Historians From The United States

"[I]n 2016. ...Trump ...said ...this is a good economy ...tremendous, we've never had it so good... but... people do not kill themselves [or kill strangers] to the extent of 150,000 people per annum in a good economy. You've got to generate a lot of despair in order to do that..."

"The Gallup poll says that half of the population is doing well, 52%... thriving, but the rest are either struggling or suffering... 44% struggling means that they have a very difficult time meeting their obligations. That's not a good economy."

"Deregulation was supposed to make the economy more efficient... but instead it led to the financial crisis... and Blackboard Economists did not even see the crisis coming when it was around the corner."

"[H]ousing prices had doubled by 2005 in 10 years time, which would have made sense if incomes had also increased substantially, but they didn't."

"[H]ousehold incomes... weren't going up. You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to figure out that something's not right with that."

"The meltdown of 2008 was a wasted crisis... because the homeowners were not bailed out. The financial sector was bailed out, the banks... the bankers... but... 8 million homeowners were thrown out of their homes."

"was supposed to be good for the economy. It meant small government, low taxes, trickle down economics, , and all of these turned out to be bad... The slogan was to starve the beast... the government..."

"Reagan lowered the taxes on the top bracket and that made the [top] 1%... super rich."

"Today 21% of [total] annual income goes to 1% of households. ...That cannot be the basis of a good democracy."

"George Akerlof, Kenneth Arrow, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Krugman, Thomas Schelling, Herbert Simon, Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, , and Oliver Williamson... these Nobel Prize winning economists... are usually excluded from mainstream Econ 101 textbooks or relegated to obscure footnotes. ...[I]ntroductory textbooks hype a free-market utopia ...Hence ...do not help to understand the essentials of the real existing market economies... Rather, they present a caricature at a level of abstraction that creates a fantasy world and distorts the student's vision... [A] stereotype that markets are efficient... automatically leading to a blissful life, and they continue to sing the praises... keeping any demurrals muted."

"There must be something wrong with an economics that fosters a system that leaves so many... stranded that they strike back at the establishment by voting for a leader such as Donald Trump."

"Usually the relationship between the true unemployment rate and the official unemployment rate is 2:1."

"[T]his book is dedicated to a new kind of economics that promotes Capitalism with a Human Face."

"Blackboard economists said that globalization would be good for Americans. ...It had a few winners and... many losers. ...It ...led to an epidemic of Deaths of Despair in which so much was destroyed in America. Hyper-globalization destroyed... neighborhoods and cities and everything in the ... It was like an atomic bomb hit... Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses accelerated... the destruction of human lives."

"[R]andom allocation at the start of life cannot... be the basis of a good society."

"[I]n... 2017... 40% of the population evaluated their life as "struggling" and another 3%... "suffering.""

"[F]ree markets, being a human invention, often become dysfunctional; they do not deserve our blind faith."

"The growth-at-any-price perspective does not consider... distribution: economic growth will not help the destitute, the uneducated underclass, or the majority of those... unemployed."

"[C]hildren who are attending dysfunctional schools in dysfunctional neighborhoods, people... unable to catch their bearings in... the IT revolution and globalization, the working poor... trapped in a culture of poverty... ought not be treated like machines without feelings."

"[T]here are better ways to measure progress than in terms of money."

"My focus is on real human beings... rather than inanimate objects... as money or abstract concepts... which economists often substitute for the human dimension."

"I do not believe that... income translates... into life satisfaction... particularly... statistical averages, because these hide what is going on in the lower tail of income distribution... [a] skewed... political force... manipulated by... Trumpism."

"I consider my views to be progressive, democratic, and humanitarian. ...[W]e could restructure the economy ...to improve our lives by focusing on increasing our life satisfaction instead of on income growth."

"[W]e should begin... economic analysis with empirical evidence instead rather than on ivory-tower theorizing."

"[O]ur starting point should not be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, but his Theory of Moral Sentiments... that we possess an innate empathy toward our fellow human beings. Morality and ethical principles... We ought not expunge these from the economics canon."

"Pain... plays a major role in my thinking. I advocate its minimization."

"The purpose of any economic system ought not to be growth for its own sake, but the efficient allocation of resources. Foremost... the provision of a decent life in which output is distributed equitably, people do not need to struggle to meet their basic needs... and... realize their human potential. This means... sufficient leisure time to participate in... social, cultural, and political life."

