Economics

"While sharing platforms have taken some steps towards implementing mechanisms that establish trust and protect users, this does not remove the need for regulation. Governments first have to understand the intricacies of the specific operating model and its implications – whether economic (taxes, monopolies), legal (redefining labour laws that cater to freelancers) or social (protecting the rights of participants)... Cities have to address two goals when designing regulations for sharing platforms: encouraging innovation and competition, and protecting the interests of citizens."

"Low unemployment is not what it seems. 94% of jobs created between 2005-2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining."

"The International Monetary Fund, or IMF, promotes international financial stability and monetary cooperation. It also facilitates international trade, promotes employment and sustainable economic growth, and helps to reduce global poverty. The IMF is governed by and accountable to its 189 member countries."

"The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on global supply chains but new International Monetary Fund research shows that more diversification of source countries and inputs can significantly reduce the economic drag from supply disruptions."

"What happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries."

"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."

"When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other Western leaders were starting to plan for the postwar world, they had the recent past very much in their minds in other ways. They wanted to build a robust world order that would prevent the world from sliding, yet again, into another deadly conflict. The interwar years had been unstable ones, partly because the League of Nations had not been strong enough. Key powers, the United States in particular, had not joined or, like Germany and Japan, had dropped out. This time, Roosevelt was determined that the United States should be a member of the new United Nations. He was also prepared to do a good deal to keep the Soviet Union in. What had been a precariously balanced international order was put under further strain in the 1930s by the Great Depression, which encouraged countries to turn inward, throwing up tariff walls to protect their own workers and their own industries. What may have made sense for individual nations was disastrous for the world as a whole. Trade and investment dropped off sharply and national rivalries were exacerbated. To avoid that happening again, the Allies, with the Soviet Union's grudging acquiescence, created the economic institutions known collectively as the Bretton Woods system. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Trade Organization (this last did not materialize as the World Trade Organization until much later) were designed to provide stability to the world's economy and to encourage free trade among nations. How much difference these all made to the international order after 1943 will always be a matter of debate, but the world did not get a repeat of the 1930s."

"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides funds to governments which have short-term liquidity problems. The World Bank invests in infrastructural projects. Both institutions are based in Washington and are controlled by the US. The head of the World Bank is always an American, and the IMF is always headed by a European, usually French. The IMF provided resources for France and Portugal to resist challenges in their colonies, and without these funds, decolonisation would have begun earlier. In the new Third World states, the World Bank and IMF favoured those states which adopted the American model. They became powerful instruments in the hands of the US and often infl uenced private bank lending as well. When the US left the gold standard in 1971, it became easier for Third World states to access loans. The rapid rise in oil prices after 1973 made more funds available as the oil-rich states sought to invest their new-found wealth, but the Third World fell into the trap of accepting cheap loans and gradually became heavily indebted. US banks were happy to lend to Third World states assuming that Washington would bail them out if these states defaulted on their debts. The newly independent states were often dependent on exporting raw materials, but prices fell as technology advanced. The US aim was to create an international environment which promoted convergence between communism and capitalism, but the opposite occurred. Hence US policy made it more diffi cult for developing states to raise living standards as so much wealth had to be used to service debt. This, inevitably, contributed to the growth of left-wing movements."

"Throughout the 1980s and 90s, when many developing countries were in crisis and borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund, waves of protests in those countries became known as the "IMF riots". They were so called because they were sparked by the fund's structural adjustment programmes, which imposed austerity, privatisation and deregulation."

"Osama Bin Laden and George Bush were both terrorists. They were both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people’s lives. Bush with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al-Qaeda. The difference is that nobody elected Bin Laden."

"The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street."

"The IMF provides technical assistance and training to help member countries build better economic institutions and strengthen related human capacities. This includes, for example, designing and implementing more effective policies for taxation and administration, expenditure management, monetary and exchange rate policies, banking and financial system supervision and regulation, legislative frameworks, and economic statistics."

