guides capitalist markets to efficiency – is so invisible because, quite often, it's just not there. Unfettered markets often produce too much of some things, such as pollution, and too little of other things, such as basic research. As Bruce Greenwald and I have shown, whenever information is imperfect – that is, always – markets are inefficient; hence the need for government action."

"The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there."

"What's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the [un]hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That's the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy."

"As against the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith, there has to be a visible hand of politicians whose objective is to have the kind of society that is caring and humane."

"No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency."

"The recognized "man of a vocation" ... neither inquires about nor finds it necessary to inquire about the meaning of his actual practice of a vocation within the whole world, the total framework of which is not his responsibility but his god's."

"Market power and externalities are examples of a general phenomenon called market failure—the inability of some unregulated markets to allocate resources efficiently. When markets fail, public policy can potentially remedy the problem and increase economic efficiency. Microeconomists devote much effort to studying when market failure is likely and what sorts of policies are best at correcting market failures. As you continue your study of economics, you will see that the tools of welfare economics developed here are readily adapted to that endeavor. Despite the possibility of market failure, the invisible hand of the marketplace is extraordinarily important."

"The problem with Neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model. Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment and growth. This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that it's impossible for there to be market failures. The market is not a mere graph describing a curve of supply and demand. The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures. If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is if there is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence. Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved. And if they find that that's not the case, I would suggest that they check again, because obviously there's a mistake. Market failures do not exist."

"We need to recognise that the entire information sector—from music to newspapers to telecoms to internet to semiconductors and anything in-between—has become subject to a gigantic market failure in slow motion. A market failure exists when market prices cannot reach a self-sustaining equilibrium. The market failure of the entire information sector is one of the fundamental trends of our time, with far-reaching long-term effects, and it is happening right in front of our eyes."

"Hayek’s later monetary work constitutes some of his most creative practical policy suggestions. His ideas of competing and private currencies may come into existence during coming years for technological reasons."

"The question of the value of Hayek’s work in technical economic theory from the middle 1920s through early 1940s is one over which there is considerable dispute in the academic economic community. Some, such as contemporary Austrian economists Roger Garrison, Mark Skousen, and Gene Callahan, consider this work to be of vital, continuing relevance. Others, such as Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and Ronald Coase, while they have the highest opinion of Hayek, do not consider his work in technical economic theory to be of much worth."

"For Hayek, the causes of the Depression lay in earlier central bank policies of cheap money, which resulted in large-scale misallocation of capital. Because no central authority could grasp the shifting pattern of relative scarcities and prices, only the market could determine the right allocation. Accordingly, believing that misguided investments had to be liquidated, Hayek argued in the 1930s for policies that were more contractionary than those that were actually pursued. The task of government was to get out of the way and let the process of adjustment run its course. If they had been adopted while the crash was under way, Hayek’s prescriptions would have made the Depression even worse than it proved to be – a fact he later admitted. But he never accepted Keynes’s core insight that large-scale economic discoordination could be the result of the workings of the market itself. For him it was always government intervention that accounted for market disequilibrium. More sceptical as well as more radical in his turn of mind, Keynes questioned the self-regulating powers of the market. His work on the theory of probability disclosed insuperable gaps in our knowledge of the future; all investment was a gamble, and markets could not be relied on to allocate capital rightly. There were booms and busts long before the emergence of modern central banking. Left to its own devices, the free market can easily end up in a dead end like that of the 1930s."

"In brief the Austrian theory of the business cycle was never refuted or even rejected at the London School, but simply forgotten despite the efforts of Hayek and subsequently Lachmann (as noted below) to improve the theory (Hayek, Profits, Interest, and investment [1939; reprint; New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969]). With the Keynesian revolution, macroentities had replaced the action of individuals. Subjectivism and individual causation had been superseded by functional relations among objectified aggregates, which had few if any real world referents in the actions of economizing individuals. A whole tradition transplanted to British soil vanished. When Lachmann had arrived in London during the early 1930s, everybody was a Hayekian, but by the beginning of World War II the only consistent and thoroughgoing Hayekians left were Lachmann and Hayek himself."

"Very few people these days know the works of the Mises-Hayek school; unfortunately, I am old enough to have been an early follower of Professor Hayek, and even translated one of his books, and there is nothing like having to translate a book, particularly from the German language, to force you to come to grips with an argument."

"A few weeks ago, a journalist devoted a substantial part of a profile of yours truly to my failure to pay due attention to the "Austrian theory" of the business cycle—a theory that I regard as being about as worthy of serious study as the phlogiston theory of fire."

"Professor Mises and Dr. Hayek have advanced theories which, though they fall into the general category of monetary explanations, yet seem altogether free from those deficiencies which have marked monetary explanations in general. They explain the effects of fluctuations in the supply of money not so much in terms of fluctuations of the general price level as in terms of fluctuations of relative prices and the consequent effects on what may be called the ‘time-structure’ of production."

"In a free market, supply and demand would cause prices to rise where goods are in short supply and fall where they are abundant, providing incentives to move things from regions where there is a surplus to regions where there is a shortage. But where prices are fixed by law, no such price movements occur and there is no incentive to move goods between the two regions. Theoretically, a government planning commission could either issue orders to move these goods or change the prices in order to provide incentives for others to move them."

"The West has unfortunately already started to go along this path. I know, to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it's only ridiculous if you only limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it's an economic system where the state owns the means of production. This definition in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances. Today, states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals. This is how we come to the point where, by using different names or guises, a good deal of the generally accepted ideologies in most Western countries are collectivist variants, whether they proclaim to be openly communist, fascist, socialist, social democrats, national socialists, Christian democrats, neo-Keynesians, progressives, populists, nationalists or globalists. Ultimately, there are no major differences. They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals. They all defend a model contrary to the one that led humanity to the most spectacular progress in its history."

"Many American and British supporters of price control are fascinated by the alleged success of Nazi price control… These men who want to fight Nazism by adopting its methods do not see that what the Nazis have achieved has been the building up of a system of socialism, not a reform of conditions within a system of market economy."

"While price controls make it illegal for buyer and seller to make some transactions on terms that they would both prefer to the shortages that price controls entail, bolder and less scrupulous buyers and sellers make mutually advantageous transactions outside the law. Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black markets may function in secrecy, large-scale black markets usually require bribes to officials to look the other way."

"To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection — the comparative increase of population and wealth — of those groups that happened to follow them."

"It is no accident that many abstract rules, such as those treating individual responsibility and several property, are associated with economics. Economics has from its origins been concerned with how an extended order of human interaction comes into existence through a process of variation, winnowing and sifting far surpassing our vision or our capacity to design."

"This evolution [of extended order] came about, then, through the spreading of new practices by a process of transmission of acquired habits analogous to, but also in important respects different from, biological evolution. I shall consider some of these analogies and differences below, but we might mention here that biological evolution would have been far too slow to alter or replace man's innate responses in the course of the ten or twenty thousand years during which civilisation has developed - not to speak of being too slow to have influenced the far greater numbers whose ancestors joined the process only a few hundred years ago."

"There is the important point that an order arising from the separate decisions of many individuals on the basis of different information cannot be determined by a common scale of the relative importance of different ends. […] Here, however, it is appropriate to discuss in a general way the advantages of the differentiation that an extended order makes possible. Freedom involves freedom to be different – to have one's own ends in one's own domain; yet order everywhere, and not only in human affairs, also presupposes differentiation of its elements. Such differentiation might be confined merely to the local or temporal position of its elements, but an order would hardly be of any interest unless the differences were greater than this. Order is desirable not for keeping everything in place but for generating new powers that would otherwise not exist. The degree of orderliness – the new powers that order creates and confers – depends more on the variety of the elements than on their temporal or local position."

"Comprehending the role played by the transmission of information (or of factual knowledge) opens the door to understanding the extended order. Yet these issues are highly abstract, and are particularly hard to grasp for those schooled in the mechanistic, scientistic, constructivist canons of rationality that dominate our educational systems - and who consequently tend to be ignorant of biology, economics, and evolution."

"So far as we know, the extended order is probably the most complex structure in the universe - a structure in which biological organisms that are already highly complex have acquired the capacity to learn, to assimilate, parts of suprapersonal traditions enabling them to adapt themselves from moment to moment into an ever-changing structure possessing an order of a still higher level of complexity."

"The international monetary system is the glue that binds national economies together."

"In 1931 more than forty countries had been on the gold standard; by 1937 virtually none were. Both the United Kingdom and then the United States, the two anchors of the international monetary system, were forced to float their currencies, allowing their central banks to focus on lowering domestic interest rates without worrying about how changes in their gold reserves or capital flows would affect the exchange rate. At the same time, government deficits rose, as a result of increased public spending and collapsing revenues; this happened well in advance of the breakthrough in economic theory represented by Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), though only two countries ran deficits sufficiently large to provide an economic stimulus."

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and through its Board of Governors manipulates the credit of the United States."

"Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system."

"My expertise lies in international finance and money systems. This is why I have adopted here a whole systems approach to money. Whole systems take into account a broader, more comprehensive arena than economics does; it integrates not only economic interactions but also their most important side effects. This includes specifically in our case the effects of different money systems on the quality of human interactions, on society at large, and on ecological systems."

"The lifeblood of our economy, indeed the whole world's economy, is based on money. Without a currency that can be trusted, the entire structure of economics, the division of labor itself, falls apart. Our wealth, our well being and our very lives are dependent on the continuation of this highly complex structure called the economy and it in turn is dependent on sound money. We have placed our trust for the management of this money on a gang of thieves called the Federal Reserve. They have now clearly demonstrated their inability to restrain themselves from the excesses that can be perpetrated within a paper money system. If we want to survive as a nation, we need to eliminate both the Federal Reserve and paper money."

"The problem is easy to state: developing countries borrow too much—or are lent too much—and in ways that force them to bear most or all of the risk of subsequent increases in interest rates, fluctuations in the exchange rate, or decreases in income. Given this, it is not surprising that they often cannot repay what is owed."

"The global financial system is not working well, and it is especially not working well for developing countries. Money is flowing uphill, from the poor to the rich. [...] With nearly two-thirds of reserves being held in dollars, the United States is, in this sense, the major recipient of these benefits. If the interest rate America has to pay is just one percentage point lower than it otherwise would be on these $3 trillion of loans from poor countries, what America received from the developing countries via the global reserve system is more than it gives to the developing countries in aid."

"The IMF has been encouraging, sometimes even forcing (as condition of assistance), countries to have their central banks focus only on inflation. Europe succumbed to these doctrines. Today, throughout Euroland, there is unhappiness as the European Central Bank pursues a monetary policy that, while it may do wonders for bond markets by keeping inflation low and bond prices high, has left Europe's growth and employment in shambles."

"If we are to grasp the dynamics of this unforecasted storm, we have to move beyond the familiar cognitive frame of macroeconomics that we inherited from the early twentieth century. Forged in the wake of World War I and World War II, the macroeconomic perspective on international economics is organized around nation-states, national productive systems and the trade imbalances they generate. It is a view of the economy that will forever be identified with John Maynard Keynes. Predictably, the onset of the crisis in 2008 evoked memories of the 1930s and triggered calls for a return to “the master.” And Keynesian economics is, indeed, indispensable for grasping the dynamics of collapsing consumption and investment, the surge in unemployment and the options for monetary and fiscal policy after 2009. But when it comes to analyzing the onset of financial crises in an age of deep globalization, the standard macroeconomic approach has its limits. In discussions of international trade it is now commonly accepted that it is no longer national economies that matter. What drives global trade are not the relationships between national economies but multinational corporations coordinating far-flung “value chains.” The same is true for the global business of money. To understand the tensions within the global financial system that exploded in 2008 we have to move beyond Keynesian macroeconomics and its familiar apparatus of national economic statistics. As Hyun Song Shin, chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements and one of the foremost thinkers of the new breed of “macrofinance,” has put it, we need to analyze the global economy not in terms of an “island model” of international economic interaction—national economy to national economy—but through the “interlocking matrix” of corporate balance sheets—bank to bank. As both the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the crisis in the eurozone after 2010 would demonstrate, government deficits and current account imbalances are poor predictors of the force and speed with which modern financial crises can strike. This can be grasped only if we focus on the shocking adjustments that can take place within this interlocking matrix of financial accounts. For all the pressure that classic “macroeconomic imbalances”—in budgets and trade—can exert, a modern global bank run moves far more money far more abruptly."

"I define the subject matter of the history of economics to be economics which is not read to master present-day economics (although possibly it is read to learn the path by which we have reached the present)."

"Economics, I thus believe, has a useful past, a past that is useful in dealing with the future."

"The giants of economic science during the past two hundred years have been men concerned with the critical policy issues of their time. They studied the working of the economy in order to advocate better economic policies. But despite their concern with policy, they were not polemicists or politicians but men who sought to persuade their contemporaries in government and in the broader public by analysis and evidence that would meet the standards of professional debate."

"Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come...But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to."

"While it is tempting to think of the history of economics as the history of a succession of great thinkers who advanced the quantity and quality of analysis in this field, seldom did these pioneers create perfected analyses."

"The writer of a history of economic thought must have, above all else, some principles of selectivity...The contemporary intellectual historian, in the space of one book, can therefore present only a limited number of the most important ideas of the most important thinkers ."

"History affects the present – not simply because it is what came before the present but also because it (or, rather, what people think they know about it) informs people’s decisions. … History also forces us to question some assumptions that are taken for granted. … History is useful in highlighting the limits of economic theory. Life is often stranger than fiction, and history provides many successful economic experiences (at all levels – nations, companies, individuals) that cannot be tidily explained by any single economic theory."

"Economic history is not politically correct. Many on the left therefore struggle with its findings."

"To find a substitute for laboratory experiments, economists pay close attention to the natural experiments offered by history."

"The idea of an art world forms the backbone of my analysis. "Art world" is commonly used by writers on the arts in a loose and metaphoric way, mostly to refer to the most fashionable people associated with those newsworthy objects and events that command astronomical prices. I have used the term in a more technical way, to denote the the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for."

"[Art worlds] consist of all the people whose activities are necessary to the production of the characteristic works which that world, and perhaps others as well, define as art."

"Women had to work like slaves in the art world, but a lot of men got to the top through their charm. And it hurt them. To be young and pretty didn't help a woman in the art world, because the social scene, and the buying scene, was in the hands of women – women who had money. They wanted male artists who would come alone and be their charming guests. Rothko could be very charming. It was a court. And the artist buffoons came to the court to entertain, to charm. Now it has changed, now the younger men are in – older women and younger men."

"The fine art world and the commercial art industry are both all about money. It's hard to say which is more contemptible: the fine art world with its double talk and pretensions to the cultural high ground, or the world of commercial art trying to sell to the largest mass market it can reach. A serious artist really shouldn't be too deeply involved in either of these worlds. It's best to be on the fringe of them. In general, if you want to be a success and make the money, you have to play the game. It's no different in the fine art world, it's just a slightly different game. Essentially, you're marketing an illusion. It's much easier to lie to humans and trick them than to tell them the truth. They'd much rather be bamboozled than be told the truth, because the way to trick them is to flatter them and tell them what they want to hear, to reinforce their existing illusions. They don't want to know the truth. Truth is a bring-down, a bummer, or it's just too complicated, too much mental work to grasp."

"The media, the galleries, the collectors – it's all very chaotic actually. The artworld doesn't have this defined corporate structure that people imagine. Of course there's a system of sorts. This person will talk to that person and somebody else will pass it on to somebody else... you can trace a line of power of some kind. But its nothing like as clear and set as people think. And this chaos leads to a lot of insecurity. It's only after an artist has achieved some independence from it that he MODERN PAINTERS can really stand up to the collectors and the dealers and do his art."

"There are certain figures in the arts who, although minor in accomplishment and equivocal in their aesthetic influence, are so completely representative of the spirit of their age...."

"The general ignorance of the visual arts, especially their theoretical bases, deplorable even in the so-called intellectual world; the artist’s well-founded despair of ever reaching the mythical “masses” with “advanced art”; the resulting ghetto mentality predominant in the narrow and incestuous art world itself, with its resentful reliance on a very small group of dealers, curators, critics, editors, and collectors who are all too frequently and often unknowingly bound by invisible apron strings to the “real world’s” power structure—all of these factors may make it unlikely that conceptual art will be any better equipped to affect the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts."

"Ever since 1953, when Russell Kirk produced its intellectual coat of arms, conservatism has been "what Edmund Burke wrote." This is the equivalent of Arthur Danto’s institutional theory of art — art is whatever the art world says it is. But it’s also a cop-out. Instead of analyzing conservatism in an Aristotelian way, instead of asking how we use the term in real life, we just describe Burke. In the process, don’t we risk fleeing into what Tanenhaus calls an "alternative universe"? If conservatives are "glaringly disconnected from the realities now besetting America," as Tanenhaus says, why is the solution to be more like a man who wore a powdered wig? Liberals have problems of their own, but, to their credit, they don’t sit around debating whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards is the "real Rousseauian.""

"The current demoralization of the art world is attributable at least in part to museum interference, ideological and practical, with ongoing creation in art."

"I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you. Anyway, the real point is that the things that don't seem to me to be pictorially informed are not so interesting to me."

"... a loose network of overlapping subcultures held together by a belief in art. They span the globe but cluster in art capitals like New York, London, Los Angeles, and Berlin."

"The art world is really exactly the same as the sex industry: you have to be completely on guard, you will get shafted, fucked over left, right and centre. And you will also meet charming, wonderful people like a rainbow at the end of the day."

"China is an old nation with a colourful history. Its booming economy has triggered an appetite and a curiosity around the world for its art and culture, one that continues to grow. I can, however, tell people that it is a show with no actor."

"The art world is run by a few very extremely, um, privileged people and is ultimately corrupt and barren of any context."

"The young man or woman who has a thorough knowledge of penmanship and bookkeeping can always find a job, but with stenography and typewriting added to these, there is scarcely any limit to the salary he or she is able to command."

"Bookkeeping is never an exciting pastime, except for those quaint people who are born bookkeepers, and who find columns of figures a stimulating sight"

"While strict bookkeeping has always been required of banks, terrorist activities and corporate scandals have tightened the information used to track any."

"Bookkeeping is never neglected by anyone in business."

"There was an inn...which kept no register of...a number of seamstresses and tailors who lacked time and place and perhaps inclination to weave the cloths they cut and sewed, depending instead on the activities of those who preferred not to vex the original owners with the tiresome bookkeeping inseparable from purchase."

"Money is brought into being and transmuted from one imaginary form to another by mere entries on a ledger, and creative bookkeeping can always make the bottom line appear to balance."

"Stone was by no means the first economist to produce national income accounts. Simon Kuznets, for example, had already done so for the United States. Stone’s distinctive contribution was to integrate national income into a double-entry bookkeeping format. Every income item on one side of the balance sheet had to be matched by an expenditure item on the other side, thus ensuring consistency. Stone’s double-entry method has become the universally accepted way to measure national income."

"Since bookkeeping is still the backbone of the commercial curriculum, affording the pupil the best possible opportunity to secure an all-round knowledge of business, the report recommends that an elementary course in bookkeeping and business practice be offered in the ninth year."

"Single entry system of bookkeeping is the oldest and commonly used even today by many small businesses."

"The “Fool-Proof” Trial Balance.—Double-entry bookkeeping is never satisfied with anything short of absolute proof of the mathematical accuracy of the work."

"A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called "Fundamentalists"."

"Bookkeeping has always been the crux of the orthodox commercial course."

"Chinese bookkeeping is never strong on accruals or amortization, but this is particularly evident in the case of pensions."

"Creative bookkeeping is the magic wand of “restructuring.”"

"Capitalism designates an economic system significantly characterized by the predominance of "capital." Capitalism and double entry bookkeeping are absolutely indissociable; their relationship to each other is that of form to content."

"Hollywood bookkeeping has always been a crafty blend of voodoo economics and fairy-tale accounting."

"Bookkeeping has always been a popular subject and it will continue to be a popular subject if it is taught properly and effectively."

"Bookkeeping is the oldest of all commercial subjects. Bookkeeping was fairly widely taught before the invention and wide adoption of the typewriter."

"Bookkeeping has always been taboo with farmers. Unfortunately, at the mention of farm management, most farmers think of ink and paper. Just keeping a set of books is not the guarantee of a good farming manager."

"Until language had developed to some extent there could have been little thinking beyond the range of actual experience, for language is the instrument of thought as bookkeeping is the instrument of business. It records and fixes and enables thought to get on to more and more complex ideas. It is the hand of the mind to hold and keep."

"These people are not interested in creative destruction, they are only interested in destruction. That leads to gas chambers. That leads to, uh, guillotines. That leads to millions dead. That leads to Mao. That leads to totalitarianism. Every. Single. Time."

"Globalisation is highly selective. It proceeds by linking up all that, according to dominant interests, has value anywhere in the planet, and discarding anything which has no value or becomes devalued, in a variable geometry of creative destruction and destructive creation of value."

"We have far more people selling derivatives, index funds and mutual funds (as we call them) than there is intelligence for the task. I am cautious about prediction; I discovered years ago that my correct predictions are forgotten, the others meticulously remembered. But some things are definite; when you hear it being said that we have entered a new economy of permanent prosperity with prices of financial instruments reflecting that happy fact, you should take cover. This has been the standard justification of speculative excess for several centuries — for a good part of the millennium. My one time Harvard colleague Joseph Schumpeter thought inevitable and even beneficial what he called “creative destruction” — the cyclical process by which the system eliminates the people and institutions which are mentally too vulnerable for useful economic service. Unfortunately the process has larger and less benign effects, including the possibility of painful recession or depression."

"It's hard to overemphasize how important Ford's deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first. Yet deregulation set the stage for an enormous wave of creative destruction in the 1980s:..."

"The developed economies are currently experiencing profound changes. A technological revolution is creating entirely new sectors, based on biotechnology, microprocessors, and telecommunications, whose prod­ucts are transforming business practices across the economy. A wave of managerial innovations has seen companies around the world adopt new forms of supplier-client relations, just-in-time inventory systems, quality control and team production. Economic activity is shifting from the industrial sector into the service sector. Capitalism seems to be in the midst of one of those 'cycles of creative destruction' that Schumpeter (1950) identified."

"I do not want to avoid immersing myself in trouble — to be a mess — to struggle out of it. I want to invent, to discover, to imagine, to speculate, to improvise — to seize the hazardous in order to be inspired. I want to experience the manifestation of the absolute — the manifestation of the unexpected in an extreme and unique relation. I know that only by following my creative instincts in an act of creative destruction will I be able to find it."

"Schumpeter’s work, his dynamic view of the entrepreneur and creative destruction has had a great impact on me. He indeed wrote a book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which intended to give a complex analysis of the two systems. But these two books, and a few others (e.g., some of Mises’s and Hayek’s works) are rather exceptional. A typical American textbook on economic systems is not written with the same ambition about capitalism with which I wrote about socialism. It doesn’t give you a general model of capitalism, including the characterization of the political, ideological, and social spheres."

"We are far from understanding how to achieve adaptively efficient economies because allocative efficiency and adaptive efficiency may not always be consistent. Allocatively efficient rules would make today's firms and decisions secure - but frequently at the expense of the creative destruction process that Schumpeter had in mind."

