Economics

"The private bankers of England of whom we have the earliest cognizance, were in a very different position from their successors of the present day. The first were Jews, aliens in blood and religion; contemned, hated, feared, and despised. In the land of their adoption they were very soon made the victims of more barbarous cruelties and oppressions than were ever inflicted upon any people whatever."

"The use of banks has been the best method yet practised for the increase of money. banks have been long used in Italy, but as I am informed, the invention of them was owing to Sweedland. their money was copper, which was inconvenient, by reason of its weight and bulk; to remedy this inconveniency, a bank was set up where the money might be pledged, and credit given to the value, which past in payments and facilitate trade. The Dutch for the same reason set up the bank of Amsterdam. their money was silver, but their trade was so great as to find payments even in silver inconvenient. this bank like that of Sweedland, is a secure place, where merchants may give in money, and have credit to trade with. besides the convenience of easier and quicker payments, these banks save the expence of casheers, the expence of bags and carriage, losses by bad money, and the money is safer than in the merchants houses, for 'tis less lyable to fire or robbery, the necessary measures being taken to prevent them."

"In former times... the Exchequer was literally the bank of the Lord High Treasurer; but this was at a period when the existing facilities and securities for the transfer of money were... almost wholly unknown; when bank credits, bank cheques, and bank notes had no existence; and when the whole system of pecuniary intercourse was rude and imperfect: but since the establishment of the , the Exchequer has become rather an office of accounts and control than a repository for the safe custody of cash."

"The holder of an Exchequer bill does in fact hold a mortgage on all the property, both movable and immovable, in the United Kingdom; a mortgage binding in law, but more binding still in the unbroken faith of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. Exchequer bills are a species of Government paper money... simply orders upon the Exchequer, entitling the bearer to the sum specified therein, together with interest at a fixed rate per cent, per day, until a period is named for their payment, that period being at the option of the Government, but seldom exceeding twelve months..."

"A great portion of the yearly revenue consisted of fines, which were paid for grants of land and confirmations of liberties and franchises of various kinds. When the receivers of the public revenue lodged the money in the Exchequer, they received a discharge for the same, called a tally. Tallies were of great and constant use [and] coeval with the... Exchequer... The word tallies is originally French—taillie, cutting. ...The sum of money which it bore was cut in notches in the wood by the cutter of the tallies, and likewise written on both sides of it by the writer of the tallies. ...[O]ne was given to the parties paying money, and the other retained at the Exchequer. It is a mistake to suppose that tallies were a means of keeping accounts. On the contrary, they were official receipts for money paid into the King's Exchequer. ...[T]hey were undoubtedly an effectual protection against forgery or fraud."

"[In Ancient Rome, 340 B.C.] The first care of the new consuls was to regulate the payment of debts, the only obstruction to a perfect union of the patricians and plebeians. They no longer considered the relief of debtors as a private affair, but as a general concern of the public; and therefore chose out five men of known probity, and great experience, to take an account of all the debts of the plebeians. These five were called bankers, and had the command of the public treasury to enable them to discharge their commission; which they did to the satisfaction of both parties. Those who, out of sloth and idleness, had plunged themselves into debt, either borrowed money of these bankers, giving the treasury security for it, or deposited the value of their debts in their creditors hands in effects, which were valued by the bankers. By this means the greatest part of the debtors were relieved, without doing injury to any person, and with little loss to the public. Tranquillity being thus established at home..."

"While the Exchequer might be considered the royal Bank and Treasury, while the brotherhood of St. Thomas à Becket and the Merchants of the Steel Yard appeared in the double capacity of merchants proper and of the modern loan contractors, the business now carried on by our Rothschilds and Barings, of foreign bankers and dealers in foreign bills of exchange, was the subject of a royal monopoly."

"The expulsion of the Jews created great inconvenience, as there were none either to lend money or manage foreign business. ...[T]he family of Causini... bankers in the principal cities of Italy [were] invited to England... In... time other settled in London, in the street known by their name, and famous... as the very centre and focus of monetary transactions extending... to all parts of the globe. The occupations of the Lombards, like those of the Jews, were those of the goldsmith, the pawnbroker, and the merchant; and finally that of the banker. They, too, amassed immense wealth, and had at one time in their hands an enormous amount of church revenues. [The Lombards] also accommodated the kings of England with loans of money... Each succeeding year wore away the distinctions between the Lombard goldsmith and the native Englishman; and centuries have passed since the acute Italians of the middle ages were absorbed..."