"Providing loans to member countries that are experiencing actual or potential balance-of-payments problems is a core responsibility of the IMF. Individual country adjustment programs are designed in close cooperation with the IMF and are supported by IMF financing, and ongoing financial support is dependent on effective implementation of these adjustments."

"We know that the changing climate is triggering catastrophic weather events. And we know that unless we act decisively to mitigate the causes and adapt to the changes in the climate, we are going to be in very deep trouble. So, why is this relevant for the IMF? The reason is straightforward. Our mandate is stability, growth, employment and improving in living standards. We are not going to have stability unless we address the climate crisis."

"We can address the COVID the recovery that is necessary and we can address the climate crisis... We are committed to support our members with analytical work and through the programs we finance for an accelerated transition to a future of low-carbon climate-resilient growth... In the near term, giving priority to green investment in the recovery packages would support job-rich growth. As the economies recover, a gradual increase in carbon prices, well anchored in forward guidance, would provide much needed revenues and create a virtuous circle of adjustments in consumer behavior and new investments."

"Founding and mission: The IMF was conceived in July 1944 at the United Nations Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, United States. The 44 countries in attendance sought to build a framework for international economic cooperation and avoid repeating the competitive currency devaluations that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The IMF's primary mission is to ensure the stability of the international monetary system—the system of exchange rates and international payments that enables countries and their citizens to transact with each other."

"The current crisis is both a risk and an opportunity. It would be short-sighted to go back to the economy of yesterday with its problems of growing inequality. We should look forward and take the opportunity to build a bridge to something better: a world that is fairer and more equitable; greener and more sustainable, smarter and above all more resilient."

"If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America."

"Being told by the IMF to go easy on austerity is like being told by the Spanish Inquisition to be more tolerant of heretics."

"The concepts formulated at Bretton Woods and Havana, which brought into being the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, were characterized by exchange, trade and development-financing systems based on the interests of a few dominant countries. They evolved at a time when war between the industrial countries of the West and the socialist world seemed inevitable. As always, economic interests and political interest joined forces to overbear the countries of the Third World. Our development was hampered by economic obstacles; and every time a people resolved to make a bid for emancipation, all possible means of attack were used against it. The systems in question established the rules of the trade game. They closed markets to the products of the Third World through the establishment of tariff and non-tariff barriers, through their own anti-economic and unfair production and distribution structures. They set up harmful practices and norms, fixed freight rates, and thus secured a virtual monopoly of cargo. They also left the Third World countries to watch the advance of science as outsiders and exported to us technical know-how which in many cases was simply an instrument of cultural alienation and of increased dependence. For example, in the international telecommunications system a formidable danger is implicit. Today, 75 percent is in the hands of the developed countries of the West; and of this proportion more than 60 percent is controlled by the big United States corporations, with whose policy we are familiar. I wish to point out that, in less than ten years, our community institutions and our homes will be flooded by information and publicity which will be directed from abroad by means of satellites of high transmission power, and which, unless they are counteracted by timely measures, will serve only to increase our dependence and destroy our cultural values. This danger must be averted by the international community, which should demand that control be exercised by the United Nations."

"A contradiction lies at the very centre of the neoliberal project. On a theoretical level, neoliberalism promises to bring about a purer form of democracy, unsullied by the tyranny of the state. Indeed, this claim serves as the model lodestar for neoliberal ideology - a banner under which it justifies radical market deregulation. But, in practice, it becomes clear that the opposite is true: that neoliberalism tends to undermine democracy and political freedom. More than 40 years of experimentation with neoliberalism shows that it erodes the power of voters to decide the rules that govern the economic systems they inhabit. It allows for the colonization of political forums by elite interests - a process known as political capture - and sets up new political forums, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the , that preclude democratic representation from the outset. Neoliberalism also tends to undermine national sovereignty, to the point where parliaments of putatively independent nations no longer have power over their own policy decisions, but are governed instead by foreign banks, the , trade agreements, and undemocratic international institutions, all of which exercise a kind of invisible, remote-control power."