"Schumpeter’s approach has an important implication for political behavior. If the constellation of economic interests regularly changes because of innovation and entry, politicians face a fundamentally different world than those in a natural state: open access orders cannot manipulate interests in the same way as natural states do. Too much behavior and formation of interests take place beyond the state’s control. Politicians in both natural states and open access orders want to create rents. Rent-creation at once rewards their supporters and binds their constituents to support them. Because, however, open access orders enable any citizen to form an organization for a wide variety of purposes, rents created by either the political process or economic innovation attract competitors in the form of new organizations. In Schumpeterian terms, political entrepreneurs put together new organizations to compete for the rents and, in so doing, reduce existing rents and struggle to create new ones. As a result, creative destruction reigns in open access politics just as it does in open access economies. Much of the creation of new interests is beyond the control of the state. The creation of new interests and the generation of new sources of rents occur continuously in open access orders."

"A final aspect of all open access orders is Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction, one of the most powerful descriptions of a competitive, open access economy. When Schumpeter wrote Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in the early 1940s, the economic theory of perfect competition among atomistic firms (i.e., firms too small to have market power) had come under sustained attack as unrealistic. Large and powerful economic organizations dominated the new economy, and their behavior did not match the textbooks. Despite this dominance, the economy produced historically unprecedented, sustained economic development. Schumpeter asked, How could large businesses that were supposed to choke off competition and growth nonetheless generate such spectacular productivity increases in a world that seemed ever more competitive?"

"The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U. S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation-if I may use that biological term-that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism."

"Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm."

"Schumpeter argued that the economy was characterized by a process of creative destruction. An innovator could, through a new product or lower costs of pro duction, establish a dominant position in a market. But eventually, that dominant position would be destroyed, as another new product or process was invented. He worried that the giant corporations he saw being formed during his lifetime would stifle innovation and end this process of creative destruction. His fears, so far, have been unfounded; indeed, many of the largest firms, like IBM, have not been able to manage the innovative process in a way that keeps up with upstart rivals."

"Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G.D.P. is one measure of national income, of how much wealth Americans make, and it’s a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing. It ought to join buggy."

"There are two basic ways market organization is brought about... Some combination of the two is usual the case:"

"# Strategic structuring, informal or formal, whereby social agents, including the state, establish a rule regime regulating market access and transactions..."

"# Emergent structuring, whereby participants discover or adopt certain similar strategies within bounded rationality and situations with certain opportunity structures and incentive structures. Social network and ecological properties result in relatively well-defined aggregate performance characteristics..."

"The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term "ecological" is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature."

"Ecological Economics studies the ecology of humans and the economy of nature, the web of interconnections uniting the economic subsystem to the global ecosystem of which it is a part."

"Standard economists don't seem to understand exponential growth. Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, like any other subsystem on the planet, cannot grow forever. And if you think of an organism as an analogy, organisms grow for a period and then they stop growing. They can still continue to improve and develop, but without physically growing, because if organisms did that you’d end up with nine-billion-ton hamsters. There is a great video on this."

"In the quantitative models that appear in leading economics journals and textbooks, nature is taken to be a fixed, indestructible factor of production. The problem with the assumption is that it is wrong: nature consists of degradable resources."

"Even if we can never quantify [satisfaction or happiness]... as precisely as we currently quantify GNP,... perhaps it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong."

"Ecological economics is the name that has been given to the effort to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to address the interrelationship between ecological and economic systems in a broad and comprehensive way."

"K. William Kapp's book "The Social Costs of Private Enterprise" was one of the first economic treatise that called attention to the ecological and social external costs of the market economy. His book is considered one of the origins of and a foundation for ecological economics."

"There always will be limits to growth."

"A quantity growing exponentially toward a limit reaches that limit in a surprisingly short time."

"When there are long delays in feedback loops, some sort of foresight is essential."

"The bounded rationality of each actor in a system may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of the system as a whole."

"Ecologists and economists made unlikely partners -- indeed, these disciplines have often appeared at odds with, and determined to ignore, each other... The modeling of ecological communities or systems seemed purposely to leave out the human economy.6 At the same time, economists either took for granted or ignored the principles, powers, or forces that ecologists believed governed the world's natural communities. The market mechanism, or competitive equilibrium, that mainstream economists studied assigned no role to the natural ecosystem.7 Ecological economics sought to embed the study of economics within a larger understanding of how ecosystems work."

"Ecological rationality uses reason – rational reconstruction – to examine the behavior of individuals based on their experience and folk knowledge, who are ‘naïve’ in their ability to apply constructivist tools to the decisions they make; to understand the emergent order in human cultures; to discover the possible intelligence embodied in the rules, norms and institutions of our cultural and biological heritage that are created from human interactions but not by deliberate human design. People follow rules without being able to articulate them, but they can be discovered."

"The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the nation-state. International law and international institutions, insofar as they exist, are not strong enough to prevent war or the large-scale abuse of human rights in individual countries. Ecological threats are not adequately dealt with. Global financial markets are largely beyond the control of national or international authorities."

"Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. The calculation of intrinsic value, though, is not so simple. As our definition suggests, intrinsic value is an estimate rather than a precise figure, and it is additionally an estimate that must be changed if interest rates move or forecasts of future cash flows are revised."

"The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality."

"Gambling is a kind of tax: a tax on stupidity. A tax on greed. Some money changes hands at random, but the net cash flow always goes one way - to the Government, to the casino operators, to the bookies, to the crime syndicates. If you ever do win, you won't have won against them. They'll still be getting their share. You'll have won against all the penniless losers, that's all."

"60 Minutes is the most successful television series of all time, measured by almost any standard, not the least being cash flow. One year, in fact, the profit generated by 60 Minutes was said to have been all the money made in prime time by the CBS Television Network. It has been honored for dozens of awards for outstanding television journalism."

"Focusing on cash flow is the best way to determine whether the proposed project is feasible."

"The ability to accurately predict cash flow is the best, most universal, and most consistent standard for financial management across all nonprofit institutions, regardless of size and mission."

"In a world of perfect capital markets there would be no association between firm level investing activities and internally generated cash flows. If a firm needed additional cash to finance an investment activity it would simply raise that cash from external capital markets. If the firm had excess cash beyond that needed to fund available positive NPV projects (including options on future investment) it would distribute free cash flow to external markets. Firms do not, however, operate in such a world. There are a variety of capital market frictions that impede the ability of management to raise cash from external capital markets. In addition, there are significant transaction costs associated with monitoring management to ensure that free cash flow is indeed distributed to external capital markets. In equilibrium, these capital market frictions can serve as a support for a positive association between firm investing activities and internally generated cash flow."

"From a more theoretical viewpoint, one can focus on the nexus between the present and the future. A financial instrument typically represents a property right to receive future cash flows. Such cash flows will, of course, come in the future – hence the economics of time must be understood. In many cases the flows are uncertain, hence the need for an approach to the economics of uncertainty. In addition, cash flows in the far future may depend on actions taken (or not taken) in the near future. This gives rise to the need for a theory of the economics of options (broadly construed). Finally, one needs information to estimate likely future outcomes, hence the requirement for an understanding of the economics of information. I define financial economics so that it embraces all four of these important, difficult, and fascinating aspects of economics."

"The central question for positive financial economics is valuation – what is the value today of a set of future prospective cash flows? The central question for normative financial economics is the appropriate use of financial instruments in a world in which values are set wholly or partially in accord with the principles of positive financial economics."

"Market valuations can differ substantially and persistently from the rational expectation of the present value of cash flows without leaving statistically discernible traces in the pattern of ex-post returns."

"The three most dreaded words in the English language are 'negative cash flow'."

"Money not spent on a luxury one considered even briefly is the equivalent of windfall income and should be spent accordingly."

"Happiness is a Positive Cash Flow."

"In many parts of the economy, stabilizing forces appear not to operate. Instead, positive feedback magnifies the effects of small economic shifts; the economic models that describe such effects differ vastly from the conventional ones. Diminishing returns imply a single equilibrium point for the economy, but positive feedback – increasing returns – makes for many possible equilibrium points. There is no guarantee that the particular economic outcome selected from among the many alternatives will be the “best” one."

"The so-called free market does not provide consumers with proper information, because the social and environmental costs of production are not part of the current economic models. ...an ecological tax reform would be strictly revenue neutral, shifting the tax burden from income taxes to "eco-taxes." …the taxes would be added to existing products, forms of energy, services, and materials, so that prices would better reflect true costs."

"Unless the fundamental categories of economics such as ‘property’ were to be redefined in a radically personal way the liberal rationalist curse which had established economics as a scientific discipline cut off from human interests would proliferate. Economic models … have failed to incorporate any meaningful index of individual benefit other than the original utilitarian one, … the index of increasing income or an increasing flow of commodities."

"Unlike Hegel’s progress model of history, which moves by stages, each containing its own logic of growth and decline, the economic model develops as the simple function of one money-variable over time, with a long-term trend which increases monotonically."

"Real economic efficiency implies including all resources that affect sustainable human well-being in the allocation system, not just marketed goods and services. Our current market allocation system excludes most non-marketed natural and social capital assets and services that are critical contributors to human well-being. The current economic model ignores this and therefore does not achieve real economic efficiency. A new, sustainable ecological economic model would measure and include the contributions of natural and social capital and could better approximate real economic efficiency."

"The long term solution to the financial crisis is to move beyond the ‘growth at all costs’ economic model to a model that recognizes the real costs and benefits of growth."

"The construction of an economic model, or of any model or theory for that matter (or the writing of a novel, a short story, or a play) consists of snatching from the enormous and complex mass of facts called reality, a few simple, easily-managed key points which, when put together in some cunning way, become for certain purposes a substitute for reality itself."

"I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. So economic models -- how any model by definition isn't right. When someone just says, 'Oh, your model is wrong.' That's not much of an insight. What you want to know is, is wrong in important ways or wrong in ways that are less relevant? And you want to know what does the data really say about the model?"

"Economics is a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant to the contemporary world. It is compelled to be this, because, unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time. The object of a model is to segregate the semi-permanent or relatively constant factors from those which are transitory or fluctuating so as to develop a logical way of thinking about the latter, and of understanding the time sequences to which they give rise in particular cases. Good economists are scarce because the gift for using "vigilant observation" to choose good models, although it does not require a highly specialised intellectual technique, appears to be a very rare one."

"Many of the stories economists tell take the form of models—for whatever else they are, economic models are stories about how the world works."

"Economists also use models to learn about the world, but instead of being made of plastic, they are most often composed of diagrams and equations. Like a biology teacher’s plastic model, economic models omit many details to allow us to see what is truly important. Just as the biology teacher’s model does not include all the body’s muscles and capillaries, an economist’s model does not include every feature of the economy."

"Haavelmo was the first to recognize the capacity of economic models to guide policies. This paper describes some of the barriers that Haavelmo’s ideas have had (and still have) to overcome, and lays out a logical framework that has evolved from Haavelmo’s insight and matured into a coherent and comprehensive account of the relationships between theory, data and policy questions. The mathematical tools that emerge from this framework now enable investigators to answer complex policy and counterfactual questions using simple routines, some by mere inspection of the model’s structure."

"The corporatist-economic model of society appears to be governing us. Economists, often in the pay of transnationals, are deciding, for us, what democracy is, and will be."

"Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation."

"The striking parallel between the economic models that are currently under discussion and some engineering systems suggests the hope that in some way the rapid progress in the development of the theory and practice of automatic control in the world of engineering may contribute to the solution of the economic problems."

"The circular flow diagram occurs in virtually all modern introductory economics textbooks as a way of explaining flows of income between firms and households and their measurement in the national accounts."

"If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products."

"Knight is the first to use the circular- flow diagram as a means of explaining the way in which the interaction of individuals and businesses in goods and factor markets simultaneously solve all the functions required for effective social organization (Knight 1951, pp. 61–6). Prices provide a measure of the social importance of goods and services (albeit ‘not a true index of social importance according to any recognized ethical standard’), ensure that productive resources are allocated to the production of goods and services which place the highest value on them, and simultaneously distribute income across the productive resources accordingly. ‘The principal connection between the price system and social progress’, meanwhile, ‘is mediated by the phenomenon of interest on capital’ (pp. 63–5)."

"Knight’s wheel of wealth emphasizes the circular flow of income in the economy as money is exchanged for factor services and final goods at successive stages in the production process. His emphasis on equalization of returns at the margin implicitly made his model an equilibrium one. And Knight’s approach contrasts with Carl Menger’s emphasis on the demand for final goods determining the prices of factors of production. Knight stressed instead the importance of opportunity cost, a characteristic feature of both Chicago economics and the Virginia School of Political Economy."

"The daily expenditures by consumers for new consumers' goods, upon which business stability largely depends, are determined in part by the total volume of money in circulation, in part by other factors including the frequency with which that money is returned to consumers. The flow of money, therefore, from use in consumption to another use in consumption should not be overlooked in studies of the causes and conditions of business fluctuations. It is the purpose of this paper to describe certain aspects of this circuit flow of money, to raise the question whether it does not deserve more attention that it has yet received in our analyses of business cycles, and to suggest pertinent lines of investigation. Unfortunately, the statistics upon which the most important conclusions concerning this subject must be based are not at hand and are not likely to be for a long time to come. The following discussion will have served its purpose if it stimulates further inquiry in profitable directions and helps to hasten the day when the necessary statistics are available."

"The circular-flow diagram is a visual model of the economy. The circular flow of income is coordinated by four key markets. First, the resource market (bottom loop) coordinates businesses demanding resources and households supplying them in exchange for income. Second, the loanable funds market (lower center) brings the net saving of households plus the net inflow of foreign capital into balance with the borrowing by businesses and governments."

"[We may view the] economic organization as a system of prize relations. Seen in the large, free enterprise is an organization of production and distribution in which individuals or family units get their real income, their "living," by selling productive power for money to "business units" or "enterprises", and buying with the money income thus obtained the direct goods and services which they consume. This view, it will be remembered, ignores for the sake of simplicity the fact that an appreciable fraction of the productive power in use at any time is not really employed in satisfying current wants but to make provision for increased want-satisfaction in the future; it treats society as it would be, or would tend to become, with progress absent, or in a “static” state."

"Fiscal, monetary, and growth policies are used by the government to maintain a healthy economy. We will look at their interaction and effects on the economy in two ways. The first is to use the circular flow diagram with government and the international sectors added. Another is to look at how these policies affect aggregate demand and aggregate supply."

"The circular-flow diagram offers a simple way of organizing the economic transactions that occur between households and firms in the economy. The two loops of the circular-flow diagram are distinct but related. The inner loop represents the flows of inputs and outputs. The households sell the use of their labor, land, and capital to the firms in the markets for the factors of production. The firms then use these factors to produce goods and services, which in turn are sold to households in the markets for goods..."

"In this model (circular-flow diagram), the economy is simplified to include only two types of decision makers—firms and households. Firms produce goods and services using inputs, such as labor, land, and capital (buildings and machines). These inputs are called the factors of production. Households own the factors of production and consume all the goods and services that the firms produce."

"The circular-flow diagram a visual model of the economy that shows how dollars flow through markets among households and firms change much. We may even make the extreme and artificial assumption that all prices are completely fixed."

"The circular flow diagram separates the economy into the business sector and household sector. The business sector supplies products and demands resources used in the production process. The household sector demands products and supplies resources used in the production process."

"The competitive price system uses supply-demand markets to solve the trio of economic problems — What How, and For Whom All demand relations are shown in blue. all the supply relations, in black."

"How do we measure the net national product, NNP? The general idea is simple. Figure 10-1 shows the circular flow of dollar spending in an economy with no government and no accumulation of capital or net saving going on."

"Figure 12-6 pulls together in a simplified way the main elements of income determination. Without saving and investment, there would be a circular flow of income between business and the public: above, business pays out wages, interest, rents, and profits to the public in return for the services of labor and property; and below, the public pays consumption dollars to business in return for goods and services. Realistically, we must recognize that the public will wish to save some of its income, as shown at the spigot Z. Hence, businesses cannot expect their consumption sales to be as large as the total of wages, interest, rents, and profits."

"Business cycles are a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; this sequence of changes is recurrent but not periodic; in duration business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar character with amplitudes approximating their own."

"For well over a century business cycles have run an unceasing round. They have persisted through vast economic and social changes; they have withstood countless experiments in industry, agriculture, banking, industrial relations, and public policy; they have confounded forecasters without number, belied repeated prophecies of a "new era of prosperity" and outlived repeated forebodings of "chronic depression.""

"Periodically, our economic system becomes the spectacle of unemployed men who are able and eager to work; abundant tools to work with and materials to work upon; and a nation in need of the goods that these men, by the use of these idle machines, might make out of these surplus materials. Yet, month after month, the men and machines and materials are not brought into productive relations with each other."

"Business-cycle theorists concerned themselves with why the economy naturally generated fluctuations in employment and output, [while the rest of the profession] continued to operate on the assumption that full employment was the natural, equilibrium position for the economy."

"The postwar era has not surprised Arthur Burns, for business cycles have continued their "unceasing round." although the United States recession of 1981-82 was the eighth since World War II and the deepest postwar slump by almost any measure, the 1983-84 recovery displayed an upward momentum sufficient to befuddle forecasters and delight incumbent politicians. Nor would a reincarnated Joseph Schumpeter be disappointed in the current status of business cycle research in the economics profession. To be sure, interest in business cycles decayed during the prosperity of the 1960s, as symbolized in the 1969 conference volume, Is the Business Cycle Obsolete? and in Paul Samuelson's remark the same year that the National Bureau of Economic Research "has worked itself out of one of its first jobs, namely, the business cycle.""

"The other mystery is the reason why there is a business cycle - the irregular rhythm of recessions and recoveries that prevents economic growth from being a smooth trend."

"Inevitably, any attempt to break down the past down into cycles involves beginning and ending points that are, to some degree, arbitrary. Others might well divide the market's cycles somewhat differently. But virtually every market historian agrees on the larger picture: the history of the market is a story of bull and bear markets that take place against a backdrop of much longer waves—weak and strong cycles that last long enough to convince us that they are the norm."

"That very large system, with interconnected industries responding to each other through delays, entraining each other in their oscillations, and being amplified by multipliers and speculators, is the primary cause of business cycles. Those cycles don't come from presidents, although presidents can do much to ease or intensify the optimism of the upturns and the pain of the downturns. Economies are extremely complex systems; they are full of balancing feedback loops with delays and they are inherently oscillatory."

"This book offers an analytic description of the complicated processes by which seasons of business prosperity, crisis, depression, and revival come about in the modern world. The materials used consist chiefly of market reports and statistics concerning the business cycles which have run their course since 1890 in the United States, England, Germany and France."

"No two business cycles are quite the same; yet they all have much in common. They are not identical twins, but they are recognizable as belonging to the same family."

"Analyzing business cycles means neither more nor less than analyzing the economic process of the capitalist era.... Cycles are not like tonsils, separable things that might be treated by themselves, but are, like the beat of the heart, of the essence of the organism that displays them."

"A key tenet of the Chicago school is that free markets function well in most circumstances, so government intervention into the economy ought to be limited. A second theme is that economic analysis has substantial explanatory power for empirical phenomena, not only in the narrow economic realm but also—as Gary Becker (whom I discuss next) has particularly demonstrated—in a wide variety of social interactions."

"[ Milton Friedman was] the dominant member of the so-called Chicago school of economics [during his tenure at Chicago]... The economics department increasingly reflected his approach and interests. These included deep commitment to the truth, appreciation of markets and free enterprise, frank and blunt discussion, and enormous zeal to convince the heathen. But most important was the commitment to economic analysis as a powerful instrument for interpreting economic and social life."

"This Chicago-style approach, sometimes known as ‘Price Theory’ because of the fundamental role that prices often play, is exemplified in the path-breaking work of Gary Becker, Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, Sherwin Rosen, George Stigler, and many others. Price theory has shed light not only on the most fundamental topics of traditional economics (e.g. consumption, saving, taxation, regulation), but also pioneered the use of economic tools in studying a wide range of other human behavior (e.g. crime and corruption, discrimination, marriage)."

"[I]t was Chicago School economists such as George Stigler who wrote of the “capture theory of regulation” when it came to the trucking industry, the airline industry, and many others. That is, they produced dozens of scholarly articles demonstrating how government regulatory agencies ostensibly created to regulate industry “in the public interest” are most often “captured” by the industry itself and then used not to protect the public but to enforce cartel pricing arrangements.This was all good, solid, applied free-market economics, but at the same time the Chicago Schoolers ignored the biggest and most important regulatory capture of all — the creation of the Fed. The Chicago School simply ignored the obvious fact that the Fed was created as a governmental cartel enforcement mechanism for the banking industry — during an era when many other kinds of regulatory institutions were being created for the same purpose (i.e., “natural monopoly” regulation)."

"The Chicago, group... owes its origins to Professor Frank H. Knight of the University of Chicago, who is Mises’s junior by a few years. Like Mises, Knight owes his original reputation to a theoretical monograph; notwithstanding an early lack of recognition, the latter’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921) eventually became, and for many years continued to be, one of the most influential textbooks on economic theory, although it had not originally been designed as such. Knight has since written a great deal on questions of economic policy and social philosophy—mostly in articles the majority of which have since been published in book form. The best-known, and perhaps also the most characteristic, volume is The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays (1935). Knight’s personal influence, through his teaching, exceeds even the influence of his writings. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that nearly all the younger American economists who really understand and advocate a competitive economic system have at one time been Knight’s students."

"Henry C. Simons... his pamphlet, A Positive Program for Laissez Faire, offered a new and common basis for the aspirations of America’s young liberals. Hopes for a systematic and comprehensive work from Simons were disappointed; instead, he left a collection of essays which appeared in 1948 under the title Economic Policy for a Free Society. This book became very influential owing to its wealth of ideas and to the courage with which Simons discussed such delicate problems as trade unionism. Today, the nucleus of a group of like-minded economists—no longer confined to Chicago—is formed by Simons’ closest friend, Aaron Director, and two of the best-known younger American theoreticians, George Stigler and Milton Friedman. Director has edited Simons’ papers and carried on his work."

"If you'd asked me five years after I went to Harvard, in 1940 when I left Harvard for MIT and after being a Junior Fellow of three years, I would have said, "Thank God I left Chicago. Because the three biggest things in economics have been the Keynesian revolution, the monopolistic competition revolution, and the mathematicization of economics", and Chicago was against all of these things during that period of time."

"In the 1930s economics appeared to be a little different at the University of Chicago than elsewhere, but the same statement could be made about most major universities. Frank Knight was skeptical of the moral and intellectual content of political behavior and particularly hostile to central economic planning, but he was also severely critical of the ethical basis of a competitive economy. No doctrinaire defender of private enterprise would find him a source of strength. Henry Simons had preached a form of laissez-faire in his famous 1934 pamphlet A Positive Program for Laissez Faire, but what a form! He proposed nationalization of basic industries … [and] urged an extremely egalitarian policy in the taxation of income and detailed regulation of business practices … Much of his program was almost as harmonious with socialism as with private-enterprise capitalism.… Jacob Viner, the other major figure, had nineteenth-century liberal tastes, but rebelled against simplified or “extreme” positions. The rest of the faculty were highly varied in their policy preferences: Paul Douglas favored a large economic role for the state; Simeon Leland was a traditionalist in taxation; Henry Millis was an old-fashioned labor economist; Lloyd Mints wrote only on central bank policy; Henry Schultz stuck to his mathematical and statistical knitting; and Oskar Lange was a socialist."