"Carthage... must have been a scene of wonderful grandeur and activity. The Carthaginians were luxurious, and prone to display their wealth. ...The riches of the temples were immense, and the furniture and embellishments of private dwellings were of the costliest kind. Distant isles of the Atlantic, as well as the nearer shores of Asia and of Europe, contributed to the teeming stores of Carthage. In [this] great African republic bank-notes had their origin. "In a small piece of leather," says Æschines, the Socratic philosopher, "is wrapped a substance of the size of a piece of four drachms; but what this substance is no one knows except the maker. After this it is sealed, and issued for circulation; and he who possesses the most of this is regarded as having the most money, and as being the wealthiest man. But if any one among us had ever so much he would be no richer than if he possessed a quantity of pebbles." Of course banks must have existed for the redemption of these leather promises to pay, and the issue and currency of such notes must have been provided for by law."

"Down to the period of Henry the First, the rents, taxes, and fines due to the King, were paid in provisions and necessaries for his household. Afterwards, in succeeding reigns, the revenues of the Crown were chiefly paid in gold and silver, but sometimes made up with horses, dogs, and birds for game: on some occasions an entire payment was made in horses and dogs singly, of which there are numerous instances to be met with in the ancient rolls of the Exchequer."

"Previous to, and immediately after the Norman Conquest, there was very little money in use in England: all obligations were discharged by personal service and by payments such as cattle, horses, dogs, hawks, &c. &c."

"[U]pon the first day of the month Adar, proclamation was made throughout all Israel, that the people should provide themselves with half shekels, which were yearly paid towards the service of the temple, according to the commandment of God; On the 25th of Adar, they brought tables into the temple (that is, into the outward court, where the people stood) {Exodus xxx. 31.} On these lay the lesser coins, which were to provide those who wanted half-shekels for their offerings, or that wanted lesser pieces of money in payment for oxen, sheep, doves, &c. which stood there ready in the said court to be sold for sacrifices; but this supply and furnishing the people from the tables, was not without an exchange for other money or other things in lieu of money and that at an advantage [to the exchanger]: hence all those who sat at the tables were called bankers, or masters of the exchange."

"The first public institution in England partaking somewhat of the nature of a Bank was the Exchequer, founded by William the First: it still flourishes under Victoria, and, after an existence of eight hundred years its objects remain unchanged... The original name of the Exchequer was Scaccarium... not improbably derived from scaecus or scaccum, the "chess board," because a chequered cloth was used [by]... the accomptants of the English Court of Exchequer in counting the money inasmuch as the squares were understood to represent figures corresponding to the amounts placed thereon."

"Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

"The Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (AFT), the sec­ond largest teach­ers’ union in the coun­try, passed a res­o­lu­tion in sup­port of the Green New Deal at its bien­ni­al con­ven­tion at the end of July. The Green New Deal, fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion intro­duced in ear­ly 2019, would cre­ate a liv­ing-wage job for any­one who wants one and imple­ment 100% clean and renew­able ener­gy by 2030.... The Green New Deal’s focus on invest­ing in high-speed rail could mean sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial work for elec­tri­cians and rail work­ers like Lib­er­a­to. The leg­is­la­tion also calls for ​“repair­ing and upgrad­ing the infra­struc­ture in the Unit­ed States,” which means fix­ing bridges and roads, retro­fitting build­ings, and updat­ing sewage and water sys­tems. And the AFT’s green school build­ings cam­paign will need the sup­port of build­ing trades unions, like elec­tri­cians, plumbers, roofers, and boil­er­mak­ers. All of this infra­struc­ture work means more union jobs — but only if the labor move­ment acknowl­edges the true mag­ni­tude of cli­mate change and decides to play a lead­er­ship role in fight­ing it."