"People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology that promotes totally free markets, where the state retreats from the scene and abandons all interventionist policies. But if we step back a bit, it becomes clear that the extention of neoliberalism has entailed powerful new forms of state intervention. The creation of a global 'free market' required not only violent coups and dictatorships backed by Western governments, but also the invention of a totalizing global bureaucracy – the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and bilateral free-trade agreements – with reams of new laws, backed up by the military power of the United States. In other words, an unprecedented expansion of state power was necessary to force countries around the world to liberalize their markets against their will. As the has known ever since the in 1842, when British gunboats invaded China in order to knock down China's trade barriers, free trade has never actually been about freedom. On the contrary, as we have seen, free trade has a tendency to gradually undermine national sovereignty and electoral democracy."

"Despite the annual embarrassment of India scoring a poor rank on the , nutrition and hunger hardly merit a mention in the budget speeches of our finance ministers. The last time there was anything related to tackling malnutrition among women and children was in 2014-15 – the first budget of the Narendra Modi government – where Arun Jaitley announced that a national nutrition mission would be launched. [...] Notwithstanding its positioning, budget 2020 in effect fails on many counts to respond to the nutrition challenge in India. The direct programmes which address the multidimensional nature of malnutrition including the ICDS, mid-day meals, PMMVY and Poshan Abhiyan are underfunded and at the same time PDS which contributes to basic food security is sought to be undermined. The government seems to be oblivious to the situation of hunger in the country. It further seeks to create an illusion of plenty by arguing in the Economic Survey in its chapter on 'Thalinomics' that food affordability has increased in the last few years. This chapter is based on a flawed methodology where it compares food prices as a proportion of incomes of workers in organised manufacturing who comprise less than 5% workers in India and does not take into account that wages for the majority have been stagnating and unemployment is at its peak."

"A Penny sav’d is Twopence clear, A Pin a day is a Groat a Year. Save & have. Every little makes a mickle."

"I sank every penny I had into buying that 1,000 acres of Brazilian rainforest. Then I had it slashed and burned so we could build our dream house."

"I've got pennies for my thoughts; now I'm rich."

"Garnishments are also coming from the , even though Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced on March 25 that the department would halt collection actions and wage garnishments for 60 days beginning March 30."

"Though some protections exist for people struggling financially during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to the stimulus package signed into law on March 27, they largely ignore those who were already on the edge of financial ruin. The CARES Act has paused federal student loan debt payments and payments on federally-backed mortgages, and various cities and states have suspended evictions. But few states have stopped creditors from moving ahead with , repossessions, and attachments (one-time seizures of bank accounts). This means that in many cases, the pandemic will tip people [...] into an economic abyss from which it will be difficult or impossible to recover. Even the one-time $1,200 stimulus payments promised to millions in the U.S. can be garnished by financial institutions in many states."

"Garnishments can occur after a creditor obtains a court judgement against someone who owes them money. Some people are not aware of the court hearings, often because they have not been informed by the creditor and don’t show up to argue their cases. [...] But once a court gives the go-ahead, creditors are free to take a portion of a person's wages from their . A separate order allows them to seize money from an individual's bank account. requires that debtors are left with at least $217.50 a week in take-home pay—for a family of four, that's less than half the federal poverty level. Some states protect more income from creditors, but creditors aren't limited to targeting money. They are free to seize cars, even if a debtor needs a vehicle to get to work to earn the money to pay off their debts."

"About one-third of Americans have debts in collection, according to the . Total reached an all-time high in the last quarter of 2019, at $14.5 trillion, according to the . Unemployment checks are supposed to be protected from creditors, but even they are at risk of seizure once they are deposited into bank accounts. To protect their benefits, debtors must file a court motion, which is challenging in scores of jurisdictions where the coronavirus has closed most courts. People who do succeed in filing motions are being told they must wait weeks and sometimes months for their cases to be heard. In the meantime, the funds remain frozen."