"One of the worst aspects of these economic fluctuations is the high levels of unemployment associated with the downturns. The actuality runs counter to a major hypothesis of Chicago-style economics and its particular models, that demand equals supply—for everything. But if demand for labor equals supply of labor, what does that say about unemployment? According to that mode of thinking, there's no such thing as unemployment. What does demand = supply mean when 9.8 percent of Americans are unemployed, as is the case now? How does the Chicago school interpret that stubborn figure? They say that the unemployed are really just enjoying leisure. They're getting a little bit of an early vacation. But when most people go on vacation, they are happy. If you look at most of the people who can't get a job, they're not enjoying a vacation. The Chicago school would say this is not a problem for economists; it's a problem for psychiatrists. The unemployed should all go see a psychiatrist and try to understand why they aren't enjoying their leisure. But my own view is this is really quite an absurd view of economics and what's going on today."

"Macroeconomics has been in an unsettled state since the early 1970s. The Keynesian model, which was almost universally accepted as the basic paradigm until the late 1960s, is regarded by most economists as scientifically not quite respectable. Periodically, some group of economists tries to patch up the Keynesian framework—the most recent effort was by the new Keynesians in the 1980s—but the results have never really been successful."

"The term new Keynesians denotes a loosely connected group of researchers who shared a common belief that the synthesis that emerged in response to the rational-expectations critique was basically correct. But they also shared the belief that much remained to be learned about the nature of imperfections in different markets and about the implications of those imperfections for macroeconomic fluctuations."

"Colander: What’s your view of the New Keynesian approach? Tobin: I’m not sure what that means. If it means people like Greg Mankiw, I don’t regard them as Keynesians. I don’t think they have involuntary unemployment or absence of market clearing. It is a misnomer to call Mankiw any form of Keynesian. Colander: How about real-business-cycle theorists? Tobin: Well, that’s just the enemy."

"Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural."

"Macroeconomics is the study of how people make decisions in resource-limited situations on a national or global scale. It deals with the effects of decisions that national leaders make on such issues as tax rates, interest rates, foreign and trade policy."

"There are some sordid minds, formed of slime and filth, to whom interest and gain are what glory and virtue are to superior souls; they feel no other pleasure but to acquire money."

"The big, looming, monetary issue is "quantitative easing": that is, printing money. What happens is that the government borrows from the Bank of England, not from the markets. It expands the money supply to keep the economy going and also to counter deflation without simultaneously increasing government debt. The attractions are obvious, as are the dangers. The Robert Mugabe school of economics provides a salutary warning about uncontrolled monetary expansion in generating hyper-inflation. The road to Harare is not as long as we might hope. Monetary easing may prove to be necessary but will have to be managed with great skill and care: Too little easing and the crisis drags on – as in Japan. If there is too much, the authorities face the messy task of mopping-up liquidity by issuing bonds which add to the burden of borrowing or else we lurch back from deflation to inflation. So interest rates may soon become yesterday's story."

"Slight was the thing I bought, Small was the debt I thought, Poor was the loan at best— God! but the interest!"

"Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer."

"It is not so well known that it [Keynes's and my own move from thinking in terms of price-levels and the rate of interest to thinking in terms of inputs and outputs] is matched by a movement from Hayek to Harrod. I once asked Harrod what had put him on to the construction of his so-call 'dynamic' theory; he said, to my surprise, that it was thinking about Hayek."

"I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes."

"I consider that interest is determined by the increment of produce which it enables a labourer to obtain, and is altogether independent of the total return which he receives for this labour."

"we often observe that there is abundance of capital to be had at low rates of interest, while there are also large numbers of artisans starving for want of employment."

"Instead of paying interest to those who have more money than they need and in order to keep money in circulation, people should pay a small fee if they keep the money out of circulation."

"As soon as interest is abolished, inflation becomes unnecessary..."

"As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from—so must it be with a government."

"No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance."

"Allah destroys interest and gives increase for charities. And Allah does not like every sinning disbeliever."

"Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy."

"Let us begin with a definition of economics. Over the last half-century, the study of economics has expanded to include a vast range of topics. Here are some of the major subjects that are covered in this book:"

"The most serious criticism of EMU is that by abandoning exchange rate adjustments it transfers to the labor market the task of adjusting for competitiveness and relative prices... losses in output and employment (and pressure on the European central bank to inflate) will predominate."

"What was critical for the maintenance of pegged exchange rates, I argue in this book, was protection for governments from pressure to trade exchange rate stability for other goals."

"Writing in 1944, the year of the Bretton Woods Conference, Polanyi suggested that the extension of the institutions of the market over the course of the nineteenth century aroused a political reaction in the form of associations and lobbies that ultimately undermined the stability of the market system. He gave the gold standard a place of prominence among the institutions of laissez faire in response to which this reaction had taken place. And he suggested that the opening of national economic decision making to parties representing working-class interests had contributed to the downfall of that international monetary system. In a sense, this book asks whether Polanyi’s thesis stands the test of time. Can the international monetary history of the second half of the twentieth century be understood as the further unfolding of Polanyian dynamics, in which democratization again came into conflict with economic liberalization in the form of free capital mobility and fixed exchange rates? Or do recent trends toward floating rates and monetary unification point to ways of reconciling freedom and stability in the two domains?"

"As a result of uncertainties caused by the French referendum, massive speculative flows have continued to disrupt the functioning of the exchange rate mechanism. As Chairman of Ecofin I have tonight called an urgent meeting of the EC's monetary committee to consider how stability might be restored to the markets over the next few days. In the meantime the Government has decided that Britain's best interests would be best secured by suspending our membership of the ERM with immediate effect. As a result, the second of the two interest rate rises announced today will not take effect."

"In a monetary union with irreversibly fixed exchange rates the weak would become ever weaker and the strong ever stronger. We would thus experience great tensions in the real economy of Europe. For this reason alone, monetary union without the simultaneous integration in fields like fiscal policy as well as regional and social policy is completely inconceivable... In order to create a European currency, the governments and parliaments of Europe would have to be prepared to transfer sovereign rights to a supranational institution."

"Let us begin with a definition of economics. Over the last half-century, the study of economics has expanded to include a vast range of topics. Here are some of the major subjects that are covered in this book:"

"The partial absorption of art by domestic industry and by domestic female crafts, that is to say, the fusion of artistic activity with other activities, is a retrogression from the standpoint of the division of labour and professional differentiation."

"The backbone of the domestic industry is the independent producer. These are the people who maintain the marginal wells. If the domestic industry is going to be able to adequately respond to the energy needs of this nation, changes must occur."

"As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it."

"To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation."

"For 60 years Gross Domestic Product, or GDP for short, has been the yardstick by which the world has measured and understood economic and social progress. However, it has failed to capture some of the factors that make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to their happiness, such as security, leisure,income distribution and a clean environment–including the kinds of factors which growth itself needs to be sustainable."

"If we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need."

"Some device has been concocted by the devil, suggesting innumerable spending opportunities to the wealthy, so that they pursue unnecessary and worthless things as if they were indispensable, and no amount is sufficient for the expenditures they contrive."

"You should always adapt your consumption to your income — you shouldn't try and adjust your income to your consumption. That's a basic principle for individuals, businesses, and everything else."

"Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. ... To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues. It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption."

"Consumption is encouraged by government, business, and even our social leaders. It teaches children the wrong values, pollutes the environment, affects health and health costs, and ultimately life expectancy.Most importantly, it distorts values and priorities. Unbridled consumption is not a virtue but a disease that should not be encouraged by our leaders. We must recognize that consumption alone is not a measure or standard of living or wellbeing, particularly if it pollutes the environment and affects health."

"Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?"

"People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility. Forests are felled to make “personalised heart-shaped wooden cheese board sets”. Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish. This is pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us."

"When our pauper was rich, did he perform any of the useful social functions we've just mentioned simply by spending his money? Though he may have appeared to belong to the ruling class, surely in fact he was neither ruling, nor serving society in any other way; he was merely a consumer of goods. ... Don't you think we can fairly call him a drone? He grows up in his own home to be a plague to the community, just as a drone grows in its cell to be a plague to the hive."

"Since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption."

"It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves."

"Leisure held the first place at the start, and came to hold a rank very much above wasteful consumption of goods. ... From that point onward, consumption has gained ground, until, at present, it unquestionably holds the primacy."

"One of the strangest disparities of history lies between the sense of abundance felt by older and simpler societies and the sense of scarcity felt by the ostensibly richer societies of today. Charles Péguy has referred to modern man’s feeling of “slow economic strangulation,” his sense of never having enough to meet the requirement which his pattern of life imposes on him. Standards of consumption which he cannot meet, and which he does not need to meet, come virtually in the guise of duties."

"Productive economy of scale is "unlimited" only when the state absorbs the diseconomies of large scale production. Overall economies of scale reflect a package of costs. And those costs are themselves influenced by direct and indirect subsidies that distort price as an accurate signal of the actual cost of providing a service. If the state had not allowed big business to externalize many of its operating costs (especially long-distance shipping) on the public through subsidies (especially subsidized transportation), economy of scale would have been reached at a much lower level of production. The state's subsidies have the effect of artificially shifting the economy of scale upward to higher levels of output than a free market can support."

"As for large landed property, its defenders have always sophistically identified the economic advantages offered by large-scale agriculture with large-scale landed property, as if it were not precisely as a result of the abolition of property that this advantage, for one thing, received its greatest possible extension, and, for another, only then would be of social benefit."

"Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life."

"The importance of empire became especially obvious to the self-styled 'have not' powers when they adopted rearmament as a tool of economic recovery. For rearmament in the 1930s, if one wished to possess the most up-to-date weaponry, demanded copious supplies of a variety of crucial raw materials (see below). Neither Italy, Germany nor Japan had these commodities within their own borders other than in trivial quantities. By contrast, the lion's share of the world's accessible supplies lay within the borders of one of four rival powers: the British Empire, the French Empire, the Soviet Union and the United States. Thus, no country could aspire to military parity with these powers without substantial imports of commodities whose supply they all but monopolized. For three reasons, it was not possible for the 'have nots' to rely on free trade to acquire them. First, free trade had been significantly reduced by the mid-1930s, thanks to the imposition of protectionist tariffs. Second, Italy, Germany and Japan lacked adequate international reserves to pay for the imports they required. Third, even if their central banks' reserves had been overflowing with gold, there was a risk that imports might be interdicted by rival powers before rearmament was complete. There was therefore a compelling logic behind territorial expansion, as Hitler made clear in his memorandum of August-September 1936, which outlined a new Four-Year Plan for the German economy."

"The exchange relationships we choose determine whether we share them as a common gift or sell them as a private commodity. A great deal rests on that choice. For the greater part of human history, and in places in the world today, common resources were the rule. But some invented a different story, a social construct in which everything is a commodity to be bought and sold. The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world. But it is just a story we have told ourselves and we are free to tell another, to reclaim the old one. One of these stories sustains the living systems on which we depend. One of these stories opens the way to living in gratitude and amazement at the richness and generosity of the world. One of these stories asks us to bestow our own gifts in kind, to celebrate our kinship with the world. We can choose. If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become."

"The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labor as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production."

"The commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities."

"The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force."

"CREDITOR, n. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions."

"Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times."

"If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year."

"The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage..."

"The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own."

"In his first years in the White House, Mr. Roosevelt apologized for each annual deficit. Each new budget message explained that, because of unforeseen circumstances, the promise of the previous year had not been met, but next year things would be better; next year there would be a balanced budget…. The 1938 congressional elections were uncomfortably near at hand…. it was announced that the President would deliver a Fireside Chat. In it our startled ears caught the opening accents of a grand new liturgy. Spending would be resumed, but let not the heart be troubled. Spending was no longer the rock of unsound finance on which so many liberal governments had been wrecked; it was not danger, but security. Debt, if owed to ourselves, was not debt but investment."

"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt."

"All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation."

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."

"Indeed, the CBO numbers are ominous, as they outline the likely path of debt and deficits. The watchdog agency estimates that debt held by the public, which currently totals $27.4 trillion and excludes intragovernmental obligations, will rise from the current 99% of GDP to 116% over the next decade. That would be “an amount greater than at any point in the nation’s history,” the CBO said in its most recent update. Surging budget deficits have been driving the debt, and the CBO only expects that to get worse."

"Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?""

"Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both."

"I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes."

"A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing."

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."

"And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude."

"I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of it's being a public blessing."

"At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture."

"I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of it's constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing."

"Such was the origin of that debt which has since become the greatest prodigy that ever perplexed the sagacity and confounded the pride of statesmen and philosophers. At every stage in the growth of that debt the nation has set up the same cry of anguish and despair. At every stage in the growth of that debt it has been seriously asserted by wise men that bankruptcy and ruin were at hand. Yet still the debt went on growing; and still bankruptcy and ruin were as remote as ever."

"When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I. Well, what we have now, at least two thirds of it, is the war debt. We're never going to make a substantial cut in that debt until we quit getting into these unnecessary wars."

"No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance."

"Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy."

"Our national debt a national blessing."

"United States debt per citizen $86,639 United States debt per taxpayer $228,999"

"I hold every man a debtor to his profession."

"Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times."

"Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times."

"Forgive us out debts, as we forgive our debtors."

"Leve aes alienum debitorem facit, grave inimicum."

"The economist’s “demand” is not the real demand; his “consumption” is an artificial consumption. For the economist, only that person really demands, only that person is a real consumer, who has an equivalent to offer for what he receives."

"The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits."

"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors."

"Moving to a cooperatively organized enterprise is one of the best ways to really do something about unequal distribution of wealth."

"Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because "that’s not how the free market works"—implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations."

"The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class."

"Ever since the dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land, all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes."

"Efficient exploitation requires that those exploited be relatively mobile, self-animating and self-maintaining—the more so as the work in question requires greater intelligence, attention or ingenuity. But it also requires that they not be free enough, strong enough or willful enough to resist, escape or significantly misfit the situation of exploitation."

"Efficient exploitation of “human resources” requires that the structures that refer the others’ actions to the exploiter’s ends must extend beneath the victim’s skin. The exploiter has to bring about the partial disintegration and re(mis)integration of the others’ matter, parts and properties so that as organized systems the exploited are oriented to some degree by habits, skills, schedules, values and tastes to the exploiter’s ends rather than, as they would otherwise be, to ends of their own. In particular, the manipulations which adapt the exploited to a niche in another’s economy must accomplish a great reduction of the victim’s intolerance of coercion."

"What the exploiter needs is that the will and intelligence of the victim be disengaged from the projects of resistance and escape but that they not be simply broken or destroyed. Ideally, the dis-integration and mis-integration of the victim should accomplish the detachment of the victim's will and intelligence from the victim’s own interests and their attachment to the interests of the exploiter. This will effect a displacement or dissolution of self-respect and will undermine the victim’s intolerance of coercion. With that, the situation transcends the initial paradigmatic form or structure of coercion; for if people don’t mind doing what you want them to do, then, in a sense, you can’t really be making them do it. In the limiting case, the victim’s will and intelligence are wholly transferred to a full engagement in the pursuit of the dominating person’s interests. The “problem” had been that there were two parties with divergent interests; this sort of solution (which is very elegant, as that word is used in logic) is to erase the conflict by reducing the number of interested parties to one. This radical solution can properly be called “enslavement.”"

"The problem of ideology ... has especially to do with the concepts and the languages of practical thought which stabilize a particular form of power and domination; or which reconcile and accommodate the mass of the people to their subordinate place in the social formation."

"The Lord enters into judgment"

"They shall build houses and inhabit them;"

"Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong?"

"No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc."

"When our pauper was rich, did he perform any of the useful social functions we've just mentioned simply by spending his money? Though he may have appeared to belong to the ruling class, surely in fact he was neither ruling, nor serving society in any other way; he was merely a consumer of goods. ... Don't you think we can fairly call him a drone? He grows up in his own home to be a plague to the community, just as a drone grows in its cell to be a plague to the hive."

"In a market-based labor contract, there is no exploitation. People come to agreement based on their own perceptions of mutual benefit."

"Oppression follows logically from exploitation, so as to guarantee the latter."

"...sustainability is not compatible with the existing profit- and growth-oriented development paradigm. And this means that the standard of living of the North’s affluent societies cannot be generalized. This was already clear to Mahatma Gandhi 60 years ago,who, when asked by a British journalist whether he would like India to have the same standard of living as Britain, replied: ‘To have its standard of living a tiny country like Britain had to exploit half the globe. How many globes will India need to exploit to have the same standard of living?’ From an ecological and feminist perspective, moreover, even if there were more globes to be exploited, it is not even desirable that this development paradigm and standard of living was generalized, because it has failed to fulfill its promises of happiness, freedom, dignity and peace, even for those who have profited from it."

"Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies in Ecofeminism Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, 1993, (2014)"

"In process of time, the robber, or slaveholding, class—who had seized all the lands, and held all the means of creating wealth—began to discover that the easiest mode of managing their slaves, and making them profitable, was not for each slaveholder to hold his specified number of slaves, as he had done before, and as he would hold so many cattle, but to give them so much liberty as would throw upon themselves (the slaves) the responsibility of their own subsistence, and yet compel them to sell their labor to the land-holding class—their former owners—for just what the latter might choose to give them. Of course, these liberated slaves, as some have erroneously called them, having no lands, or other property, and no means of obtaining an independent subsistence, had no alternative—to save themselves from starvation—but to sell their labor to the landholders, in exchange only for the coarsest necessaries of life; not always for so much even as that."

"Condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become a master in it too, be able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on the heads, only draws the wire, works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannot satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another’s hands and is used (exploited) by this other. For this laborer in another’s service there is no enjoyment of a cultivated mind, at most crude amusements: culture, you see, is barred against him."

"I can see no hope for humanity so long as one's right to live depends upon one's ability to pay the cost of living imposed by those who exploit our daily needs."

"The Theory of Economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions."

"The fact that economics is not physics does not mean that we should not aim to apply the same fundamental standards for what constitutes legitimate argument; we can insist that the ultimate criterion for judging economic ideas is the degree to which they help us order and summarize data, that it is not legitimate to try to protect attractive theories from the data."

"[A]lmost every statement which we — or for that matter anyone else — runs afoul of some existing opinion, and, by the very nature of things, most opinions thus far could hardly have been proved or disproved within the field of social theory. It is therefore a great help that all our assertions can be borne out by specific examples from the theory of games and strategy."

"Happily there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete."

"John Stuart Mill 1848 [1965], The Principles of Political Economy Book 3. University of Toronto Press, p. 594"

"So far no chemist has discovered exchange value either in a pearl or a diamond."

"Economic doctrine is ... not a body of concrete truth but an engine for the discovery of concrete truth, similar say to the theory of mechanics."

"Andrea: Unglücklich das Land, das keine Helden hat. Galilei:Nein. Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat."

"For want of a Nail the Shoe was lost; for want of a Shoe the Horse was lost; and for want of a Horse the Rider was lost; being overtaken and slain by the Enemy, all for want of Care about a Horse-shoe Nail."

"The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed."

"In the last analysis, the question of what are true and false needs must be answered by the individuals themselves, but only in the last analysis; that is, if and when they are free to give their own answer. As long as they are kept incapable of being autonomous, as long as they are indoctrinated and manipulated (down to their very instincts), their answer to this question cannot be taken as their own."

"The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war."

"Goneril: What need you five-and-twenty? Ten? Or five? To follow in a house where twice so many Have a command to tend you? Regan: What need one? Lear: O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, ... But, for true need,— You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!"

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output."

"Reagan had the opportunity to perform this quick surgery when he came into office. Instead, he turned his economic policies over to the Friedmanite monetarists. Reaganomics is largely monetarism. The monetarist view is that the Fed must only very, very slowly reduce the rate of counterfeiting, and thereby insure a gradual, painless recession with no unemployment or sharp readjustments. The hoax of Reaganomics was that the phony "budget cuts" and "tax cuts" were supposed to provide the razzle-dazzle to give gradualist Friedmanism the time, or the "breathing space," to work its magic. … There were two fundamental reforms the Reagan Administration could have proposed to end our Age of Inflation. First, either the abolition or the brutal checking of the Fed. Nothing was done, since monetarism wishes to give all power to the Fed and then navely urges the Fed to use that power wisely and with self-restraint. Second, the Administration could have followed Reagan's campaign pledge and reinstituted the gold standard. But the Friedmanite monetarists hate gold with a purple passion and wish all power to government fiat money."

"Although there are deep and abiding differences between Chicago school monetarists and Austrian monetary theorists, there has always been strong agreement among them on one thing: the central importance of the money supply in explaining the purchasing power of money or "price level" in the economy.This does not appear to be the case any longer. The June 2004 cover article of Monetary Trends a publication of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, long a staunch bastion of monetarism, is entitled "How Money Matters." A more accurate description of its contents is "Why Money Doesn’t Matter Anymore." The author, William T. Gavin, emphasizes that "money still matters"—just not its quantity."

"Monetarism was a powerful force in economic debate for about three decades after Friedman first propounded the doctrine in his 1959 book A Program for Monetary Stability. Today, however, it is a shadow of its former self, for two main reasons.First, when the United States and the United Kingdom tried to put monetarism into practice at the end of the 1970s, both experienced dismal results: in each country steady growth in the money supply failed to prevent severe recessions. The Federal Reserve officially adopted Friedman-type monetary targets in 1979, but effectively abandoned them in 1982 when the unemployment rate went into double digits. This abandonment was made official in 1984, and ever since then the Fed has engaged in precisely the sort of discretionary fine-tuning that Friedman decried. For example, the Fed responded to the 2001 recession by slashing interest rates and allowing the money supply to grow at rates that sometimes exceeded 10 percent per year. Once the Fed was satisfied that the recovery was solid, it reversed course, raising interest rates and allowing growth in the money supply to drop to zero.Second, since the early 1980s the Federal Reserve and its counterparts in other countries have done a reasonably good job, undermining Friedman’s portrayal of central bankers as irredeemable bunglers. Inflation has stayed low, recessions—except in Japan, of which more in a second—have been relatively brief and shallow. And all this happened in spite of fluctuations in the money supply that horrified monetarists, and led them—Friedman included—to predict disasters that failed to materialize. As David Warsh of The Boston Globe pointed out in 1992, "Friedman blunted his lance forecasting inflation in the 1980s, when he was deeply, frequently wrong."

"Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor."

"Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s monumental Monetary History of the United States eventually helped to displace Keynesian interpretations with a monetarist interpretation, especially after the stagflation of the 1970s worked to discredit Keynesian macroeconomics."

"Friedman's failure to see that monetarism would ultimately lead to the excesses of Keynesian tinkering in the economy is tragic, but the failure of so many today to recognize this is without excuse."