"[T]he current U.S. economic system... is incapable of providing a satisfactory life to... 44% of the population. ...[I]s that good enough for a $20 trillion economy... supposedly the richest in the world?"

"One need not be a native utopian to be appalled by a society... [of] gross inequality..."

"The new normal is what I call Bailout capitalism because Ben Bernanke put a lot of money [creation of $trillions by the Federal Reserve] into the financial sector."

"Greenspan... out of hand and cold-bloodedly thwarted [warnings of , , Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff, Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, Nassim Taleb, John Taylor, and] 's valiant efforts to regulate derivatives a decade before the meltdown."

"Greenspan and Benjamin Bernanke... ignored the evidence because they were blinded by their ideology and the infallibility of the markets. They were prisoners of their own ideology."

"[I]deology is unavoidable in economics because... [of] values and an organizing system of thought... preconceived notions of how the world works. This is unavoidable."

"If one does not subject... ideology to empirical evidence... ideology becomes dogma."

"The ideological commitment to "," ...has brought us to our current, precarious situation."

"[W]e cannot help but... to organize our thoughts without making some fundamental assumptions... a function of our... mindset, worldview... intellectual and emotional commitments... [that] influence... ideas developed in the discipline."

"The recent election of Donald Trump was fueled by... an economic system that skews its benefits to a select few and leaves too many... scrambling to eke out a bare existence."

"I hope the present volume can... improve the teaching of economics by presenting a real-world perspective as opposed to the fantasy world of mainstream textbooks."

"[I]n the United States... southerners were 1.5 cm taller than men of the more industrialized North, even though the per capita income was greater in the North. ...Although England had a higher per capita income... as much as 25%, its soldiers were shorter than those of the United States in the eighteenth century. A century later, Irish recruits into the Union Army were taller than soldiers born in England, although English per capital income was... higher..."

"Being isolated from markets... had its advantages as long as the population density did not exceed the carrying capacity of the land, because subsistence peasants/farmers had little choice but to consume all of their own food output. Once they became integrated... they had to compete with other segments of the population for food, which tended to impinge on their nutritional intake..."

"[N]utritional advantages of the were quite pronounced by the early eighteenth century. Thereafter, the height of the American population was above European norms until the mid-twentieth century, confirming the extent to which the new... environment was favorable from a human biological point of view."

"[M]uch work remains to be done before we have even a complete of Europe and America. ...The contributions to this volume testify to the fact that much has already been accomplished. ...It is important that the research continue, inasmuch as it promises to illuminate a large number of problems."

"In all studies without exception, the positive relationship between social status and physical stature has been consistently documented in various societies and at different times. ...[E]ven in egalitarian America, social standing affected height throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the wake of the New Deal, these effects became less pronounced as became less skewed."

"The financial crisis of 2008 illustrated... how markets often go haywire, yet textbooks remain unchanged, failing to convey the fundamental flaws and systematic weaknesses of the free-market system."

"[A]cademics and politicians continue to sing the praises of abstract markets as if... descended... from heaven while maintaining... silence about the fact that without government help, countless... corporations would have landed in the dustbin of history."

"[E]conomics cannot be purged of ideology..."

"[A] more unequal distribution in income will have a negative effect on the mean height of a population."

"Here is the , 2008... the assets of the Federal Reserve is under $1 trillion... and within weeks you have more than a doubling of the assets of the Federal Reserve, and then comes 2 and... 3 and by that time you're at $4 1/2 trillion... and then... comes the Covid crisis and we're up to $7 trillion. Now... that kind of a Capitalism is unsustainable. ...[N]o wonder that there is asset inflation as a consequence... and the stock market went through the roof."

"IQ, intelligence quotient is normally distributed. ...The smart can take advantage of those with low IQ. That's not going to be the basis of a good economy and a good democracy if if people take advantage of one another. ...That's especially true of an educational system that is mediocre for a goodly portion of the population."

"[A] kinder and more just economic system is... one that is embedded in a truly democratic society that not only empowers people but enables them to live their daily lives with less uncertainty, less manipulation, less taking advantage of... weaknesses, and less fear that their lives could collapse like a house of cards. This capitalism... envisions... zero unemployment, zero inflation, zero trade deficits, and zero government deficit over the business cycle."