"A direct allotment of a share of profits is one of the most ancient methods of rewarding labor. If not actually older than the wage system it was at least widely prevalent before money wages were commonly paid. In agriculture it is seen in the metayer system of continental Europe, to which "farming on shares" in New England corresponds. In the fishing industry, where the system seems to be peculiarly applicable, the pay of the crew is almost universally in proportion to the catch. On the economic and social effects of share farming the judgements of competent observers have differed widely. Adam Smith thought that it could never be the interest of meters to lay out any part of their own savings on the further improvement of the land ... Sismondi ... whose opportunities for observation were superior to those enjoyed by any other writer that has treated this subject, gives emphatic testimony in favor of the system, as conducive to prosperity, moral order, and content."

"... if the only argument for this economic system were the demonstration of its justice, it might well despair of gaining ground. Men's consciences are not easily enlisted against their interests, and few would be induced to share profits, which they have considered their peculiar possession, with workmen who could claim them only as a moral right. But profit-sharing forwards the interests of the employer no less than those of the employed. It offers a keen incentive to the ambition, fidelity, and industry of the laborer, and thus actually creates an entirely new source of profit."

"Profit-sharing, in the loose sense, must be of untold antiquity; the first great example of profit-sharing in the strict sense is that of the Parisian house-painter, Edme-Jean Leclaire, “ The Father of Profit-Sharing.” In 1842 he was employing 300 men on day wages. By greater zeal and intelligence and less waste, not necessarily by harder work, he reckoned they could save £3000 a year; and he made it their interest to do so by arranging that they should receive the greater part of the saving themselves. This arrangement proved a very great success; the material gain to the men and the improvement in their morale were marked; and Leclaire, who began life with nothing and died worth £48,000, always maintained that, without the zeal drawn out in his men by profit-sharing, he never could have made so large a business or gained so much wealth."

"Chile has nationalized copper, its basic resource, which accounts for over 70 percent of its exports. Little regard has been given however to the fact that the nationalization process, with all its implications and consequences, including the establishment and payment of indemnities, has been the clearest and most categorical expression of the will of its people, and has been carried out in full accord with a precise mandate of provisions established in the nation's Constitution. Little regard has been given the fact that the foreign companies which exploited the mines have drawn profits many times greater than the value of their investments. These companies which amassed huge fortunes at our expense, and assumed that they had the right to burden us indefinitely with their presence and their abuse, have stirred up forces of every kind—including those of their own state institutions, in their country and elsewhere—to attack and injure Chile and its economy."

"It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry."

"Following this preamble, these shall be the principles of social justice towards the realization of which we must strive:… 2. I believe that every citizen willing to work and capable of working shall receive a just, living, annual wage which will enable him both to maintain and educate his family according to the standards of American decency. 3. I believe in nationalizing those public resources which by their very nature are too important to be held in the control of private individuals… 5. I believe in upholding the right to private property but in controlling it for the public good."

"There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or workers within the framework of global, corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism, which uses identity politics, multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics, will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism, evisceration of civil liberties and omnipotence of the organs of security and surveillance. Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed, despite its continually rebranding itself. The longer the self-identified left and liberal class seek to work within a system that the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism,” the more the noose will be tightened around our necks. If we do not rise up to bring government and financial systems under public control—which includes nationalizing banks, the fossil fuel industry and the arms industry—we will continue to be victims."

"Government ownership would serve the interests of democracy by taking this vitally necessary industry out of the grip of a mass of holding companies and financial interests intent on profits and placing it in the hands of representatives of the 150,000,000 people in these United States."

"I think they've made the biggest financial mess that any government's ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they're now trying to control everything by other means. They're progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people."

"It is far more likely that by the time nationalization has become the rule, and private enterprise the exception, Socialism (which is really rather a bad name for the business) will be spoken of, if at all, as a crazy religion held by a fanatical sect in that darkest of dark ages, the nineteenth century. Already, indeed, I am told that Socialism has had its day, and that the sooner we stop talking nonsense about it and set to work, like the practical people we are, to nationalize the coal mines and complete a national electrification scheme, the better."