"However, if Friedmanite monetarism was anything, it was naïve about political reality. The fatal flaw of Friedman's famous "monetary rule" of constant growth of the money supply in the 3–4 percent range was premised on the assumption that a machine-like Fed chairman would selflessly pursue the public interest by enforcing Friedman's monetary rule. According to Friedman, Stockman writes, "inflation would be rapidly extinguished if money supply was harnessed to a fixed and unwavering rate of growth, such as 3 percent per annum." This was the fundamental assumption behind monetarism, and it flew in the face of everything the Chicago Schoolers purported to know about political reality. In other words, Friedmanite monetarism was never a realistic possibility, for as Friedman himself frequently said of all other governmental institutions besides the Fed, a government institution that is not political is as likely as a cat that barks like a dog. Friedman's monetary rule, Stockman concludes, was "basically academic poppycock.""

"The world probably would have been much better off had macroeconomics never been devised. Although I have in mind Keynesian macroeconomics above all, I include other types of macro models as well. I even include, somewhat reluctantly, the whole quantity theory approach descended from David Hume to the Friedmanites, now known as monetarism. … In short, among its many other deficiencies, as spelled out by Mises and his followers, monetarism’s most fundamental flaw is identical to the most fundamental flaw of Keynesian, Post-Keynesian, New Classical, and other theories advanced by macroeconomists during the past seventy or eighty years: not only does the theory leave out critical variables, but it is too simple, being expressed in huge, all-encompassing aggregates that conceal the real economic action taking place within the economic order."

"Monetarism means honest money. It means that the money is backed properly by the production of goods and services."

"In the last decade or two there has grown up in this country, principally under the leadership of Professor Milton Friedman, a school calling itself the Monetarists. The leaders sometimes sum up their doctrine in the phrase: "Money matters," and even sometimes in the phrase: "Money matters most.""

"It is with considerable reluctance that I criticize the monetarists, because, though I consider their proposed monetary policy unfeasible, they are after all much more nearly right in their assumptions and prescriptions than the majority of present academic economists. The simplistic form of the quantity theory of money that they hold is not tenable; but they are overwhelmingly right in insisting on how much "money matters," and they are right in insisting that in most circumstances, and over the long run, it is the quantity of money that is most influential in determining the purchasing power of the monetary unit. Other things being equal, the more dollars that are issued, the smaller becomes the value of each individual dollar. So at the moment the monetarists are more effective opponents of further inflation than the great bulk of politicians and even putative economists who still fail to recognize this basic truth."

"I do not mean to suggest that all those who call themselves monetarists make this unconscious assumption that an inflation involves this uniform rise of prices. But we may distinguish two schools of monetarism. The first would prescribe a monthly or annual increase in the stock of money just sufficient, in their judgment, to keep prices stable. The second school (which the first might dismiss as mere inflationists) wants a continuous increase in the stock of money sufficient to raise prices steadily by a "small" amount—2 or 3 per cent a year. These are the advocates of a "creeping" inflation. … I made a distinction earlier between the monetarists strictly so called and the "creeping inflationists." This distinction applies to the intent of their recommended policies rather than to the result. The intent of the monetarists is not to keep raising the price "level" but simply to keep it from falling, i.e., simply to keep it "stable." But it is impossible to know in advance precisely what uniform rate of money-supply increase would in fact do this. The monetarists are right in assuming that in a prospering economy, if the stock of money were not increased, there would probably be a mild long-run tendency for prices to decline. But they are wrong in assuming that this would necessarily threaten employment or production. For in a free and flexible economy prices would be falling because productivity was increasing, that is, because costs of production were falling. There would be no necessary reduction in real profit margins. The American economy has often been prosperous in the past over periods when prices were declining. Though money wage-rates may not increase in such periods, their purchasing power does increase. So there is no need to keep increasing the stock of money to prevent prices from declining. A fixed arbitrary annual increase in the money stock "to keep prices stable" could easily lead to a "creeping inflation" of prices."

"But this brings us to what I consider the fatal flaw in the monetarist prescriptions. If the leader of the school cannot make up his own mind regarding what the most desirable rate of monetary increase should be, what does he expect to happen when the decision is put in the hands of the politicians? … The fatal flaw in the monetarist prescription, in brief, is that it postulates that money should consist of irredeemable paper notes and that the final power of determining how many of these are issued should be placed in the hands of the government—that is, in the hands of the politicians in office. The assumption that these politicians could be trusted to act responsibly, particularly for any prolonged period, seems incredibly naive. The real problem today is the opposite of what the monetarists suggest. It is how to get the arbitrary power over the stock of money out of the hands of the government, out of the hands of the politicians."

"While many of the conflicting claims can be reconciled in terms of the short-run and long-run orientation of Keynesians and monetarists, respectively, and in terms of their contrasting philosophical orientations, neither vision takes into account the workings or failings of the market mechanisms within the investment aggregate.Austrian macroeconomics is set apart from both Keynesianism and monetarism by its attention to the differential effects of interest-rate changes within the investment sector, or—using the Austrian terminology—within the economy's structure of production."

"Accounting for the artificial boom and the consequent bust is not part of Keynesian income-expenditure analysis, nor is it an integral part of monetarist analysis. The absence of any significant relationship between boom and bust is an inevitable result of dealing with the investment sector in aggregate terms. The analytical oversight derives from theoretical formulation in Keynesian analysis and from empirical observation in monetarist analysis. But from an Austrian perspective, the differences in method and substance are outweighed by the common implication of Keynesianism and monetarism, namely, that there is no boom-bust cycle of any macroeconomic significance."

"Moreover, in 'macro', the scholastics, beginning with Buridan and culminating in the sixteenth century Spanish scholastics, worked out an 'Austrian' rather than monetarist supply and demand theory of money and prices, including interregional money flows, and even a purchasing-power parity theory of exchange rates."

"Even more than William Potter, John Law assured the nation that the increased money supply and bank credit would not raise prices, especially under Law's own wise aegis. On the contrary, Law anticipated Irving Fisher and the monetarists by assuring that his paper money inflation would lead to 'stability of value', presumably stability of the price of labour, or the purchasing power of money. … The cataclysm of John Law's experiment and his Mississippi bubble provided a warning lesson to all reflective writers and theorists on money throughout the eighteenth century. As we shall see below, hard-money doctrines prevailed easily throughout the century, from Law's former partner and outwitter Richard Cantillon down to the founding fathers of the American Republic. But there were some who refused to learn any lessons from the Law failure, and whose outlook was heavily influenced by John Law."

"One of the superb features of Cantillon's Essai is that he was the first, in a pre-Austrian analysis, to understand that money enters the economy as a step-by-step process and hence does not simply increase or raise prices in a homogeneous aggregate.8 Hence he criticized John Locke's naive quantity theory of money—a theory still basically followed by monetarist and neoclassical economists alike—which holds that a change in the total supply of money causes only a uniform proportionate change in all prices. In short, an increased money supply is not supposed to cause changes in the relative prices of the various goods."

"John Wheatley's exclusive emphasis on the money supply and unitary price levels foreshadowed the modern severe monetarist and macroeconomic split between the monetary and real realms. More pointedly, his mechanistic emphasis on the price level also foreshadowed the unfortunate Fisherine, Chicagoite and later monetarist preoccupation with stabilizing the 'price level' and with fanatically opposing any and all changes in such 'levels'. Even in his early books of 1803 and 1807, Wheatley denounced the alleged evils of falling prices as well as of inflation, and indeed claimed that falling prices were even more damaging. Indeed, the influence of Wheatley's early tracts was gravely weakened by his being soft-core and timid in drawing any policy conclusions from his hard-core analysis. Instead of returning to the gold standard, Wheatley could only suggest the withdrawal of note issue powers from the country banks and the redemption of all small bank notes under £5. … [A]s in the case of all too many monetarist and mechanistic quantity theorists, Wheatley began as an ardent hard-money bullionist, and was driven over the years by his frenetic hatred of deflation to wind up as a fiat money inflationist."

"Christiernin, however, was far from a hard-core hard-money man. He defended bank notes as useful, increasing activity and employment, and opposed deflation because, he pointed out, prices and wages were sticky downward. It is doubtful, however, that downward stickiness could last for long in the eighteenth century. But Christiernin's main objection to deflation was that his ideal was not sound, metallic money but a pre-Friedmanite desire to stabilize the value of the daler and make the price level constant. In pursuit of that goal, he urged open market operations by the central bank. Furthermore, again in anticipation of the monetarists, he admittedly preferred inflation to deflation, if that was the choice."

"The Austrian description of the boom's timing and cause seems similar to the monetarist theory, but there is an important difference. Both schools agree that the contraction of the monetary expansion triggered the recession, but the monetarists view this contraction as something that should be avoided so that prosperity can continue. In Austrian theory, the contraction is necessary to restore balance to the real economy—the preceding expansion is the problem. This is one reason why the two schools differ in their policy recommendations."

"Austrian theory, like the Keynesian and monetarist theories, can give a reason for the start of the Japanese recession. Unlike the other schools, the Austrian policy recommendation of laissez-faire has not been tried."

"Although I realize that Austrian-school economists have themselves been highly critical of monetarism, many of its most fundamental claims are in fact fully consistent with their own understanding of monetary theory. Indeed, back in the 1970s the difference between Austrian and monetarists writings about money seemed trivial compared to the difference between them and the writings of other (broadly "Keynesian") economists. I recall very well how I myself got "deprogrammed" from mainstream thinking about money and inflation by reading Henry Hazlitt's wonderful book, The Inflation Problem, and How to Resolve It . Hazlitt was, of course, a thoroughgoing Misesian. Yet no one who reads his book can fail to note the many crucial similarities between his arguments and those of Milton Friedman concerning the same subject."

"Your friend, rather perversely I think, refers to the "disastrous results" that followed the monetary tightening of Volcker and other more monetarist-minded central bankers without even hinting at the facts that that the tightening was aimed at bringing down inflation rates, and that it succeeded remarkably well in doing precisely that. In other words, the tightening did precisely what monetarism said it would do, and what monetarists' critics at the time, wedded to the view that monetary policy was ineffective, and that inflation was entirely caused by OPEC (or by unions, or by anything except monetary policy) insisted it could not do. And yet your friend imagines that the experience proved the monetarists wrong!"

"In one respect, however, I agree that monetarism was wrong, namely, to the extent that it failed to recognize the need to allow inflation to occur to the extent that it was solely due to falling output or productivity—a case I have argued, along with the symmetrical one for letting prices fall as productivity improves, in my IEA pamphlet Less Than Zero."

"It is indeed true that the reduction of inflation came at a big price—that Volcker's tightening, for instance, succeeded in lowering inflation only in the wake of a severe recession. But this possibility was, first of all, one concerning which monetarists were perfectly aware: they understood the danger that, once inflation, and accelerating inflation especially, came to be anticipated by the public, putting the breaks on money growth would result in prices and wages continuing for some time to rise beyond their new, less-rapidly rising equilibrium values, with a consequent rise in unemployment."

"No monetarist, certainly not Friedman, welcomed this side-effect of monetary restraint. But then again, had Friedman been listened to earlier (and had the likes of Paul Samuelson been ignored), things would never have come to this tragic stage. By way of analogy, should we blame those who would end the war in Iraq, and who opposed it all along, for the tragic consequences that are likely to follow any rapid U.S withdrawal?"

"After Keynes, it was no longer possible to develop economic theory within the old equilibrium framework. The temporal dimension he introduced was there to stay. The next step was logical: the emergence of growth theory as such. Here, however, the inherent limits of orthodox economic theory checked its own spontaneous trajectory. The preoccupation with growth which is the distinguishing feature of post-Keynesian economics should logicallyhave returned it to political economy (and its apex, Marx). For the reproduction of capital was central to Marx’s concerns. But political economy was forbidden, for obvious reasons: it by definition put the socio-economic system as a whole in question."

"Academics who continue to be amused and intrigued with the still-growing literature on the economics of John Maynard Keynes have had to learn to distinguish among the several different schools that draw inspiration from the master. Hyphenated or adjectival Keynesianism includes, for instance, both Neo-Keynesianism, which is based on an assumed wage and price stickiness, and New Keynesianism which attempts to explain the stickiness. Neo- and New Keynesianism share certain methodological presuppositions with Neo- and New Classicism but do not share in the judgment that markets are generally self-equilibrating. Interpreters who prefer to blend Keynes's ideas with those of the old classical school, which featured a cost-based production theory, have adopted "post" as their adjective of choice. … Post Keynesians emphasize Keynes's vision of utopia and the associated reform proposals almost to the exclusion of his diagnosis of depression and prescription of short-run demand-management policies. In fact, standard textbook Keynesianism, whose graphics and equations make the case for monetary and fiscal activism, are repeatedly described in the Davis volume as "bastardized Keynesianism" (Joan Robinson's term) so as to provide an appropriate contrast with the more radical Keynesianism adopted by the volume's contributors. If "post Keynesians" did nothing but embrace these utopian aspects of Keynes, they would more accurately be described as Keynesian fundamentalists."

"Such an emphasis is justified, from an Austrian perspective, because of numerous suggestions made that the two schools would benefit from some sort of “increased intellectual trade.” For instance, no less an authority than John Hicks has “made a case for increased integration” of the viewpoints of John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek (Snowdon, Vane, and Wynarczyk 1994). The Austrians and Post Keynesians, in addition to their criticisms of orthodoxy on the issue of uncertainty, also share non-mainstream perspectives on the importance of monetary institutions (as opposed to strict money neutrality) and transitional states (as opposed to static equilibrium). However, despite their shared recognition of important factors such as ignorance, money, and time, the two schools remain far apart on the nature and significance of these factors within the economic system."

"Post Keynesian policy recommendations involve limiting the legal ability of individuals to bargain in the marketplace. Such recommendations include traditional demand management and "incomes" policies designed to stimulate expenditures while stifling free wage bargaining (Snowdon, Vane, and Wynarczyk 1994, pp. 367–82). However, a glaring omission in Davidson's chapter is that the link from the Post Keynesian position on uncertainty to the possibility of government action] to "improve the performance of the economy" is never made. Even if one accepts the view of an economy plagued by an all-encompassing uncertainty and entrepreneurs that act without any good reason for doing so, it still does not follow that government is capable of improving upon the results of this economic process.10 In fact, the Post Keynesians' own vision of pervasive uncertainty would seem to lean against such conclusions, for how, in a world of such uncertainty, could the government possibly form policies that are compatible with full employment and price stability? Under uncertainty, there can be no perfect ex ante knowledge of the relationship between actions and particular outcomes. To claim that government can improve upon free-market outcomes by reducing uncertainty, one must somehow infer that the government is able to obtain information that is unavailable to market participants in regard to future prospects. If Davidson has some reason to believe that government does indeed have access to such information, it is not stated here."

"Davidson's Post Keynesian account suffers from a related problem. Against his enemies, the proponents of efficient markets, Davidson is anxious to assure us that the future is uncertain. But he nevertheless has a mechanical view of what will happen if government spending in a recession takes place as massively as he wishes. Then, he assures us, the economic doldrums will end and all will be well. How does he know that business and consumer confidence will respond so readily to the injection of government money? Evidently, the future is uncertain, but somehow this state of affairs alters when government enters the scene.Why should we believe this? Why assume that business confidence is so rigidly determined? Is it not rather the result of many causes that, if indeed the future is uncertain, cannot be readily specified?"

"[A]mong its many other deficiencies, as spelled out by Mises and his followers, monetarism’s most fundamental flaw is identical to the most fundamental flaw of Keynesian, Post-Keynesian, New Classical, and other theories advanced by macroeconomists during the past seventy or eighty years: not only does the theory leave out critical variables, but it is too simple, being expressed in huge, all-encompassing aggregates that conceal the real economic action taking place within the economic order."

"The Carter Administration, like its predecessors, is not really coping with the causes of unemployment. Under the influence of post-Keynesian conceptions it seeks once again to stimulate the economy through deficit spending and credit expansion, through tax rebates and public works, and talks about raising minimum wages and increasing unemployment compensation. It is resorting to the very measures that create unemployment rather than alleviate it.Throughout the Keynesian and post-Keynesian era, the inexorable laws of economics have not changed. Unemployment still is, and always has been, a cost phenomenon. A worker whose employ ment adds valuable output and is profitable to his employer can always find a job. A worker whose employment inflicts losses is destined to be unemployed."

"I am very unsympathetic to the school that calls itself post-Keynesian. First of all, I have never been able to understand it as a school of thought. I don't see an intellectual connection between a Hyman Minsky, on the one hand, who happens to be one of the oldest friends I have, and someone like Alfred Eichner, on the other, except that they are all against the same thing, namely the mainstream, whatever that is. The other reason why I am not sympathetic is that I have never been able to piece together (I must confess that I have never tried very hard) a positive doctrine. It seems to be mostly a community which nows what it is against but doesn't offer anything very systematic that could be described as a positive theory. I have read many of Paul Davidson's articles and they often do not make sense to me. Some of post-Keynesian price theory comes forth from the belief that universal competition is a bad assumption. I have all my life known that. So I have found it an unrewarding approach and have not paid much attention to it."

"There is a close and important relationship between Kaldor–Hicks efficiency and Posner's assignment rule. By assigning the appropriate entitlement to the party who would have purchased it had it not been for transaction costs, Posner's principle ensures that the entitlement will be secured by a party who would have been able to compensate the loser and still gain by the assaignment."

"Until recently, economists have not been particularly carried away with concern over environmental problems caused by industrial development. Just as in the other sciences, the few economists ...who have always sounded the alarm ...are somewhat out of the mainstream. These humanist concerns seem to have gone out of style after the age of classical economics. Even the conventional analytical models of contemporary economics seem to prefer to exclude these concepts by ignoring them entirely or by shunting them off into their own branch, called "economic externalities." These externalities include any “given” or windfall factor, such as the availability of transportation, technological know-how, a labor force, or resources, factors that are not themselves directly involved in the economic analysis of markets and businesses. For example, the regularly bright and sunny weather of Hollywood was considered an external economy of the movie industry there. The movie moguls, no matter how tyrannical, could neither turn on nor turn off the sun. But as the surrounding community grew and the smog thickened, the weather became an external economy. In very recent years concern over these economic externalities has grown. The environmentalists are beginning to be included in the mainstream. The literature is growing, and professional meetings include sessions on environmental economics. Attempts are even being made to extend the theoretical framework to include the changes in the environment caused by economic activity. [...] The Materials Flow of the Economy... sees the human race living on a 'space ship earth' in which all the inputs and outputs, all the original resources and all the final wastes, must be accounted for. Furthermore, when the materials are returned in the form of smoke, sewage, garbage, junk, heat, noise, and a wide variety of noxious gases, the world becomes a very changed place — and the change is seldom for the better. Implicit in this materials flow concept of the economy is that the less production that is needed to maintain an adequate level of affluence, the better. An efficient economy is one that gets big results with little effort. More industries, more mines, more businesses, more employment, and more consumer goods do not always mean more well-being... because all these also mean more destruction of our natural resources and despoilation of our surroundings."

"Alongside their work on pure economic theory, the classical political economists engaged in a parallel project: to promote the forcible reconstruction of society into a purely market-oriented system. ... Most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative. To make sure that people accepted wage labor, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support. ... Perhaps because so much of what the classical economists wrote about traditional systems of agricultural production was divorced from the seemingly more timeless remarks about pure theory, later readers have passed over such portions of their works in haste. ... I argue that these interventionist recommendations were a significant element in the overall thrust of their works. Specifically, classical political economy advocated restricting the viability of traditional occupations in the countryside to coerce people to work for wages."

"The classical economists were brilliant and creative minds who, if reborn among us today, would soon forge to the peak of our profession. But they lived in early times and had no access to the scientific knowledge and know-how that has accumulated over the centuries. Therefore, a modern graduate student is expected to improvise a more accurate account of the incidence of export subsidies than any classical writer ever managed to fabricate. In order to adjudicate the merits of the Ricardo and Smith litigants, I ought first to sketch a tolerably accurate, modern account of the incidence process."

"In general the claim can be supported that a view of classical political economy as committed to extreme laissez-faire or unmitigated economic individualism misrepresents or at the very least analytically overgeneralizes their circumscribed theoretical and practical aims. In general then, with regard to both political and economic liberty, the classical political economists might be seen to be united in their efforts to theorize and systematize the productive and allocating functions of the mechanism of the market as the most efficient means to engender the growth of wealth. At the same time, classicals such as Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, and Mill recognized that the market, of necessity, operated in a larger context of restriction – not only legal, but equally as important, within political, religious, moral, and conventional restrictions – which could not be readily or in some cases even desirably overcome."

"There were many ways in which the Keynesian revolution could have developed. It could have extended to core theory and connected to Robertson's and Hayek's work, but it did not, in large part because of the interest of the Keynesian revolutionaries in policy. Complex core theory has little to say about policy; surface theory has much to say. Thus much of the early work in Keynesian economics involved the development of policy-related surface theory. A key place for this development was the Harvard seminar centered around Alvin Hansen, who had come from the University of Minnesota as the first Littauer Professor and who became the one tenured Harvard faculty member accepting Keynesian ideas. With Hansen the young Keynesians had a powerful faculty ally who, like them, was primarily interested in policy, not complex theory. Thus, like a river, the Keynesian revolution followed the path of least resistance, and it was this area of theoretical policy that constituted that path."

"As was the case with the Keynesian theoretical revolution, the Keynesian policy revolution in the United States did not need to be tied to The General Theory. It could have occurred without The General Theory, and much of it ― specifically the emphasis given to monetary and fiscal policy ― was as much a C.E.D. revolution as it was a Keyneisan revolution. Our interviews support this view, and it explains an interesting event recounted in a story about a seminar at which Keynes repudiated what was then thought to be Keynesian economics. This Keynesian policy revolution could be garnered from the Treatise as easily as from The General Theory, and indeed was. Ironically, this policy revolution, while in many ways the least revolutionary aspect of the Keynesian revolution, was the most contentious at the time. People care about policy in ways they do not care about theories or textbooks. That it took place in the 1930s made this policy revolution all the more contentious."

"The Keynesian Revolution is one of the most remarkable episodes in the entire history of economic thought; certainly never before and perhaps never since has the economics profession been won over so rapidly and so massively to a new economic theory."

"Contrary to what is widely believed, the crucial result of the 'Keynesian Revolution' is the general acceptance of a factual assumption and, what is more, of an assumption which becomes true as a result of its being generally accepted. The Keynesian theory, as it has developed during the last twenty years, has become a formal apparatus which may or may not be more convenient to deal with the facts than classical monetary theory; this is not our concern here. The decisive assumption on which Keynes's original argument rested and which has since ruled policy is that it is impossible ever to reduce the money wages of a substantial group of workers without causing extensive unemployment. The conclusion which Lord Keynes drew from this, and which the whole of his theoretical system was intended to justify, was that since money wages can in practice not be lowered, the adjustment necessary, whenever wages have become too high to allow , must be effected by the devious process of reducing the value of money. A society which accepts this is bound for a continuous process of inflation."

"Though with its reliance on apparently measurable magnitudes it appears at first more scientific than the older microtheory, it seems to me that it has achieved this pseudo-exactness at the price of disregarding the relationships which really govern the economic system. Even though the schemata of micro-economics do not claim to achieve those quantitative predictions at which the ambitions of macro-economics aim, I believe by learning to content ourselves with the more modest aims of the former, we shall gain more insight into at least the principle on which the complex order of economic life operates, than by the artificial simplification necessary for macro-theory which tends to conceal nearly all that really matters. I venture to predict that once this problem of method is settled, the 'Keynesian Revolution' will appear as an episode during which erroneous conceptions of the appropriate scientific method led to the temporary obliteration of many important insights which we had already achieved and which we shall then have painfully to regain."

"I do not consider the term "Keynesian revolution" appropriate. [...] It seemed to be a more political event than a scientific event. The Depression discredited the whole profession, people were alarmed about it. The General Theory is a political response to the Depression and to the discrediting of conventional economics that resulted from it.But I should acknowledge that Keynes left an opening for younger econometricians and mathematical economists to take over and to write down models. When their senior colleagues criticized their models, they could say, "Well, these are Keynesian models." And since the older people still hadn't caught up with Keynes, that shut them up. So people like Klein and Tinbergen took over because they had the exciting new methods."

"John Maynard Keynes, late economic adviser to the British Government, is the new prophet of inflationism. The "Keynesian Revolution" consisted in the fact that he openly espoused the doctrines of Silvio Gesel. As the foremost of the British Gesellians, Lord Keynes adopted also the peculiar messianic jargon of inflationist literature and introduced it into official documents. Credit expansion, says the Paper of the British Experts of April 8, 1943, performs the "miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread." The author of this document was, of course, Keynes. Great Britain has indeed traveled a long way to this statement from Hume's and Mill's views on miracles."

"The great economists were harbingers of new ideas. The economic policies they recommended were at variance with the policies practiced by contemporary governments and political parties. As a rule many years, even decades, passed before public opinion accepted the new ideas as propagated by the economists, and before the required corresponding changes in policies were effected.It was different with the "new economics" of Lord Keynes. The policies he advocated were precisely those which almost all governments, including the British, had already adopted many years before his "General Theory" was published. Keynes was not an innovator and champion of new methods of managing economic affairs. His contribution consisted rather in providing an apparent justification for the policies which were popular with those in power in spite of the fact that all economists viewed them as disastrous. His achievement was a rationalization of the policies already practiced. He was not a "revolutionary," as some of his adepts called him. The "Keynesian revolution" took place long before Keynes approved of it and fabricated a pseudo-scientific justification for it. What he really did was to write an apology for the prevailing policies of governments.This explains the quick success of his book. It was greeted enthusiastically by the governments and the ruling political parties. Especially enraptured were a new type of intellectuals, the "government economists." They had had a bad conscience. They were aware of the fact that they were carrying out policies which all economists condemned as contrary to purpose and disastrous. Now they felt relieved. The "new economics" reestablished their moral equilibrium. Today they are no longer ashamed of being the handymen of bad policies. They glorify themselves. They are the prophets of the new creed."

"I think that Keynes was certainly a good example of a new paradigm. His work is possibly the best example of a case for which I think Kuhn's theory fits as well as it can in the domain of the social sciences. In a fairly short period of time, Keynes gave a new way of looking at the economy, a way which was widely accepted, at least by the younger generation."

"Work by economists reexamining the so-called Keynes-versus-the-classics debate has led to another debate, one that might be termed the Keynes-and-the-Keynesians debate. Economists refer to both Keynes's General Theory and the ensuing debates as the Keynesian Revolution. The word revolution implies a radical break with previous tradition. Early work on this revolution dealt with what Keynes was really saying and with how much and where it differed in general terms from what his predecessors had said. Interest then shifted to what Keynes's predecessors really said: was there truly a "classical economics" or was this simply a straw man to make Keynes's writings look significant."

"If liberalism's core doctrine is that, given institutional adherence to the rights of life, liberty, and property, civil society can be counted on by and large to run itself, and if the showcase example in liberalism's brief is the undirected market economy's capacity to function satisfactorily, then the "Keynesian Revolution" signaled the abandonment of liberalism."

"The sum and substance of the "Keynesian Revolution" was the thesis that there can be an unemployment equilibrium on the free market. As we have seen, the only sense in which this is true was known years before Keynes: that widespread union maintenance of excessively high wage rates will cause unemployment."

"During the early 1930s, there was a great deal of interest, in the United States and Great Britain, in Mises's theory of the trade cycle, an interest unfortunately nipped in the bud by the excitement surrounding the "Keynesian Revolution.""

"Keynes was scarcely a "revolutionary" in any real sense. He possessed the tactical wit to dress up ancient statist and inflationist fallacies with modern, pseudoscientific jargon, making them appear to be the latest findings of economic science. Keynes was thereby able to ride the tidal wave of statism and socialism, of managed and planning economies. Keynes eliminated economic theory's ancient role as spoilsport for inflationist and statist schemes, leading a new generation of economists on to academic power and to political pelf and privilege."

"The Keynesian revolution, led by Alvin Hansen, Seymour Harris, Abba P. Lerner, and Paul Samuelson, among others, excited the minds of a new generation of economists for several reasons. First, Keynes's middle-of-the-road policies were viewed, not as a threat to free-market capitalism, but as its savior. According to Marxism, which was growing in influence in the 1930s, capitalism was inherently unstable and would be characterized by periodic crises and depressions. Keynes's allegation that government could expand or contract aggregate demand as conditions required seemed to eliminate the apparent cycle in capitalism without eliminating capitalism itself. A laissez-faire policy of economic freedom could be preserved on a microeconomic level. Thus, Keynes changed the dismal science to the optimists' club: man could be the master of his economic destiny."

"In this extended survey, we have witnessed a kaleidoscopic variety of opinions and reactions to the Keynesian revolution. Unfortunately, no immediate consensus among free-market advocates arose in response to the challenge of a new and dangerous macroeconomics that grew out of the Great Depression. Some dismissed Keynes prematurely; others considered Keynes a major threat; still others treated his theory as a second-best solution to the vagaries of laissez-faire capitalism. Many were mesmerized by Keynes's new bag of techniques, which they could not always claim fully to understand. Because no united front developed to counter the Keynesian revolution, the most industrialized nations of the world languished under the spell of its magic."

"There are many anticipators of marginal analysis. Three major names were Augustin Cournot (1801-1877), J. H. von Thünen (1783-1850), and H. H. Gossen (1810-1858). Cournot's originality and ingenuity can hardly be exaggerated. 200 small pages, he described and defined the downward-sloping , completely analyzed the maximization of profit under conditions of monopoly, advanced an ingenious explanation of pricing, proved that equilibrium price occurred when equaled , and exactly defined the market from which we call perfect competition and he called "unlimited competition." And the book went unread."

"There's a lot of misplaced criticism of equilibrium models. For explaining 1950-, 1960-, 1970-type business cycles, they're a lot more robust than some people give them credit for. The failure of wages and prices to adjust is no problem because there's a lot of reasons, many of them coming from contract theory and models of enduring relationships, that would lead one not to expect the current real wage/price to adjust to clear the current labor market. [...] What we mean by equilibrium is essentially two things. First, we set out to explain data on prices and quantities as resulting from the interaction of individual decisions; that's the key thing together with the notion that markets clear in some sense. That doesn't mean everybody has a job every period. The notion of clearing may be much more complicated and may involve lotteries. There are various responses why workers are unemployed. [...] Another thing is that these environments are sufficiently complicated so that it's not automatic that equilibria are optimal."

"The Neoclassical Synthesis was taken as an article of faith. Fundamental questions about the failures of the market system, such as the causes of periodic depressions and the unemployment that accompanied them, were avoided."

"The essential problem of the West today is not just that we need to come to grips with those who, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the overwhelming empirical evidence, continue to advocate for impoverishing socialism. But there's also our own leaders, thinkers and academics who are relying on a misguided theoretical framework to undermine the fundamentals of the system that has given us the greatest expansion of wealth and prosperity in our history. The theoretical framework to which I refer is that of Neoclassical economic theory, which designs a set of instruments that, unwillingly or without meaning to, end up serving intervention by the state, socialism and social degradation."

"The problem with Neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model. Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment and growth. This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that it's impossible for there to be market failures. The market is not a mere graph describing a curve of supply and demand. The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures. If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is if there is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence. Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved. And if they find that that's not the case, I would suggest that they check again, because obviously there's a mistake. Market failures do not exist."

"That was building up during the '50s, in the so-called neoclassical synthesis, better called the neoclassical-neo-Keynesian synthesis, I think. The main thing was that classical economics didn't explain the Great Depesssion and didn't give you any hope of solving it. Keynesian economics did."

"Today orthodox economics accepts Keynes's critique of the self-regulating market mainly by acknowledging that the market economy may deviate from its normal equilibrium in the short run, and so display Keynesian characteristics, while in the long run, normal, full-employment equilibrium will be restored as the prices eventually adjust to equilibrium levels. This orthodox rendition of Keynes seems to accept his insights, while neatly preserving the basic elements of supply-and-demand theory. A centerpiece of this revisionism was the work of J.S. Hicks, familiar to students of macro-economics as the "IS-LM" model. Hicks's gloss on Keynes, first published in 1937, holds that the market economy fails to attain full employment mainly because money wages are "sticky." That is, they fail to adjust immediately to real changes in economic conditions. Since labor costs are a principal ingredient of product costs, sticky money wages keep up prices too, and so ensure a high demand for money for transactions purposes, in turn keeping interest rates high. If only money wages would fall, the demand for money would fall too, interest rates would come down, and the decline in interest rates would stimulate an increase in investment, raising output and moving the economy toward full employment."

"The West has unfortunately already started to go along this path. I know, to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it's only ridiculous if you only limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it's an economic system where the state owns the means of production. This definition in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances. Today, states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals. This is how we come to the point where, by using different names or guises, a good deal of the generally accepted ideologies in most Western countries are collectivist variants, whether they proclaim to be openly communist, fascist, socialist, social democrats, national socialists, Christian democrats, neo-Keynesians, progressives, populists, nationalists or globalists. Ultimately, there are no major differences. They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals. They all defend a model contrary to the one that led humanity to the most spectacular progress in its history."

"I think the basic issue there is the question of whether there are any dead weight losses or market filures of a macroeconomic nature in a market economy. Neo-Keynesians think there are and that the government can do something about them. They think that demand management policy can assist the economy to stay close to its equilibrium track."

"I was never under any illusion about the theoretical possibility that the Phillips curve is vertical. In fact, I could cite passages that precede Friedman and Phelps, which say that it could well be. But all the empirical findings before 1966 suggested that the feedback term from price inflation to wages was considerably less than one so I accepted a nonvertical Phillips curve. I was probably overoptimistic about the degree to which you could expand employment in the '60s. In fact, I have acknowledged that in print. We at the council had stated 4 percent as what would now be called the natural rate of unemployment, I suppose, with a nonaccelerating rate of inflation. We did get the 4 percent before the Vietnam War, and we didn't have any accelerating rate of inflation. Maybe that was because we had an incomes policy. It was a rather weak one; it was sometimes called "open-mouth" policy. It was an informal guide-post policy, but in retrospect it looks like it made more difference than people credited it for. At any rate, the acceleration of inflations came when Johnson disobeyed his economic advisers. We went down to 3 percent unemployment which was probably well below the natural rate. So, I could admit to having been too optimistic."

"Things are stuck now."

"Yeah. You get that. Requests for signing statements is probably the biggest part of the story. Well, I don’t think it has actually in my case. I don’t go to places where I’m invited (just) because I’ve got a Nobel. (laugh) I don’t want to decorate anybody. So I try to keep on working. On the whole, I think it can happen, (but) I think it hasn’t happened in my case. I think I’ve, I’ve kept pretty much…. And the things that I have gotten as a result of it, on the whole, have been things I liked to go to, and I simply turned down things that I’m not interested in. So I don’t think it’s been a strongly negative matter at all."

"I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it. One reason was that I feared that such a prize, as I believe is true of the activities of some of the great scientific foundations, would tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion. This apprehension the selection committee has brilliantly refuted by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are. I do not yet feel equally reassured concerning my second cause of apprehension. It is that the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally. There is no reason why a man who has made a distinctive contribution to economic science should be omnicompetent on all problems of society - as the press tends to treat him till in the end he may himself be persuaded to believe."

"My response was the common one. At 5:30 in the morning the phone rang. My wife (was) in bed next to me and said, which child has had an accident? I listened and a Swedish accented voice said how does it feel to win the Nobel Prize? I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a hoax, but I said to my wife, it’s okay, no child is involved. Then the announcement came that I had been named. It seemed genuine and not a hoax, and I was surprised. I think one of my reactions was, and my second daughter criticized me later when I told her about it, I said well it’s nice to have a lot of hard work rewarded. She said that was a very stuck up answer (laugh)."

"Ragnar Frisch / Jan Tinbergen (1969)"

"Paul Samuelson (1970)"

"Simon Kuznets (1971)"

"John Hicks / Kenneth Arrow (1972)"

"Wassily Leontief (1973)"

"Gunnar Myrdal / Friedrich Hayek (1974)"

"Leonid Kantorovich / Tjalling Koopmans (1975)"

"Milton Friedman (1976)"

"Bertil Ohlin / James Meade (1977)"

"Herbert A. Simon (1978)"

"Theodore Schultz / Arthur Lewis (1979)"

"Lawrence Klein (1980)"

"James Tobin (1981)"

"George Stigler (1982)"

"Gérard Debreu (1983)"

"Richard Stone (1984)"

"Franco Modigliani (1985)"

"James M. Buchanan (1986)"

"Robert Solow (1987)"

"Maurice Allais (1988)"

"Trygve Haavelmo (1989)"

"Harry Markowitz / Merton Miller / William Forsyth Sharpe (1990)"

"Ronald Coase (1991)"

"Gary Becker (1992)"

"Robert Fogel / Douglass North (1993)"

"John Harsanyi / John Forbes Nash, Jr. / Reinhard Selten (1994)"

"Robert Lucas, Jr. (1995)"

"James Mirrlees / William Vickrey (1996)"

"Robert C. Merton / Myron Scholes (1997)"

"Amartya Sen (1998)"

"Robert Mundell (1999)"

"James Heckman / Daniel McFadden (2000)"

"George Akerlof / Michael Spence / Joseph E. Stiglitz (2001)"

"Daniel Kahneman / Vernon L. Smith (2002)"

"Robert F. Engle / Clive Granger (2003)"

"Finn E. Kydland / Edward C. Prescott (2004)"

"Robert Aumann / Thomas Schelling (2005)"

"Edmund Phelps (2006)"

"Leonid Hurwicz / Eric Maskin / Roger Myerson (2007)"

"Paul Krugman (2008)"

"Elinor Ostrom / Oliver E. Williamson (2009)"

"Peter A. Diamond / Dale T. Mortensen / Christopher A. Pissarides (2010)"

"Thomas J. Sargent / Christopher A. Sims (2011)"

"Alvin E. Roth / Lloyd S. Shapley (2012)"

"Eugene Fama / Lars Peter Hansen / Robert J. Shiller (2013)"

"Jean Tirole (2014)"

"Angus Deaton (2015)"

"When Paul Samuelson introduced the idea of revealed preference, I have little doubt that he was only trying to ground economic theory in observable behavior, as required by the positivism of the 1930s, and do away with unnecessary concepts."

"A wide variety of economic problems lead to differential, difference, and integral equations. Ordinary differential equations appear in models of economic dynamics. Integral equations appear in dynamic programming problems and asset pricing models. Discrete-time dynamic problems lead to difference equations."

"Mathematical modeling is a mixed blessing for economics. Mathematical modeling provides real advantages in terms of precision of thought, in seeing how assumptions are linked to conclusions, in generating and communicating insights, in generalizing propositions, and in exporting knowledge from one context to another. In my opinion, these advantages are monumental, far outweighing the costs. But the costs are not zero. Mathematical modeling limits what can be tackled and what is considered legitimate inquiry. You may decide, with experience, that the sorts of models in this book do not help you understand the economic phenomena that you want to understand."

"I have not been able to lay my hands on any notes as to Mathematico-economics that would be of any use to you. I have very indistinct memories of what I used to think on the subject. I never read mathematics now: in fact I have even forgotten how to integrate a good many things. But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very well unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules—(1) Use mathematics as a shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can’t succeed in (4), burn (3). This last I do often."

"We're not trying to provoke — and don't think that we will need to provoke — a recession. But we do think it's absolutely essential that we restore price stability, really for the benefit of the labor market as much as anything else."

"People are right to be angry: they understand they did not cause the recession, but they had to pay for it while Wall Street grew richer."

"The phenomenon of recessions puzzled many economists in the early years of this century, and led many of them to produce their worst work. Thorstein Veblen went from his brilliant Theory of the Leisure Class to write a really terrible book (The Engineers and the Price System) purporting to explain economic slumps. Joseph Schumpeter, whose magnificent vision of the "creative destruction" inherent in capitalist growth continues to inspire many economists, wrote a turgid, almost meaningless two-volume study, Business Cycles. Marxists gleefully seized upon the biggest recession of all, the Great Depression of the 1930s, as evidence of the irrationality of capitalism, yet they never offered a good explanation of why and how such things happen, just assurances that socialism would cure them. It fell to the British economist John Maynard Keynes to provide a clear story about what happens during a recession, and some useful advice about how to get out of one."

"The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the other nations, which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs."

"When I was a student at the University of Chicago, where I was a direct student of in the classroom, and an indirect student of Frank Knight, I could not learn why price should equal marginal cost. Even when I got to Harvard in 1935, I went around asking everybody: “What is the proof that this is so?” Of course, I did not know the 1892–1893 work of Vilfredo Pareto in which he essentially shows that a perfectly competitive equation system gives you the necessary and sufficient condition, not for ethical optimality—he was always a little slippery on that problem—but for what came to be called Pareto optimality so that there is no avoidable deadweight loss. I think I had most to learn from Abba Lerner, although I, of course, worked it out for myself."

"If I had had perfect teachers, they would have known the Pareto work; they would have known Enrico Barone and what you might call the fundamental theorems of welfare economics that the conditions for Pareto optimality would be exactly realized by competitive arbitrage. Before Bergson, Lerner–Hicks–Hotelling–Kaldor–Scitovsky insufficiently understood that the full set of Pareto optimality conditions constituted an incomplete set of conditions for ethical maximization. You must ask the right questions and make the right distinctions. All of my teachers believed there was something to Adam Smith’s invisible hand—that each person pursuing their self interest would, by some miraculous action of the invisible hand, be led to contrive in some vague sense the best interest of all. However, none of them could explain properly what the truth and falsity was in that position. I would say that if I had been a bright student in 1894 and read Pareto’s Italian journal article, I would have understood what I now understand to be the germ of truth in the invisible hand argument. All it refers to is the avoidance of deadweight loss. Here is where my association with Abram Bergson becomes relevant."

"There is little doubt that the observation that quality may depend on price (productivity on wages; default probability on interest rates) has provided a rich mine for economic theorists: A simple modification of the basic assumptions results in a profound alteration of many of the basic conclusions of the standard paradigm. The Law of Supply and Demand has been repealed. The Law of the Single Price has been repealed. The Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics has been shown not to be valid. More than that, the theories that we describe here provide the basis of progress toward a unification of macroeconomics and microeconomics. They pro vide an explanation of unemployment and credit rationing, derived from basic microeconomic principles. It is a theory in which the extensive idleness that periodically confronts society's resources, human and capital, is seen as but the most obvious example of market failures that prevasively and persistently distort the allocation of resources."

"I was invited to become a member of the Mt. Pelerin Society in 1957, and I vividly recall my first participation in a general meeting, at the Suvretta House in St. Moritz, the most luxurious hotel I had ever seen. I recall the feet cushions in the lobby and the Spanish princess who got so many of us a bit excited by her mere presence. (No connection with the society.) I do not know who nominated me for membership, perhaps it was Frank Knight, but I do know that everyone acknowledged that the society was really Hayek's and that any new member must have been approved by Hayek himself. By 1957, the membership had grown somewhat from its small beginnings a decade earlier, but there was still a club-like aspect to the meeting and with an underlying tension between the central European and American members (the latter mostly with Chicago connections). To those of us who had libertarian-populist blood in our veins, there was too much deference accorded to Hayek, and especially to Ludwig von Mises, who seemed to demand sycophancy."

"The group’s members depicted themselves as ‘liberals’ (in the traditional European sense) because of their fundamental commitment to ideals of personal freedom. The neoliberal label signalled their adherence to those free market principles of neoclassical economics that had emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century [...] to displace the classical theories of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and, of course, Karl Marx. Yet they also held to Adam Smith’s view that the hidden hand of the market was the best device for mobilizing even the basest of human instincts such as gluttony, greed, and the desire for wealth and power for the benefit of all. Neoliberal doctrine was therefore deeply opposed to state interventionist theories, such as those of John Maynard Keynes, which rose to prominence in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. Many policy-makers after the Second World War looked to Keynesian theory to guide them as they sought to keep the business cycle and recessions under control. The neoliberals were even more fiercely opposed to theories of centralized state planning, such as those advanced by Oscar Lange working close to the Marxist tradition. State decisions, they argued, were bound to be politically biased depending upon the strength of the interest groups involved [...]. State decisions on matters of investment and capital accumulation were bound to be wrong because the information available to the state could not rival that contained in market signals."

"In some way, the founding and the first conference of the Mont Pèlerin Society, which, I feel entitled to say, was my own idea, although I received a great deal of support in its organisation especially from Röpke as well as from Mises, constituted the rebirth of a liberal movement in Europe. Americans have done me the honour of considering the publication of The Road to Serfdom as the decisive date, but it is my conviction that the really serious endeavour among intellectuals to bring about the rehabilitation of the idea of personal freedom especially in the economic realm dates from the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947."

"So far as I know, the MPS never produced and distributed an agreed public statement of its program. Outside the economics profession, it was invisible. The MPS was no more influential inside the economics profession. There were no publications to be discussed. The American membership was apparently limited to economists of the Chicago School and its scattered university outposts, plus a few transplanted Europeans. “Some of my best friends” belonged. There was, of course, continuing research and debate among economists on the good and bad properties of competitive and noncompetitive markets, and the capacities and limitations of corrective regulation. But these would have gone on in the same way had the MPS not existed. It has to be remembered that academic economists were never optimistic about central planning. Even discussion about the economics of some conceivable socialism usually took the form of devising institutions and rules of behavior that would make a socialist economy function like a competitive market economy (perhaps more like one than any real-world market economy does). Maybe the main function of the MPS was to maintain the morale of the free-market fellowship."

"The accounting prices in a socialist economy can be determined by the same process of trial and error by which prices on a competitive market are determined. […] Neither would the Central Planning Board have to solve hundreds of thousands (as Professor Hayek expects) or millions (as Professor Robbins thinks) of equations. The only "equations" which would have to be "solved" would be those of the consumers and the managers of production. These are exactly the same "equations" which are "solved" in the present economic system and the persons who do the "solving" are the same also. Consumers "solve" them by spending their income so as to get out of it the maximum total utility; and the managers of production "solve" them by finding the combination of factors that minimizes average cost and the scale of output that equalizes marginal cost and the price of the product. They "solve" them by a method of trial and error, making (or imagining) small variations at the margin, as Marshall used to say, and watching what effect those variations have either on the total utility or on the cost of production. And only a few of them have been graduated in higher mathematics. Professor Hayek and Professor Robbins themselves "solve" at least hundreds of equations daily, for instance, in buying a newspaper or in deciding to take a meal in a restaurant, and presumably they do not use determinants or Jacobians for that purpose."