"We in Europe have watched with admiration the burgeoning of this mighty American economy. There is a new mood in the United States. A visitor feels it at once. The resurgence of your self-confidence and your national pride is almost tangible. Now the sun is rising in the West. For many years, our vitality in Britain was blunted by excessive reliance on the State. Our industries were nationalized, controlled, and subsidized in a way that yours never were. We are having to recover the spirit of enterprise which you never lost. Many of the policies you are following are the policies we are following. You have brought inflation down. So have we. You have declared war on regulations and controls. So have we. Our Civil Service is now smaller than at any time since the War and controls on pay, prices, dividends, foreign exchange, all are gone. You have encouraged small business -- so often the source of tomorrow's jobs. So have we. But above all, we are carrying out the largest program of denationalization in our history. Just a few years ago, in Britain, privatization was thought to be a pipe dream. Now it is a reality and a popular one. Our latest success was the sale of British Telecommunications. It was the largest share issue ever to be brought to the market on either side of the Atlantic -- some 2 million people bought shares. Members of Congress, that is what capitalism is -- a system which brings wealth to the many and not just to the few."

"TRANSPORTATION—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people."

"My sin - my greater sin [...] and even my greatest sin is that I nationalized Iran's oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world's great empire (The U.K.) [...] This at the cost to myself, my family; and at the risk of losing my life, my honor and my property.""

"The bureaucratization inherent in Communist regimes was also responsible for the economic failures that either contributed to their downfall or else compelled them to abandon Communism in all but name. The nationalization of productive assets led to the transfer of their management to officials who had neither the competence nor the motivation to operate them efficiently. The inevitable result was declining productivity. Furthermore, the rigidity inherent in centralized management made Communist economies unresponsive to technological innovation, which explains why the Soviet Union, despite its high level of science, missed out on some of the most important technological discoveries of recent times. As Friedrich Hayek has pointed out, only the free market has the ability to sense and respond to shifts in the economy. And only the prospect of enrichment motivates people to exert themselves beyond their immediate needs. Under Communism, effective incentives were lacking: indeed, diligence at work was punished, in that meeting one’s productivity quotas resulted in these quotas being raised."

"Now, Therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, under and by virtue of the powers vested in me by the foregoing resolutions and statute, and by viture of all other powers thereto me enabling, do hereby, through Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War, take possession and assume control at 12 o'clock noon on the twenty-eight day of December, 1917, of each and every system of transportation and the appurtenances thereof located wholly or in part within the boundaries of the continental United States and consisting of railroads, and owned or controlled systems of coastwise and inland transportation, engaged in general transportation, whether operated by steam or by electric power, including also terminals, terminal companies and terminal associations, sleeping and parlor cars, private cars and private car lines, elevators, warehouses, telegraph and telephone lines and all other equipment and appurtenances commonly used upon or operated as a part of such rail or combined rail and water systems of transportation; - to the end that such systems of transportation be utilized for the transfer and transportation of troops, war material and equipment, to the exclusion so far as may be necessary of all other traffic thereon; and that so far as such exclusive use be not necessary or desirable, such systems of transportation be operated and utilized in the performance of such other services as the national interest may require and of the usual and ordinary business and duties of common carriers."

"To realize fully the necessity for Nationalization we must understand the wonderful possibilities of national organization."

"Vegetarianism"

"Organic food"

"A lot has been written about how this pandemic is exacerbating social inequalities. But what if it’s because our societies are so unequal that this pandemic happened? There is a that, historically, have been more likely to occur at times of social inequality and discord. As the poor get poorer, the thinking goes, their baseline health suffers, making them more prone to infection. At the same time they are forced to move more, in search of work, and to gravitate to cities. The rich, meanwhile, have more to spend on luxuries, including products that hail from far-flung places. The world becomes more tightly connected through trade, and germs, people and luxury goods travel together along trade routes that connect cities. On paper, it looks like a perfect storm."

"Immune system"