"From the human point of view, return paid to non-human factors of production is unearned. ... The employment of capital instruments and natural resources in economic production requires no personal hardship or exertion from any human being. The economic services provided by these factors of production are not corporeally inherent in human beings. The opposite is true of labor services, which can only be provided through the physical and mental activity of human beings. ... The really grossly exaggerated personal incomes in society are dominated by property income, and this source of inequality would be abrogated by the equalization of property income distribution."

"Let me examine the alleged "distinction from capitalism" characteristic of the Soviet Union and see whether it isn't a distinction from a certain stage of capitalism rather than from capitalism as a whole. The determining factor in analyzing the class nature of a society is not whether the means of production are the private property of the capitalist class or are state-owned, but whether the means of production ... are monopolized and alienated from the direct producers. The Soviet Government occupies in relation to the whole economic system the position which a capitalist occupies in relation to a single enterprise. ... "Bureaucratic state socialism" is an irrational expression behind which there exists the real economic relation of state-capitalist-exploiter to the propertyless exploited."

"I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that is has survived at all. ... I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism."

"Thus by 1925, both Leninism and Fascism, variants of Marxism, had created political and economic systems that shared singular properties… Both sought order and disciple of entire populations in the service of an exclusivistic party and an ideology that found its origins in classical Marxism… Both created a kind of ‘state capitalism,’ informed by a unitary party, and responsible to a ‘charismatics’ leader.”"

"If we are to keep the term ‘capitalism’ at all, then, we must distinguish between ‘free-market capitalism’ on the one hand, and ‘state capitalism’ on the other. The two are as different as day and night in their nature and consequences. Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government — the State — to accumulate capital for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence."

"Under a system of ‘state–controlled capitalism,’ or mixed economy, large companies can avoid normal evolutionary processes by hooking up with state power in order to direct, regulate, and micromanage the economy. And if they skirt bankruptcy, they can be declared “too big to fail,” showered with billions in taxpayer bailouts, and quickly taught that bad behavior is richly rewarded."

"State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold."

"Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state. And if I dare to introduce to Italy state capitalism or state socialism, which is the reverse side of the medal, I will have the necessary subjective and objective conditions to do it."

"The features of complexity economics are clear. The economy is not necessarily in equilibrium; in fact it is usually in nonequilibrium. Agents are not all knowing and perfectly rational; they must make sense of the situations they are in and explore strategies as they do this…In this way the economy is organic, one layer forms on the top of the previous ones; it is ever changing, it shows perpetual novelty; and structures within it appear, persist for a while, and melt back into it again."

"Right after we published our first findings, we started getting letters from all over the country saying, "You know, all you guys have done is rediscover Austrian economics"… I admit I wasn't familiar with Hayek and von Mises as the time. But now that I've read them, I can see that this is essentially true."

"In complexity economics one is not searching out the truth; one is simply searching for a statistical fit that can be temporarily useful in our understanding of the economy."

"Mechanical methods and models of simple causal explanation are increasingly inapplicable as we advance to such complex phenomena. In particular, the crucial phenomena determining the formation of many highly complex structures of human interaction, i.e., economic values or prices, cannot be interpreted by simple causal or 'nomothetic' theories, but require explanation in terms of the joint effects of a larger number of distinct elements than we can ever hope individually to observe or manipulate."

"The neoclassical era in economics has ended and has been replaced by an unnamed era. We believe what best characterizes the new era is its acceptance that the economy is complex, and thus that it might be called the complexity era."

"That very large system, with interconnected industries responding to each other through delays, entraining each other in their oscillations, and being amplified by multipliers and speculators, is the primary cause of business cycles. Those cycles don't come from presidents, although presidents can do much to ease or intensify the optimism of the upturns and the pain of the downturns. Economies are extremely complex systems; they are full of balancing feedback loops with delays and they are inherently oscillatory."

"The other thing was an open problem: How does economics really look like when you recognize it as the prototype of a new kind of science of complex phenomena which could not employ the simple model of mechanics or physics, but had to deal with what then I described as mere pattern predictions, certain limited prediction. That was so much more fascinating as an intellectual problem."

"[W]ith sound-money and gold-standard morality transcendent, Jackson's destruction of the Bank was all but universally regarded as a villainous action. ...In more recent times, as the conventional wisdom of bankers has come... modestly into question and a heightened democratic ethos has ascribed both perception and virtue to the common man, Jackson's action has been viewed with contrasting warmth. He was... speaking for the small, energetic and aspiring folks of the new states, the new farms and the frontier. He was, in an important respect, their accidental ally. He opposed the bank as a monopoly—a monster which, as Biddle held, had power to rival that of the state. ...[I]t was also the power of his political enemies. But he favored hard money—he was for currency consisting of gold and silver and for eschewing all paper as the instrument of the devil. In getting rid of the bank, he got... the softest [money] of all—an explosion of new banks, and avalanche of bank notes. But this, and the loans so allowed, were what his constituents most wanted. Had Andrew Jackson succeeded in establishing... hard money... his name would have been reviled by the... small, energetic and aspiring folk of the frontier. Historians, in pondering whether Jackson was right or wrong on financial matters, must allow... a third possibility... that he was confused."

"It is the outstanding merit of gold as the monetary standard that it makes the supply and the purchasing power of the monetary unit independent of government, of office holders, of political parties, and of pressure groups. The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice. It is precisely the merit of the gold standard, finally, that it puts a limit on credit expansion."

"Men have chosen the precious metals gold and silver for the money service on account of their mineralogical, physical, and chemical features. The use of money in a market economy is a praxeologically necessary fact. That gold — and not something else — is used as money is merely a historical fact and as such cannot be conceived by catallactics. In monetary history too, as in all other branches of history, one must resort to historical understanding."

"The gold standard was the world standard of the age of capitalism, increasing welfare, liberty, and democracy, both political and economic. In the eyes of the free traders its main eminence was precisely the fact that it was an international standard as required by international trade and the transactions of the international money and capital market. It was the medium of exchange by means of which Western industrialism and Western capital had borne Western civilization into the remotest parts of the earth's surface, everywhere destroying the fetters of age-old prejudices and superstitions, sowing the seeds of new life and new well-being, freeing minds and souls, and creating riches unheard of before."

"It is easy to understand why people viewed the gold standard as the symbol of this greatest and most beneficial of all historical changes. All those intent upon sabotaging the evolution toward welfare, peace, freedom, and democracy loathed the gold standard, and not only on account of its economic significance. In their eyes the gold standard was the labarum, the symbol, of all those doctrines and policies they wanted to destroy. In the struggle against the gold standard, much more was at stake than commodity prices and foreign-exchange rates."

"No government is, however, powerful enough to abolish the gold standard. Gold is the money of international trade and of the supernational economic community of mankind. It cannot be affected by measures of governments whose sovereignty is limited to definite countries. As long as a country is not economically self-sufficient in the strict sense of the term, as long as there are still some loopholes left in the walls by which nationalistic governments try to isolate their countries from the rest of the world, gold is still used as money."

"Money is gold, and nothing else."

"Belief in the gold standard was the faith of the age. With some it was a naive, with some a critical, with others a satanistic creed implying acceptance in the flesh and rejection in the spirit. Yet the belief itself was the same, namely, that banknotes have value because they represent gold. Whether the gold itself has value for the reason that it embodies labor, as the socialists held, or for the reason that it is useful and scarce, as the orthodox doctrine ran, made for once no difference."

"No doubt all commodities have politics. But money and credit and the structure of finance piled on them are constituted by political power, social convention and law in a way that sneakers, smartphones and barrels of oil are not. At the apex of the modern monetary pyramid is fiat money. Called into existence and sanctioned by states, it has no “backing” other than its status as legal tender. That uncanny fact became literally true for the first time in 1971–1973 with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Under the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, the dollar, as the anchor of the global monetary system, was tied to gold. This was itself, of course, no more than a convention. When it became too hard for the United States to live with—upholding it would have required deflation—on August 15, 1971, President Nixon abandoned it. This was a historic caesura. For the first time since the advent of money, no currency in the world any longer operated on a metallic standard. Potentially, this freed monetary policy, regulating the creation of money and credit as never before. But how much freedom would policy makers actually have after throwing off the “golden fetters”? The social and economic forces that had made the gold peg unsustainable even for the United States were powerful—at home the struggle for income shares in an increasingly affluent society, abroad the liberalization of offshore dollar trading in London in the 1960s. When those forces were unleashed in the 1970s without a monetary anchor, the result was to send inflation soaring toward 20 percent in the advanced economies, something unprecedented in peacetime. But rather than retreating from liberalization, by the early 1980s any restriction on global capital flows was lifted. It was precisely to tame the forces of indiscipline unleashed by the end of metallic money that the market revolution and the new neoliberal “logic of discipline” were inaugurated. By the mid-1980s Fed chair Paul Volcker’s dramatic campaign to raise interest rates had curbed inflation. The only prices going up in the age of the great moderation were those for shares and real estate. When that bubble burst in 2008, when the world faced not inflation but deflation, the key central banks threw off their self-imposed shackles. They would do whatever it took to prevent a collapse of credit. They would do whatever it took to keep the financial system afloat. And because the modern banking system is both global and based on dollars, that meant unprecedented transnational action by the American state."

"The term 'marginal revolution' is usually taken to refer to the nearly simultaneous but completely independent discovery in the early 1870s by Jevons, Menger and Walras of the principle of diminishing marginal utility as the fundamental building block of a new kind of static microeconomics. It constitutes, so the argument goes, one of the best examples of multiple discoveries in the history of economic thought, which simply cries out for some sort of historical explanation: it is too much to believe that three men working at nearly the same time in such vastly different intellectual climates as those of Manchester, Vienna and Lausanne could have hit by accident on the same idea. The trouble is that none of the standard explanations is convincing. The levels of economic development in England, Austria and Switzerland were so different in the 1860s that all crypto-Marxist explanations in terms of changes in the structure of production or the relationship between social classes strain our sense of credulity. Likewise, the utilitarian-empiricist tradition of British philosophy, the neo-Kantian philosophical climate of Austria and the Cartesian philosophical climate of Switzerland simply had no elements in common that could have provoked a utility revolution in economics. In matters of economic policy, there was in fact continuity with classical thinking and when Jevons and Walras wrote on policy questions, as they often did, there was little or no connection between their practical recommendations and their views on value theory."

"Austerity is not new, nor is it a product of the so-called Neoliberal Era that began in the 1970s. Outside, perhaps, of the less than three booming decades that followed World War II, austerity has been the mainstay of capitalism. It has been true throughout history that where capitalism exists, crisis follows. Where austerity has proven wildly effective is in insulating capitalist hierarchies from harm during these moments of would-be social change. Austerity is capitalism's protector, popular among states for its effectiveness and billed as a means of "fixing" economies by increasing their "efficiency"—short-term readjustments for long-term gains."

"When I refer to a crisis of capitalism, I do not mean an economic crisis—say, slowdown in growth or an uptick in inflation. Capitalism is in crisis when its core relationship (the sale of production for profit) and its two enabling pillars (private property in the means of production and wage relations between owners and workers) are contested by the public, in particular by the workers who make capitalism run. As part of these expressions of unhappiness, people have historically demanded alternative forms of social organization. indeed . . . austerity's primary utility over the last century has been to silence such calls and foreclose alternatives to capitalism. Mostly austerity serves to quash public outcry and worker strikes—not, as is advertised, to spontaneously improve country's economic indicators by practicing greater economic discipline."

"Austerity as we know it today emerged after World War I as a method for preventing capitalism's collapse: economists in political positions used policy levers to make all classes of society more invested in private, capitalist production, even when these changes amounted to profound (if also involuntary) personal sacrifices. In the early 1920s, austerity functioned as a powerful counteroffensive to strikes and other forms of social unrest that exploded on an unprecedented scale after the war—a period traditionally, and oddly, overlooked by political and economic scholars who study austerity. The timing of austerity's invention reflects its animating motivations. Of greater importance than austerity's purported economic efficacy was its ability to guard catalyst relations of production during a time of unprecedented social organizing and public agitation from working classes."

"Finally, and very importantly, the cause of necessary economic reforms has not been served by confounding that necessity with the policy of austerity. Indeed, serious consideration of the kinds of reform that are needed has been hampered, rather than aided, by the loss of clarity about the distinction between reform of bad administrative arrangements (such as people evading taxes, government servants using favoritism, banks being exempt from necessary discipline, or—for that matter—preserving a nonviable system of early retiring ages), and austerity in the form of ruthless cuts in public services and basic social security. The requirements for alleged financial discipline have tended to amalgamate the two, even though any analysis of social justice would view policies for necessary reform in an altogether different way from drastic cuts in important public services. Even if that distinction may have been lost in rather crude financial thinking, opportunities for adequate public reasoning, in “government by discussion,” could have brought out its relevance clearly enough. Europe has been extraordinarily important for the world, which has learned so much from it. It can remain globally important by setting its own house in order—economically, politically, and socially. The first step is to understand properly, with some clarity, the policy challenges that Europe faces today. A failure to do so will reverberate far beyond Europe’s own borders."

"I end with a concluding ironic point about the Methodenstreit. Although at first the Germans were successful and then later (for a time) the Austrians appeared vindicated, in the still longer term it might be said that neither group won. One focused on national destinies might be tempted to say that the French won. Both schools would, after all, end up losing out to the followers of Léon Walras (who mathematized marginalism) and of Auguste Comte (the father of positivism}. Ah, the French."

"I've done well in my career, but I am not sitting on $22m. I'm doing this so that one negative audience comment in a test screening won't force me to change the end of my movie."

"Barbarossa achieved its funding goal of $10,000 within three hours of being posted. Not even children's cancer research can match that pace. There's somebody out there right now waiting for enough donations to trickle in to cover a life-saving operation, but the Internet, in its vast wisdom, has decided that jiggly upskirt warfare was in more immediate need of philanthropy."

"Starting one’s working life in an irregular job can lead to a fruitful career or to long-term stagnation. While studies of European labour markets support the stepping-stone hypothesis, this column presents evidence that irregular jobs lead to negative midlife outcomes in Japan. Future jobs are less stable, pay less, and psychological distress is higher. Such problems suggest a role for policy to reduce economic and social disadvantages of non-regular workers. [...] Our estimation results show that initial job status as an irregular employee reduces opportunities for success in later life in Japan. This finding contrasts with observations from previous studies in European countries, where beginning working life with fixed-term contracts and other non-regular job statuses does not necessarily signal a bad start. Further, the current study highlighted the traumatic impact of initial unstable job status on mental health; influence of this status is not fully mediated by socioeconomic/marital status. We can argue that policy measures are needed to reduce economic and social disadvantages of non-regular workers in Japan."

"If the imperial order of Western supremacy is very slowly beginning to change, the reasons are instructive. China's economic growth in recent decades is precisely the outcome of a constant refusal to accommodate to the Washington Consensus; that is, a refusal to allow China's economy to be shaped by the institutional structures that this system generated. Other emerging economies have also succeeded precisely to the extent that they have refused neoliberal policies."

"The Washington doctrine was everywhere greeted by ideological cheerleaders: from the profiteers of the ‘Irish miracle’ (the property-bubble boom of the ‘Celtic tiger’) to the doctrinaire ultra-capitalists of former Communist Europe. Even ‘old Europeans’ were swept up in the wake. The EU’s free-market project—the so-called ‘Lisbon agenda’; the enthusiastic privatization plans of the French and German governments: all bore witness to what its French critics described as the new ‘pensée unique’. Today there has been a partial awakening. To avert national bankruptcies and wholesale banking collapse, governments and central bankers have performed remarkable policy reversals, liberally dispersing public money in pursuit of economic stability and taking failed companies into public control without a second thought. A striking number of free market economists, worshippers at the feet of Milton Friedman and his Chicago colleagues, have lined up to don sackcloth and ashes and swear allegiance to the memory of John Maynard Keynes. This is all very gratifying. But it hardly constitutes an intellectual revolution. Quite the contrary: as the response of the Obama administration suggests, the reversion to Keynesian economics is but a tactical retreat. Much the same may be said of New Labour, as committed as ever to the private sector in general and the London financial markets in particular. To be sure, one effect of the crisis has been to dampen the ardor of continental Europeans for the ‘Anglo-American model’; but the chief beneficiaries have been those same center-right parties once so keen to emulate Washington."

"Washington itself implied that this is something out of the rich Western countries, and if they agree on something that is to be imposed on the rest of the world, it means that there is no consultation. It should be a world consensus, not a Washington consensus. Every time we are up against this understanding there, we find that they are all designed in order to be in their favor, to enrich them, in fact, and it would be at our expense. That is why we feel a need to resist the Washington consensus."

"What I would agree with is that the Washington Consensus, whatever you want to call it, got a little too comfortable with, they’re looking at GDP numbers, and they’re looking at the internet, and everything is looking pretty great; and particularly after the Cold War, Jim, after what you guys engineered, you have this period of great smugness on the part of America and American elites, thinking, ‘We got this all figured out.’ Remember there were books coming out that it’s the end of history."

"Some political scientists, for example, say that the Economic Man may be very nice for playing games with but that he is an abstraction who does not exist, while Hitler and Stalin are real and not to be played with. Economic analysis, they say, not only does not help us to understand such political actors but makes it more difficult to bring them within the purview of social science by systematically excluding or deforming their specific motives. Economists, seeking mathematical convenience, turn us away from the consideration of the most important social phenomena."

"[T]he entrepreneur is the focal point at which the dynamic forces... materialize into action for economic progress. The entrepreneur doesn't really respond primarily to the profit motive... entrepreneur and investor—are often not... the same person. Neither does the entrepreneur seek power... management and entrepreneur are not necessarily one. Nor do Veblenesque social status or Weberian Protestant righteousness seem to be the main motives... Rather, he seems to be the adventurer, a pioneer, an artist sculpting in economic clay. ...Is the dynamic force that sustains the industrialized economic system... an irrational spirit..? Many economists... postulate the existence of an "economic man," who rationally and objectively computes... and makes a decision that will maximize perofits. ...[T]his imaginary construct is the dynamic implicitly assumed for almost all of the economic theories from the late 1800s to the present. ...[T]hey continue to use it because without economic man most of their theories would be invalidated."

"There is a principle, supposed to prevail among many, which is utterly incompatible with all virtue or moral sentiment; and as it can proceed from nothing but the most depraved disposition, so in its turn it tends still further to encourage that depravity. This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations."

"Political economy ... does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging the comparative efficacy of means for obtaining that end."

"Both Socrates and Christ taught economic man to be at least slightly ashamed of himself when he failed to sacrifice the lower capacity to the higher. Freud is America’s great teacher, despite his ardent wish to avoid that fate. For it was precisely the official and parental shams of high ideals that Freud questioned. In their stead, Freud taught lessons which Americans, prepared by their own national experience, learn easily: survive, resign yourself to living within your moral means, suffer no gratuitous failures in a futile search for ethical heights that no longer exist—if they ever did."

"The average man of the present age … does not want to be a sentimentalist in his endeavors; he wants some measure for purposeful activity; he wants to feel that through the world some increasing purpose runs. … But since his metaphysic calls only for magnitude and number, since it is becoming without a goal, it is not a source of distinctions in value. It is a system of quantitative comparison. Its effect therefore has been to collapse the traditional hierarchy and to produce economic man, whose destiny is mere activity."

"Keynes's answer was that the rate of interest was determined in the financial markets, and there is no reason why it should necessarily gravitate to the requisite level. It was not a very convincing answer. This was the weakness Hicks would exploit. The demand function for investment (which Keynes called the marginal efficiency of capital schedule) was the Trojan horse that allowed the forces of his enemies to attack the very heart of Keynes's case for an under-employment equilibrium and hence for active government. It was one of Keynes's closest collaborators who solved the dilemma. From 1936 on, Joan Robinson had argued that if Keynes was right about the determination of employment, then orthodox theory must be wrong about the determination of prices. In the mid-1960s she at last found a way of sustaining her argument."

"The high theory debates that she and others conducted with the more orthodox theorists of MIT reached an agreed conclusion when Paul Samuelson was forced to concede that there was no logically consistent way to construct a demand function for capital outside the artificial confines of a one-commodity world (see the symposium on paradoxes in capital theory, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1966). This, in turn, means that it is not possible to formulate a logically consistent theory of the long-run normal rate of interest; hence no consistent theory of long-run prices or of output and employment is possible either. Building so-called Keynesian models on the basis of market failure no longer makes sense--there cannot be a short-run deviation from a long-run equilibrium that is not there in the first place! In one stroke the critical task in which Keynes had failed was accomplished, and the marginal efficiency of capital schedule was swept away too. What was left was the part of his theory that Keynes himself had regarded as his truly original contribution--the principle of effective demand."

"When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based."

"Aside from Yugoslavia, experiments with decentralization did not extend to planning innovation, the greatest weakness of the socialist economies. Even where markets were allowed to exert more influence over current production, the state was still responsible for planning the future. And state socialism provided only weak incentives for innovation. The Schumpeterian pressure that forced capitalist firms to innovate or die was not present in the planned economy."

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor – not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. ... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual."

"Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter. ... It makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all."

"What will be the consequences of the ultimate disappearance of private property? Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished. There will be no more crises; the expanded production, which for the present order of society is and hence a prevailing cause of misery, will then be insufficient and in need of being expanded much further. Instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all; it will create new needs and, at the same time, the means of satisfying them. It will become the condition of, and the stimulus to, new progress, which will no longer throw the whole social order into confusion, as progress has always done in the past."

"Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety."

"Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Republicanism, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing."

"I still see Hayek as the best critic of all forms of centralized economic planning. It is to his merit to have shown scientifically that centralized planning cannot work for an economy because complete knowledge of that economy is never available centrally. As nice as it would be to have one, there is no mastermind who knows and can control everything, and there never will be. This was Hayek's scientific argument for the superiority of the market economy. A planned economy is only a viable means where there is a clear overarching goal – during wartime. A war economy is always a planned economy. Supporters of central economic dreams should therefore hear it once and for all: centralized economic planning is not suitable during peacetime."

"As a result of the efforts of Hayek, Friedman, and the many others who share their general outlook, the idea of a centrally planned and centrally administered economy, so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, has been discredited."

"Without a market in which allocations can be made in obedience to the law of supply and demand, it is difficult or impossible to funnel resources with respect to actual human preferences and goals."

"Under central planning neither planners, managers, nor workers had incentives to promote the social economic interest. Nor did impeding markets for final goods to the planning system enfranchise consumers in meaningful ways. But central planning would have been incompatible with economic democracy even if it had overcome its information and incentive liabilities. And the truth is that it survived as long as it did only because it was propped up by unprecedented totalitarian political power."

"A fully planned economy was based on the government deciding the priorities for production. Government ministries then issued production quotas, which factories strove to fulfill. The allocation of raw materials, energy, and workers was decided centrally, based on calculations of how much was needed to achieve the quotas on time. Transport, repairs, or new machinery were requested by the individual factory and decided on, according to political priority, by state institutions allocated such tasks. Investment and output were imagined to be in perfect balance, and resources therefore utilized to the utmost. Distribution replaced the market as a mechanism of dividing the output. No factories ever closed, and no workers were laid off. There was therefore full employment at all times. The country was a socialist economic machine, the purpose of which was to maximize production. Reality, of course, diverged rather substantially from this economic ideal, as did capitalist practices from free market thinking in nonsocialist countries. Although much was achieved in terms of increasing production during the first decades of full economic planning, mainly in industry (socialist agriculture always lagged behind), growth slowed later. Some of this is undoubtedly explained by the first phase of growth being pushed forward simply by unrealized potential from earlier decades. The resource advantages of centralization in an underdeveloped economy played a part in initial successes, as did the enthusiasm of workers to rebuild and see their factories and countries succeed. But there were also inefficiencies built into the planned economy, which became more glaring as economies matured. There was a lack of efficient allocation, innovation, and product differentiation. There was also a lack of incentives for workers, and a lack of economizing or preservation of resources, natural or industrial."

"The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free."

"You begrudge your fellow human beings what you yourself enjoy; taking wicked counsel in your soul, you consider not how you might distribute to others according to their needs, but rather how, after having received so many good things, you might rob others."

"'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need."

"Who are the greedy? Those who are not satisfied with what suffices for their own needs. Who are the robbers? Those who take for themselves what rightfully belongs to everyone. And you, are you not greedy? Are you not a robber? The things you received in trust as a stewardship, have you not appropriated them for yourself? Is not the person who strips another of clothing called a thief? And those who do not clothe the naked when they have the power to do so, should they not be called the same? The bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy. You are thus guilty of injustice toward as many as you might have aided, and did not."

"Civilization no longer represents the conscience of the individuals who must find therein their work. The facts and forces which now organize industry and so-called justice, violate the best instincts of mankind. ... Without regard to his conscience, the economic system involves a man in the guilt of the moral and physical death of his brothers: their blood cries to him from the adulterated and monopolized foods he eats; from the sweat-shop clothes he wears; from his educational advantages, his special privileges, his social opportunities. ... In fine, civilization denies to man that highest of all rights — the right to live a guiltless life, the right to do right."

"Protestantism promoted the spread of that cold rationality which is so characteristic of the modern individual. ... By allying itself with the rising economic system it made men dependent upon the world of things even to a higher degree than before. Where formerly they worked for the sake of salvation, they were now induced to work for work’s sake, profit for profit’s sake, power for power’s sake."

"The stinking puddle from which usury, thievery and robbery arises is our lords and princes. They make all creatures their property—the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plant in the earth must all be theirs. Then they proclaim God's commandments among the poor and say, "You shall not steal.""

"Prophetic delegitimization of hierarchical authority implies the inherent equality of all human beings, a ... proposition on which Islam and Marxism agree."

"When the Lord's Prayer is prayed with insight it becomes a petition for the abolition of capitalism and the supplanting of the existing economic order with a society which is consistent with the religion of Jesus."

"To countless generations of religious thinkers, the fundamental maxim of Christian social ethics had seemed to be expressed in the words of St. Paul to Timothy: "Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. For the love of money is the root of all evil." Now, while, as always, the world battered at the gate, a new standard was raised within the citadel by its own defenders. The garrison had discovered that the invading host of economic appetites was, not an enemy, but an ally. Not sufficiency to the needs of daily life, but limit less increase and expansion, became the goal of the Christian's efforts."

"The shrewd, calculating commercialism which tries all human relations by pecuniary standards, the acquisitiveness which cannot rest while there are competitors to be conquered or profits to be won, the love of social power and hunger for economic gain—these irrepressible appetites had evoked from time immemorial the warnings and denunciations of saints and sages. Plunged in the cleansing waters of later Puritanism, the qualities which less enlightened ages had denounced as social vices emerged as economic virtues. They emerged as moral virtues as well. For the world exists not to be enjoyed, but to be conquered. Only its conqueror deserves the name of Christian. For such a philosophy, the question, "What shall it profit a man?" carries no sting. In winning the world, he wins the salvation of his own soul as well."

"γεωμετρῆσαι βούλομαι τὸν ἀέρα ὑμῖν διελεῖν τε κατὰ γύας."

"'But whom do I treat unjustly,' you say, 'by keeping what is my own?' Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common — this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption. For if we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need."

"The poacher ... is asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time—when for hunting purposes all land was held in common. ... In those times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and—like the modern landlord—would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax—was a criminal of the deepest dye. Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern society."

"The same process of enclosure and forced played out over and over again during the period of European colonization – not just under the British but under the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch as well ... In all these cases scarcity was created, purposefully, for the sake of capitalist expansion."

"Enclosure, once accepted, redefines community. Enclosure undermines the local autonomy of community. ... Enclosure allows the bureaucrats to define local community as impotent ... to provide for its own survival. People become economic individuals that depend for their survival on commodities that are produced for them. Fundamentally, most citizens' movements represent a rebellion against this environmentally induced redefinition of people as consumers."

"The problems with software are just examples of the problems found generally with creativity. Our trend in copyright law has been to enclose as much as we can; the consequence of this enclosure is a stifling of creativity and innovation. If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit."

"As for large landed property, its defenders have always sophistically identified the economic advantages offered by large-scale agriculture with large-scale landed property, as if it were not precisely as a result of the abolition of property that this advantage, for one thing, received its greatest possible extension, and, for another, only then would be of social benefit."

"When industrial capitalism first started to emerge in the early nineteenth century, its machinations were relatively visible. Take, for instance, the enclosures. Pasturelands that had been used in common for centuries to provide villages with their very sustenance were systematically fenced off—enclosed—in order to graze sheep, whose wool was needed for the burgeoning textile industry. Communal life was briskly thrust aside in favor of privatization, forcing people into harsh factories and crowded cities. Advanced capitalism, as it pushes past the fetters of even nation-states in its insatiable quest for growth, encloses life in a much more expansive yet generally invisible way: fences are replaced by consumer culture. We are raised in an almost totally commodified world where nothing comes for free, even futile attempts to remove oneself from the market economy. This commodification seeps into not only what we eat, wear, or do for fun but also into our language, relationships, and even our very biology and minds. We have lost not only our communities and public spaces but control over our own lives; we have lost the ability to define ourselves outside capitalism’s grip, and thus genuine meaning itself begins to dissolve."

"Stop to consider how the so-called owners of the land got hold of it. They simply seized it by force, afterwards hiring lawyers to provide them with title-deeds. In the case of the enclosure of the common lands, which was going on from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even have the excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were quite frankly taking the heritage of their own countrymen, upon no sort of pretext except that they had the power to do so."

"The capitalistic system originated in the forcible seizure of natural opportunities and rights by a few, and then converting those things into special privileges which have since become vested rights, formally entrenched behind the bulwarks of statute law and government."

"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth itself belongs to no one!”"

"Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the claims of superior cunning—those are the sources to which titles may be traced. The original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen; not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers; blows were the current coin given in payment; and for seals, blood was used in preference to wax. Could valid claims be thus constituted? Hardly. And if not, what becomes of the pretensions of all subsequent holders of estates so obtained? Does sale or bequest generate a right where it did not previously exist?"

"As Nozick acknowledges, a modern state should not feel morally constrained by property holdings which might have had a Lockean pedigree but in fact do not. In this regard it is interesting that one of the main uses of Lockean theory these days is in defending the property rights of indigenous people—where a literal claim is being made about who had first possession of a set of resources and about the need to rectify the injustices that accompanied their subsequent expropriation."

"The law locks up the hapless felon"

"The word ‘Keynesian’ means many things to many people. Decades ago, it was a carelessly applied label for economic liberals and interventionists in general. For a while in the late 1970s and early 1980s it became a pejorative term more or less synonymous with old-fashioned."

"In a sense, the 1980s helped bring further to fruition American hopes in the mid-1940s that economic liberalism would spread American influence, although the Bretton Woods generation of the 1940s had not intended regional major indebtedness. The spread of American influence was to be taken further in the 1990s after the fall of Eastern European and Soviet Communism. Free market economies also provided a major incentive for countries to look to the USA, the largest market in the world. The reduction of tariffs made the USA a more attractive commercial partner. In another light, this was a question of the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs, a process that owed much to the quest for cheap labour, greatly encouraged by Western investment in parts of the Third World. The free market ideology of the West, and notably of Reagan and Thatcher, and the willingness to encourage structural adjustment, helped create an economic affinity, both within the West and in the Third World, that was not matched by the Soviet Union. In particular, Chinese economic links with the USA developed rapidly."

"Socialism had defeated her brand of ultra-liberal economics. ... [Margaret Thatcher believed that] the law of the market could be applied in the place of politics. She underestimated the dignity and grandeur of politics, which is an attempt to combine, an attempt to convince, an attempt to listen to others, to try to find a society which is not better but less bad than the one in which we live today."

"Even the Mercantile System cannot be correctly judged by modern economics since the latter is itself one-sided and as yet burdened with that very system’s premises. Only that view which rises above the opposition of the two systems, which criticises the premises common to both and proceeds from a purely human, universal basis, can assign to both their proper position. It will become evident that the protagonists of free trade are more inveterate monopolists than the old Mercantilists themselves. It will become evident that the sham humanity of the modern economists hides a barbarism of which their predecessors knew nothing; that the older economists’ conceptual confusion is simple and consistent compared with the double-tongued logic of their attackers, and that neither of the two factions can reproach the other with anything which would not recoil upon themselves. This is why modern liberal economics cannot comprehend the restoration of the Mercantile System by List, whilst for us the matter is quite simple. The inconsistency and ambiguity of liberal economics must of necessity dissolve again into its basic components. Just as theology must either regress to blind faith or progress towards free philosophy, free trade must produce the restoration of monopolies on the one hand and the abolition of private property on the other."

"The only positive advance which liberal economics has made is the elaboration of the laws of private property. These are contained in it, at any rate, although not yet fully elaborated and clearly expressed. It follows that on all points where it is a question of deciding which is the shortest road to wealth – i. e., in all strictly economic controversies – the protagonists of free trade have right on their side. That is, needless to say, in controversies with the monopolists – not with the opponents of private property, for the English Socialists have long since proved both practically and theoretically that the latter are in a position to settle economic questions more correctly even from an economic point of view."

"The term has only arisen as a result of the liberal economists’ passion for generalisation. As long as private property exists, this term has no meaning."

"By dissolving nationalities, the liberal economic system had done its best to universalise enmity, to transform mankind into a horde of ravenous beasts (for what else are competitors?) who devour one another just because each has identical interests with all the others – after this preparatory work there remained but one step to take before the goal was reached, the dissolution of the family. To accomplish this, economy’s own beautiful invention, the , came to its aid."

"The opposite of competition is monopoly. Monopoly was the war-cry of the Mercantilists; competition the battle-cry of the liberal economists. It is easy to see that this antithesis is again a quite hollow antithesis. Every competitor cannot but desire to have the monopoly, be he worker, capitalist or landowner. Each smaller group of competitors cannot but desire to have the monopoly for itself against all others. Competition is based on self-interest, and self-interest in turn breeds monopoly. In short, competition passes over into monopoly. On the other hand, monopoly cannot stem the tide of competition – indeed, it itself breeds competition; just as a prohibition of , for instance, or high positively breed the competition of ."

"A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas."

"Bill Clinton and his two treasury secretary enablers, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, instituted a system of unregulated capitalism that has resulted in financial anarchy. This anarchic form of capitalism, where everything, including human beings and the natural world, is a commodity to exploit until exhaustion or collapse, is justified by identity politics. It is sold as “enlightened liberalism” as opposed to the old pro-union class politics that saw the Democrats heed the voices of the working class. Financial anarchy and short-term plunder have destroyed long-term financial and political stability. It has also pushed the human species, along with most other species, closer and closer towards extinction."

"Economic theory as derived from Adam Smith assumes first that homo economicus acts with perfect optimality on complete information, and second that when many of the species homo economicus do that, their actions add up to the best possible outcome for everybody. Neither of these assumptions stands up long against the evidence."

"The ruthless sell-off of Britain's National Health Service during Covid by the Boris Johnson govt is a crime against humanity."

"There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture."

"The law locks up the hapless felon"

"... investors must never forget that their expenses are Wall Street’s income."

"I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which has always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom.; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing."

"The question is not put how far extends"

"To those who are awake, there is one world in common, but of those who are asleep, each is withdrawn to a private world of his own."

""Commons" is an Old English word. According to my Japanese friends, it is quite close to the meaning that iriai still has in Japanese. "Commons," like iriai, is a word which, in preindustrial times, was used to designate certain aspects of the environment. People called commons those parts of the environment for which customary law exacted specific forms of community respect. People called commons that part of the environment which lay beyond their own thresholds and outside of their own possessions, to which, however, they had recognized claims of usage, not to produce commodities but to provide for the subsistence of their households. The customary law which humanized the environment by establishing the commons was usually unwritten. It was unwritten law not only because people did not care to write it down, but because what it protected was a reality much too complex to fit into paragraphs. The law of the commons regulates the right of way, the right to fish and to hunt, to graze, and to collect wood or medicinal plants in the forest. An oak tree might be in the commons. Its shade, in summer, is reserved for the shepherd and his flock; its acorns are reserved for the pigs of the neighbouring peasants; its dry branches serve as fuel for the widows of the village; some of its fresh twigs in springtime are cut as ornaments for the church — and at sunset it might be the place for the village assembly. When people spoke about commons, iriai, they designated an aspect of the environment that was limited, that was necessary for the community's survival, that was necessary for different groups in different ways, but which, in a strictly economic sense, was not perceived as scarce."

"A transformation of the environment from a commons to a productive resource constitutes the most fundamental form of environmental degradation. This degradation has a long history, which coincides with the history of capitalism but can in no way just be reduced to it. Unfortunately the importance of this transformation has been overlooked or belittled by political ecology so far. It needs to be recognized if we are to organize defense movements of what remains of the commons."

"The earth are all in one bowl, all to be shared from a single spoon. This is the vision of the economy of the commons, wherein resources fundamental to our well-being, like water and land and forests, are commonly held rather than commodified. Properly managed, the commons approach maintains abundance, not scarcity. These contemporary economic alternatives strongly echo the indigenous worldview in which the earth exists not as private property, but as a commons, to be tended with respect and reciprocity for the benefit of all."

"Our trend in copyright law has been to enclose as much as we can; the consequence of this enclosure is a stifling of creativity and innovation. If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit."

"There has never been a time in history when more of our "culture" was as "owned" as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now."

"The law locks up the hapless felon"

"Economism is the view that the economy is the most important part of society and that the other dimensions such as politics and education should serve it. Economism has become the ruling ideology, not because of claims of economists, but because of the decisions of political leaders, financiers, corporate leaders, and the general public."

"I had before me the product of two mutually exclusive philosophies. Economism would insist that having made the perfect pencil, Thoreau should make more pencils and sell them for money with which to buy more material to make still more pencils to sell for money to buy still more material, and so on, because the making and selling of pencils is the whole content of life. Thoreau did not believe it is the whole content of life. It was clear that economism's philosophy was the only one which my companion was capable of accepting. Detach him from his particular specialised practice of it, and existence would have no further meaning for him; and in this he was representative of the great bulk of society in this present age."

"John Doe: Hello. This is John Doe. Interested in data? Süddeutsche Zeitung: We're very interested. John Doe: There are a couple of conditions. My life is in danger. We will only chat over encrypted files. No meeting, ever. The choice of stories is obviously up to you. Süddeutsche Zeitung: Why are you doing this? John Doe: I want to make these crimes public. Süddeutsche Zeitung: How much data are we talking about? John Doe: More than anything you have ever seen."

"The cat's out of the bag... So now we have to deal with the aftermath."

"It has not been a great week. I know that I should have handled this better, I could have handled this better... I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them... Don't blame Number 10 Downing Street or nameless advisers, blame me... I want to be open... I was obviously very angry about what people were saying about my dad. I loved my dad, I miss him every day... He was a wonderful father and I'm very proud of everything he did. But I mustn't let that cloud the picture. The facts are these: I bought shares in a unit trust, shares that are like any other sorts of shares and I paid taxes on them in exactly the same way... I sold those shares. In fact, I sold all the shares that I owned, on becoming prime minister... Later on I will be publishing the information that goes into my tax return, not just for this year but the years gone past because I want to be completely open and transparent about these things... I will be the first prime minister, the first leader of a major political party, to do that and I think it is the right thing to do."

"Everything I’m doing is legal, it’s a perfectly legitimate structure."

"In tax havens, boundaries between what’s legal and illegal become very blurred. The recent leak on the Panama Papers revealed how international leaders, celebrities and businessmen from all over the world were using offshore companies to avoid making their assets public and, in some cases, potentially to dodge tax or hide illegal activities. Panama is where criminal capitalism and legal capitalism become one."

"Environmental and are at root social crises. They are caused by profound problems in the social world, by elites, and the hierarchical control of decision-making and allocation of resources in profit-driven, expansionistic, ecocidal capitalist societies. As social problems, environmental crises require social solutions, namely radical political change seeking to create just, democratic, and sustainable societies. What we today call “natural disasters,” are at [the] root [of] social disasters that must be addressed if we are to solve the global . We must not only transform our and speciesist identities, our arrogant and vainglorious forms of human supremacism and pathological alienation, we must also transform our growth-oriented, profit-driven, meat-based, fossil fuel addicted societies. For millennia, the western world above all has lived by the philosophy of humans first, even humans only. It is now time for a new philosophy of earth first whereby humanity begins the arduous process of -- radically reducing their population numbers and consumption levels, rewilding natural environments and reserving vast habitats for wildlife alone, and shifting from a growth-oriented to a steady-state sustainable economy."

"We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself withersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power."

"This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels."

"It seems to me we need something like the Manhattan Project. We need some urgency saying, "Here's what we should be doing. We've got to get off fossil fuels.""

"At issue is not whether the global economy will pass away. It is passing away. Rising populations and debt combined with depletion of freshwater sources and fossil fuel make the status quo untenable. The only question is whether civil society will survive the transition."

"We have a moral responsibility to help working families in the fossil fuel industry find new jobs."

"We have a moral responsibility to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and leave our children a healthy and habitable planet."

"To control global warming, only one solution: stop burning fossil fuels."

"At present population levels, we are putting unprecedented pressure on finite resources. We are conducting a grand-scale, unauthorized experiment on the 4.5 billion-year-old planet. The fact that we have not hit the bounds in a few generations of outrageous growth should not be taken as evidence for our long-haul prospects. We live like kings today, on the backs of [at least] roughly 100 energy slaves each (human metabolism is 100 Watts, but Americans enjoy 10 KW of continuous power). Our richness is very much tied to surplus energy availability, and that so far has been a story of finite [hydrocarbon-based] fossil fuels. But even under solar power, we can’t continue our track record of 3% energy growth per year for even several hundred years! Global physical limits—thermodynamic, energy return on energy invested, finite arable land, water, fisheries, climate change, etc.—are all asserting themselves to remind us that nature doesn’t care about our dreams."

"Fossil fuels opened the door to widespread mechanization and electrification, completely transforming our way of life. As central as their role has been, it is difficult to claim that many of the benefits we enjoy today—whether health care, technology, scientific knowledge, or comfortable living standards—would have been possible without them. Much that we celebrate in this world rode on the back of fossil fuels."

"Our fossil fuel bonanza has left our ecosystem in a perilous state. We have destroyed vast forests and habitat, polluted water and soil, kicked off a rapid climate trend that natural systems may not adapt to quickly enough, and basically overrun the planet. […] 96% of mammal mass on the planet is now in the form of humans and our livestock, leaving a paltry 4% of wild mammals—land and sea. Roughly 70% of vertebrate numbers have vanished since 1970 (undoubtedly a higher fraction if the survey had started in 1700). Forests are also way down."

"We are already experiencing huge cost externalities from population hypergrowth and profligate fossil fuel use in the form of environmental devastation. Of the earth’s estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past fifty years. Each year, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct, an all-time high for the last 65 million years. Within one hundred years, between one-third and two-thirds of all birds, animals, plants, and other species will be lost. Nearly 25 percent of the 4,630 known mammal species are now threatened with extinction, along with 34 percent of fish, 25 percent of amphibians, 20 percent of reptiles, and 11 percent of birds. Even more, species are having population declines. Environmental scientists speak of an “omega point” at which the vast interconnected networks of Earth’s ecologies are so weakened that human existence is no longer possible."

"Everything characteristic about the condition we call modern life has been a direct result of our access to abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have permitted us to fly, to go where we want to go rapidly, and [to] move things easily from place to place. Fossil fuels rescued us from the despotic darkness of the night. They have made the pharaonic scale of building commonplace everywhere. They have allowed a fractionally tiny percentage of our swollen populations to produce massive amounts of food. They have allowed us to develop industries of surpassing ingenuity and to push the limits of what it even means to be human to the strange frontier where man imagines himself into a kind of machine immortality. All of the marvels and miracles of the twentieth century were enabled by our access to abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels. Even the applied technology of atomic fission, which came along in the mid-[20th-]century, would have been impossible without fossil fuels and may be impossible to continue very long into the future without them. The age of fossil fuels is about to end. There is no replacement for them at hand. These facts are poorly understood by the global population preoccupied with the thrum of daily life, but tragically, too, by the educated classes in the United States, who continue to be by far the greatest squanderers of fossil fuels. It is extremely important that we make an effort to understand what is about to happen to us because it will have earth-shaking repercussions for the way we live, the way the world is ordered, and whether the very precious cargo of human culture can move safely forward into the future."

"Fossil fuels have leveraged human power and ingenuity to a remarkable degree. Their discovery and accelerating utilization utterly transformed lifestyles, achievements, and even how we perceive ourselves as a species. Yet, one thing we know for certain about fossil fuels is that they are a finite resource on this planet—slowly developed in select locations over hundreds of millions of years and being used about a million times faster than the rate of production. We know that we have already consumed a sizable fraction of the initial inheritance: perhaps now halfway through the irreplaceable allotment of oil. So we know that this phase of the human adventure is a temporary one."

"Whereas, by a call dated July 25, 1877, the Mayor of this city has called upon the businessmen for organization; and whereas, the present state of affairs in the city and vicinity warrants a feeling of insecurity on the part of the business portion of the community; and although a creditable determination is express by all parties to the present conflict of interests, and while we have the fullest confidence in their good faith, still we feel that an organization, on our part, will present tangible support to their efforts in sustaining the legal authorities in preserving peace and good, order, and, will guarantee protection to property in the event of intrusion from such elements of discord as might present themselves. We, therefore, proffer our services as a company, to be known as the "Scranton Citizen Corps" in the furtherance of the objects above set forth."

"I haven't come here, gentlemen, to represent anybody but the State of Pennsylvania and the people, to preserve the peace. I come here to protect the railroads in opening travel on their property, just as I would have done for any citizen who was illegally obstructed in the enjoyment of his rights or property. If anybody wants to work, he should be allowed to do so, or if he wants to quit work, it is his right to do so, and is is my duty to see that every man's rights shall be preserved."

"Whereas, we, the employees of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, believe that we are not getting a just remuneration for our labor or a sufficient supply for ourselves and families of the common necessaries of life, therefore Resolved, That we demand twenty-five pet cent. advance on the present rate of wages; also it is further Resolved, That with a refusal of these demands all work will be abandoned from date, as we have willingly submitted to the reduction and without murmur or resistance and finding that it now fails us to live as becomes citizens of a civilized Nation we take these steps in order to supply ourselves and little ones with the neccesaries of life."

"Oh God! Isn't this a black sight for my poor heart."

"The general public opinion, as expressed to me, seems not to apprehend any violence or danger unless a too free use of liquor shall be indulged in; and at the request of committees of the workingman's organizations and others, who have called upon me this morning, requesting me to close all places where liquor is sold. I, therefore, in compliance with said request, ask of you to close your bars, and to strictly abstain from the selling of all kind of liquor for the present."

"In view of the excitement throughout the country occasioned by the labor troubles and the lamentable loss of life and property in our own and other States, it become the duty of all good citizens to use their best efforts to preserve peace and uphold the law. Recognizing, as every one must, the unfortunate condition of the business, and financial interests of all classes of the community, and especially the hardship and suffereing of the laboring men, we must yet unitein maintaining to the fullest extent the majesty of the law and the protection of life and property. I therefore earnestly urge all good citizens, and especially the workingmen themselves, to abstain from all excited discussion of the prominent question of the day. The laboring men of our city are vitally interested in the preservation of peace and good order and the prevention of any possible destruction of property. I trust the leading men among the workingment fully realize that the interests of the whole city are their interests, and that any riot or destruction of life or property can work only injury to all classes and to the good name of our city. Every taxpayer will realize that any destruction of property will have to be paid for by the city, and would by so much increase the burden of taxation. In one day Pittsburgh has put upon herself a load that her taxpayers will struggle under for years. I again earnestly urge upon men of all clases in our city the necessity of sober, careful thought and the criminal folly of any precipitate action."

"I hereby order all places of business to be immediately closed and all good citizens to hold themselves in readiness to assemble at my headquarters, at the office of the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company, upon a signal of four long whistles from the gong at the blast furnaces."

"There can be no cause for apprehension, gentlemen; that meeting, I doubt not, is held by order of the miners' committee, and I have no doubt of its orderly intentions."

"The boys of the firing squad and members of the Citizens' Corps, had hardly been relieved from immediate duty by the arrival of Gen. Brinton and his command, when we found that we had to answer at the bar of public opinion, for what we thought had been both courageously and patriotically done."

"Dear Sir, I have the favor of the 1st...you will thank Mr. Taylore and the other gentlemen most heartily for their kind expressions. The paper and dispatches will have posted you as to our actions of yesterday. The troops arrived this morning, and a great fright has been lifted from our minds. Our treatment by the local force has been simply infamous."

"The great trouble here in Scranton is our population, an excess of miners for the work to be done.""

"When a riot is running through a city there can be no neutrals; every man must be on one side or the other. He must be for peace or discord. He must be willing to shed his blood for law and order, or be the abettor of lawlessness and destruction. To be brief, it is even riotous to be found on nither side.""

"It must be plain to you from the evidence, that this was no peaceful meeting of men for peaceful ends in Scranton on the 1st of August. If it were so, there was and could be no riot. On the contrary, it was an unlawful assemblage, destructive in its tendency, deadly in its purposes. It was a riotous meeting, and every man was a rioter who refused to help to quell it."

"The miners resolved to stop work, which they had a perfect right to do. But when they formed a combination to prevent others from working and the mines from operating, they committed a crime.""

"The stinking puddle from which usury, thievery and robbery arises is our lords and princes. They make all creatures their property—the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plant in the earth must all be theirs. Then they proclaim God's commandments among the poor and say, "You shall not steal.""

"Land monopoly—in the hands of individuals, corporations or syndicates—is at bottom the prime cause of the inequalities which obtain; which desolate fertile acres turned over to vast ranches and into bonanza farms of a thousand acres, where not one family finds a habitation, where muscle and brain are supplanted by machinery, and the small farmer is swallowed up and turned into a tenant or slave. While in large cities thousands upon thousands of human beings are crowded into narrow quarters where vice festers, where crime flourishes undeterred, and where death is the most welcome of all visitors."

"Alongside their work on pure economic theory, the classical political economists engaged in a parallel project: to promote the forcible reconstruction of society into a purely market-oriented system. ... Most people in Britain did not enthusiastically engage in wage labor—at least so long as they had an alternative. To make sure that people accepted wage labor, the classical political economists actively advocated measures to deprive people of their traditional means of support. ... Perhaps because so much of what the classical economists wrote about traditional systems of agricultural production was divorced from the seemingly more timeless remarks about pure theory, later readers have passed over such portions of their works in haste. ... I argue that these interventionist recommendations were a significant element in the overall thrust of their works. Specifically, classical political economy advocated restricting the viability of traditional occupations in the countryside to coerce people to work for wages."

"What six drains on wealth do they avoid? Habitually engaging in the following things is a drain on wealth: drinking alcohol; roaming the streets at night; frequenting festivals; gambling; bad friends; laziness."

"They pick up riches as bees roaming round pick up pollen. And their riches proceed to grow, like an ant-hill piling up. In gathering wealth like this, a householder does enough for their family. And they’d hold on to friends by dividing their wealth in four. One portion is to enjoy. Two parts invest in work. And the fourth should be kept for times of trouble."

"Someone who grows in money and grain, in wives, children, and livestock, is wealthy, famous, and respected by relatives and friends, and even by royals. When someone grows in faith and ethics, wisdom, and both generosity and learning— a good man such as he sees clearly, and in the present life he grows in both ways."

"One might give alms impartially with a thousand coins of money month by month for a hundred years; but that is not worth a sixteenth part of having confidence in the Buddha. ...of having confidence in the Dhamma. ...of having confidence in the Sangha. ...of those who have mastered Dhamma."

"Beings in the ghost world do not farm, herd cattle, trade, buy, sell, or use gold and money. They survive on merits shared by humans. As water that rains on a mountain-top flows down to the bottom, so will the merits shared from the human world reach the beings in the ghost world. Just as streams of water fill the ocean, so will the merits shared from the human world reach the beings in the ghost world. One should share merits with departed relatives recalling, “He gave to me, he worked for me, he was a relative, friend, and companion.”"

"Selling poison, selling weapons, selling living beings, selling alcohol, selling meat, and, without having inspected (first), pounding sesame and mustard seed (and so on) is wrong livelihood, abstaining from it is right livelihood."

"At that time in the great city of Vaishali there was a rich man named Vimalakirti. [...] In a spirit of trust and harmony he conducted all kinds of business enterprises, but though he reaped worldly profits, he took no delight in these."

"The ownership and the consumption of goods is a means to an end, and Buddhist economics is the systematic study of how to attain given ends with the minimum means. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production—labour and capital—as the means. The former, in short, tries to maximise human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximise consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort."

"The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase of needs tends to increase one’s dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war."

"There must always be an inequality of bargaining power between masters and men in every contract, until that day shall arrive when the sacrifices of each master in a strike or lock out will affect his present comfort and future destiny as seriously, in its way, as it does that of each of his workmen."

"For [Adam] Smith, who wrote before the time of mass advertising and professional PR departments, the strategic creation of shared sentiments does not seem to be a major issue. Today, however, it seems that there is a growing imbalance between individuals and organizations that are extremely good at attracting sympathy and attention from others, with the help of high-quality training and professional advisors, and others who are unable to articulate their sentiments in a way that elicits sympathy from others. But the genuineness of sympathy of organizations and individuals that manufacture it can be doubted: their aim might be to initiate economic exchanges that the other party maybe would not agree to if it was not for the manufactured sentiments of those who offer these goods or services. The unequal ability to attract sympathy constitutes an imbalance of power in commercial societies that often aggravates the situation of those already disadvantaged in terms of human capital and material resources."

"It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate."

"White is a metaphor for power, and that is simply a way of describing Chase Manhattan Bank."

"I can't condition myself to see or to rebel against institutional privilege if I can't first see them in myself."

"It is the Capitalist bourgeoisie that creates inequality as a way to divide and rule over the entire working class. White skin privilege is a form of domination by Capital over white labor as well as oppressed nationality labor, not just providing material incentives to "buy off" white workers and set them against Black and other oppressed workers. This explains the obedience of white labor to Capitalism and the State. The white working class does not see their better off condition as part of the system of exploitation. After centuries of political and social indoctrination, they feel their privileged position is just and proper, and what is more has been "earned." They feel threatened by social gains of non-white workers, which is why they so vehemently opposed affirmative action plans to benefit minorities in jobs and hiring, and to redress years of discrimination against them. It is also why white workers have opposed most civil rights legislation."

"Whites have inherited wealth that was ostensibly generated on the backs of African Americans. What's passed down through generations is an abdication of responsibility for this legacy and for the spoils that even working-class whites continue to reap from it. The situation is akin to finding a bloodied bag of money at your doorstep every month and spending it freely without seriously questioning where it came from or whose blood has been spilled to make it possible."

"You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, "Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please." You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. And this is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact, and equality as a result."

"American families are in the process of passing along a $9 trillion legacy from one generation to the next. ... Hand in hand with this money, I submit, what is really being handed down from generation to generation is the profound legacy of reproducing racial inequality. The legacy is difficult to discern because the language of family heritage hides it from our political consciousness."

"It's impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism."

"A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people."

"EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL.... Nature is no respecter of birth or money power when she lavishes her mental and physical gifts. We fight God when our Social System dooms the brilliant clever child of a poor man to the same level as his father."

"I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality."

"In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class."

"The Republican Party is part of a larger American discussion about the tension between equality of opportunity and protection of property. ... Republicans began with the idea that they would be the political arm of the Declaration of Independence's equality of opportunity. Throughout their history, three times now, they have swung from that pole through a sort of racist and xenophobic backlash against that principle, tied themselves to big business, and come out protecting the other American principle, which is the protection of property."

"Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860."

"Basic income grants freedom and security without strings attached. It automatically supplements low wages without bureaucracy or complex wage subsidies."

"With a basic income, more people can choose for themselves whether to work full-time or part-time, making their own tradeoffs between more money and more leisure."

"The economic impact of the UBI together with the three tax changes in the US would be roughly as follows. First, bank deposits from UBI would increase significantly. Experience says that low-income beneficiaries would first pay off their high-cost credit card loans and student loans (though maybe not all at once). Money left over after that would be spent on household goods and services... Private debt would fall, but overall the government debt might increase equally, perhaps by US$500 billion per annum... UBI would actually cut some existing government costs, both for targeted welfare services that would become redundant, and even for prisons and police. Higher personal incomes available to spend on goods and services would also generate more tax revenues for the government. It is unclear how much would be added to the current intake, probably less than the net cost of the UBI. But the net deficit at the end of the day might be quite small or even non-existent. A viable democratic social system must not allow a "winner takes all" approach... It is time to consider another way of getting money into the system, without funnelling it directly through the banks to the wealthy...."

"Unless we abandon the work ethic of another era, ... lives may be wasted because of blind insistence that everyone must have a "job" even if the job is useless."

"The State ... should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family."

""Jobs for every American" is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter, basic food, and medical care. I’m talking about welfare for all."

"'Suppose there were a man, a slave, a labourer, getting up before you and going to bed after you, willingly doing whatever has to be done, well-mannered, pleasant-spoken, working in your presence. And he might think, ... "I ought to do something meritorious. Suppose I were to shave off my hair and beard, don yellow robes, and go forth from the household life into homelessness!" And before long, he does so. And he, having gone forth might dwell, restrained in body, speech and thought, satisfied with the minimum of food and clothing, content, in solitude. And then if people were to announce to you: "Sire, you remember that slave who worked in your presence, and who shaved off his hair and beard and went forth into homelessness?" ... Would you then say: "That man must come back and be a slave and work for me as before?"No indeed, Lord. For we should pay homage to him, we should rise and invite him and press him to receive from us robes, food, lodging, medicines for sickness and requisites, and make arrangements for his proper protection.'"

"If you read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 25, it says people have rights to adequate food, nutrition, health, employment, security and so on. Those are minimal rights. Any society ought to guarantee that. Well, one way to guarantee that would be through a socially-acceptable form of basic income."

"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system."

"I'm always concerned about, more than anything else, the waste of human potential. ... So much intelligence is wasted from poverty. People who simply don't have the time, the space to use their imaginations. They can't be creative, because to be creative requires that, for a little while at least, you let go of the basic concerns of staying alive—you can't really be creative if survival is the primary topic on your mind. And so I've been thinking about that for a long time, thinking how do we utilize the cumulative intelligence and creativity of people? And recently I heard of ... a very simple idea, ... which is: give everyone some money every week. No matter how rich they are, how poor they are, just make sure that there's a basic income level beyond which people don't fall. ... I like the idea that it says we believe that all people are potentially creative and that they should be given the chance to express that."

"If you can provide a mechanism where anybody can try any commercial idea without risking becoming homeless and indebted, more people will innovate and take risks."

"In general, I favor some form of a guaranteed income. I think we're gonna have to move in that direction ultimately, I don't think there's going to be any other choice."

"I think we need to do something different and what I have proposed is that eventually we're going to have to move toward a Guaranteed Income where everybody is guaranteed at least some livable income in our society."

"One obvious way to help fund a citizen's dividend or guaranteed income would be to levy a carbon tax, and therefore you'd be doing something very positive for the environment. ... I think there's a strong relationship between these two issues. On the one hand we have to take on these environmental challenges, on the other hand we've got this unfolding trend going on which is impacting people's income security and those two are directly related: as long as people perceive that they're not secure economically, they're worrying about paying their rent next month, or they're worried about putting food on the table, they're not gonna be able to focus on longer-term environmental issues. And that's one of the big problems we see with climate change: if you look at surveys of the American people, they acknowledge that climate change is an issue, but it's also absolutely at the bottom of their list of priorities, and the top of their list, of course, is jobs, it's incomes. So I really think that if we want to have meaningful progress on environmental issues like climate change we need to put this whole issue of income security and income inequality first-hand at the top."

"We should replace the ragbag of specific welfare programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash [which] would provide an assured minimum to all persons in need, regardless of the reasons for their need, while doing as little harm as possible to their character, their independence, or their incentives to better their own conditions. ... A negative income tax provides comprehensive reform which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely."

"A guaranteed income ... could for the first time free man from the threat of starvation, and thus make him truly free and independent economically and psychologically. ... People would no longer learn to be afraid, if they did not have to fear for their bread."

"A guaranteed income would not only establish freedom as a reality rather than a slogan; it would also establish a principle deeply rooted in Western religious and humanist traditions: man has the right to live, regardless! This right to live —to have food, shelter, medical care, education, etc.— is an intrinsic human right that cannot be restricted by any condition, not even the one that the individual must be socially "useful.""

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."

"Those in supreme power, politically and economically, aren't yet convinced that our Planet Earth has anywhere nearly enough life support for all humanity. They assume it has to be either you or me, that there is not enough for both. Those with financial advantage reason that selfishness is necessary and fortify themselves even further... Neither the great political or financial powers of the world nor the population in general realize that the engineering-chemical-electronic revolution now makes it possible to produce many more technical devices with ever less material. We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be "you or me," so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. Only twelve years ago technology reached the point where this could be done. Since then it has made it ever so much easier to do. This is not a visible revolution and it is not political. You’re dealing with the invisible world of technology."

"There is no single cure for poverty, but we should not, in our sophistication, be afraid of the obvious ... We need to consider the one prompt and effective solution for poverty, which is to provide everyone with a minimum income."

"Everybody should be guaranteed a decent basic income. A rich country such as the U.S. can well afford to keep everybody out of poverty. Some, it will be said, will seize upon the income and won’t work. So it is now with more limited welfare, as it is called. Let us accept some resort to leisure by the poor as well as by the rich."

"The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power, and enriches literature, and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves, driven to their task either by the lash of a master or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who perform it for its own sake, and not that they may get more to eat or drink, or wear, or display. In a state of society where want was abolished, work of this sort would be enormously increased."

"When the production process demands less work and distributes less and less wages, it gradually becomes obvious that the right to an income can no longer be reserved for those who have a job; nor, most importantly, can the level of incomes be made to depend on the quantity of work furnished by each person. Hence the idea of guaranteeing an income to every citizen which is not linked to work, or the quantity of work done."

"If you provide a basic income, you send a powerful message: nobody wants to just sit there and do nothing, we trust you to find a valuable occupation. The idea of morality of work is one of the most insidious tools in the hands of power, and increases the bullshit jobs phenomenon."

"Throughout most of recorded history, the only people who actually did wage labor were slaves. ... It’s only now that we think of wage labor and slavery as opposite to one another."

"It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working."

"The very nature of work will change. The governments may have to consider stronger social safety nets, and eventually universal basic income."

"And the biggest question mark of all is whether, at long last, robots and artificial intelligence really will make large numbers of people completely unemployable. If human labor is less needed in the future, that in principle is excellent news: a paradise of robotic servants awaits us. But our economies have always relied on the idea that people provide for themselves by selling their labor. If the robots make that impossible, then societies will simply come apart unless we reinvent the welfare state. Not all economists think that’s worth worrying about just yet. But those who do are reviving an idea that dates back to Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia: a universal basic income. The idea still seems utopian, in the sense of fantastically unrealistic. Could we really imagine a world in which everyone gets a regular cash handout, enough to meet their basic needs, no questions asked? Some evidence suggests it’s worth considering. From 1974 to 1979, the idea was tried in a small Canadian town, Dauphin, in Manitoba. For five years, thousands of Dauphin’s poorest residents got monthly checks funded jointly by the provincial and federal governments. And it turns out that guaranteeing people an income had interesting effects. Fewer teenagers dropped out of school. Fewer people were hospitalized with mental health problems. And hardly anyone gave up work. New trials are under way to see if the same thing happens elsewhere. It would, of course, be enormously expensive. Suppose you gave every American adult $12,000 a year. That would cost 70 percent of the entire federal budget. It seems impossibly radical. But then, impossibly radical things do sometimes happen, and quickly. In the 1920s, not a single U.S. state offered old-age pensions; by 1935, Frances Perkins had rolled out Social Security across the nation."

"The problem isn't that we have some inequality. Some inequality is necessary for a high-functioning capitalist democracy. The problem is that inequality is at historic highs today and it's getting worse every day. And if wealth, power, and income continue to concentrate at the very tippy top, our society will change from a capitalist democracy to a neo-feudalist rentier society like 18th-century France. That was France before the revolution and the mobs with the pitchforks. So I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. All highly prosperous capitalist democracies are characterized by massive investments in the middle class and the infrastructure that they depend on."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"There can be no doubt that some minimum of food, shelter, and clothing, sufficient to preserve health and the capacity to work, can be assured to everybody."

"The assurance of a certain minimum income for everyone, or a sort of floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself, appears not only to be a wholly legitimate protection against a risk common to all, but a necessary part of the Great Society in which the individual no longer has specific claims on the members of the particular small group into which he was born."

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a new widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income."

"A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated."

"There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum – and livable – income for every American family."

"That's why I talk about basic income ... there has to be a stronger social safety net because when people don't have options, they're going to make bad choices. Let's have better choices on the table."

"I once heard someone defend that belief by declaring that "human nature is to do as little as necessary." This prejudice is refuted not just by a few studies but the entire branch of psychology dealing with motivation. Normally, it's hard to stop happy, satisfied people from trying to learn more about themselves and the world, or from trying to do a job of which they can feel proud."

"If the picture I’ve drawn is at all right, the only way we could have anything resembling a middle-class society — a society in which ordinary citizens have a reasonable assurance of maintaining a decent life as long as they work hard and play by the rules — would be by having a strong social safety net, one that guarantees not just health care but a minimum income, too."

"We need to change the fundamentals of our society. We must move from a wealth-based civilization to one that is life-affirming—an ecological civilization. Without this Great Transition, we are leaving future generations to face the horrors of a collapsing civilization on a devastated planet. Can we transition rapidly enough? And can the transition occur without the old civilization collapsing catastrophically around us? Given this context, I have been surprised by how much the discussion of a universal basic income sounds like arguing how to stack the deck chairs on the Titanic... In my view, the fundamental issues need to be: Does UBI help with the process of transforming civilization from within?"

"A full-fledged UBI — one that unconditionally provides every person with enough income to meet their basic needs—would fundamentally alter the paradigm of capitalism that has locked workers into the dominant system ever since its inception. Capitalism has endured by commoditizing people’s lives, forcing them to sell the bulk of their available time and energy, or else face destitution and starvation. A true UBI would transform the relationship between labor and capital and weaken the power of the wealthy elite to control the population."

"Computers and robots replace humans in the exercise of mental functions in the same way as mechanical power replaced them in the performance of physical tasks. As time goes on, more and more complex mental functions will be performed by machines. Any worker who now performs his task by following specific instructions can, in principle, be replaced by a machine. This means that the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish—in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors."

"The most skilfully combined, and with the greatest foresight of objections, of all the forms of Socialism, is that commonly known as Fourierism. This system does not contemplate the abolition of private property, nor even of inheritance; on the contrary, it avowedly takes into consideration, as an element in the distribution of the produce, capital as well as labour. ... In the distribution, a certain minimum is ... assigned for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable or not of labour."

"Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime."

"The State owes all its citizens a secure subsistence, food, suitable clothes and a way of life that does not damage their health."

"This method of dealing with thieves is both unjust and undesirable. As a punishment, it's too severe, and as a deterrent, it's quite ineffective. Petty larceny isn't bad enough to deserve the death penalty. And no penalty on earth will stop people from stealing, if it's their only way of getting food. In this respect, you English, like most other nations, remind me of these incompetent schoolmasters, who prefer caning their pupils to teaching them. Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody's under the frightful necessity of becoming, first a thief, and then a corpse."

"I want to dismantle all the bureaucracies that dole out income transfers, whether they be public housing benefits or Social Security or corporate welfare, and use the money they spend to provide everyone over the age of 21 with a guaranteed income, deposited electronically every month into a bank account."

"Ultimately, we will have to have some sort of Universal Basic Income. I don't think we're going to have a choice."

"I propose a new approach that will make it more attractive to go to work than to go on welfare, and will establish a nationwide minimum payment to dependent families with children. I propose that the Federal government pay a basic income to those American families who cannot care for themselves in whichever State they live. ... I propose that we make available an addition to the incomes of the "working poor," to encourage them to go on working, and to eliminate the possibility of making more from welfare than from wages. We could adopt a "guaranteed minimum income for everyone", which would appear to wipe out poverty overnight. It would also wipe out the basic economic motivation for work, and place an enormous strain on the industrious to pay for the leisure of the lazy. Or, we could adopt a totally new approach to welfare, designed to assist those left far behind the national norm, and provide all with the motivation to work and a fair share of the opportunity to train."

"Artificial intelligence is here and it is accelerating, and you're going to have driverless cars, and you're going to have more and more automated services, and that's going to make the job of giving everybody work that is meaningful tougher, and we're going to have to be more imaginative, and the pact of change is going to require us to do more fundamental reimagining of our social and political arrangements, to protect the economic security and the dignity that comes with a job. It's not just money that a job provides; it provides dignity and structure and a sense of place and a sense of purpose. And so we're going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income, review of our workweek, how we retrain our young people, how we make everybody an entrepreneur at some level. But we're going to have to worry about economics if we want to get democracy back on track."

"Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. ... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds."

"I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene."

"There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed."

"Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."

"Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing to do with the laws but to obey them; and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation."

"An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer."

"There shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum. ... as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."