"The push from corporate headquarters to replace real pay with cheap "psychic income" (ranging from good-work badges and thank-you notes from bosses to doling out tickets for a sporting event) is on the rise... Workplace exploitation is at least as old as the industrial revolution. But rather than using whips and chains to make the assembly lines move ever-faster, today's corporate exploiters use technology, devious work schedules, and lobbyists to extract more work from employees — for less pay... What we have here is the deterioration of executive ethics to the point that openly gaming and cheating America's workaday majority is considered fair game by the avaricious corporate elites. As America is learning, to its horror, the combination of unbridled corporate greed and abandonment of common ethics... is turning wickedness into gold."

"Maryland’s Senate passed a bill Thursday that gradually increases the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, delivering another victory to supporters of the national “Fight for $15” campaign that has ushered in wage increases in other states... Other states and jurisdictions — including New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia — have raised their minimum wages. A bill making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives would raise the federal minimum to $15. Meanwhile, major companies including Amazon, Target, Whole Foods and Costco have all embraced $15 minimums."

"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."

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"Some corporations are learning, at long last, that... the only way to inspire that customer-centric devotion to a company’s mission is by treating employees in a way they deserve: with living wages and a share of the profit. As more and more companies adopt this new vision of long-term success, there will be less and less need to send income on a round trip from private sector coffers into the hands of government, only to be returned to the private sector as a subsidy. It can come straight from those who own the company to those who make the profits possible... In the end, the burden rests with business to use the amazing power of free enterprise capitalism to produce inclusive growth and prosperity for all Americans. The private sector can do that if it chooses to change and act with wisdom and urgency."

"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."

"What is the best of times for a few is feeling more like the worst of times for many. We’re living in what is celebrated as a booming economy, so why—for example—are deaths by suicide among white middle-class males at an all-time high? Certain numbers are higher than ever—GDP and suicide rates—but they don’t add up... Most Americans still do not complete even a community college degree, yet the median income of a high school graduate lifts a family of four less than 40 percent above the poverty line; in the 1970s, such an earner would have cleared that threshold by three times as much..."

"Decoupling growth from is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation."

"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."

"If the world experiences a slow, relatively peaceful transition away from U.S. hegemony, then the subsequent global order just might maintain some of the liberal international institutions that still represent the best of American values. If, by contrast, the golden-shower diplomacy of Donald Trump continues... then we will likely witness a harsher world order based on autocracy, Realpolitik, and commercial domination, with scant attention to human rights, women’s rights, or the rule of law."

"The unwavering conviction that Our America is one, from the Río Bravo to Patagonia, is imperative, and that we have a fundamental duty to prevent them from plundering our natural resources and subjugating us to their hegemony. The hostility of imperialism is today directed against our most genuine values."

"No one has the right to oppress others, no hegemony can crush any country..."

"According to the postmodern theorist Lalita Pandit conventions of history writing are more often than not marked by intellectual bad faith that serves and maintains hegemonic ideologies.She adds, ``it is nearly impossible to alter the premises of hegemonic claims, because hegemonies are founded in such retellings, and passing off of myth for fact and history, non-truth for belief. In part at least, all hegemonies are founded in discourses. Discourse conventions are automatically set to deal with exigencies. When a contrary, anti-hegemonic view comes out strong, historiagraphic conventions, having become habit or mind-sets, are all set to transform the contrary view and absorb into a grand paradigm that ultimately only serves the hegemonic ideology. At the same time, hegemonic institutions are automatically set up to not validate, not give authority to contrary views. After all, what is considered truth is what comes from the horse's mouth, and who decides who this privileged horse, the subject who knows the truth is?"

"In September 2002 the [G.W.] Bush administration announced its National Security Strategy, which declared the right to resort to force to eliminate any perceived challenge to US global hegemony, which is to be permanent. The new grand strategy aroused deep concern worldwide, even within the foreign policy elite at home."

"Sometime in the last two years, American hegemony died. The age of U.S. dominance was a brief, heady era, about three decades marked by two moments, each a breakdown of sorts. It was born amid the collapse of the Berlin Wall, in 1989. The end, or really the beginning of the end, was another collapse, that of Iraq in 2003, and the slow unraveling since... As with most deaths, many factors contributed to this one. There were deep structural forces in the international system that inexorably worked against any one nation that accumulated so much power. In the American case, however, one is struck by the ways in which Washington—from an unprecedented position—mishandled its hegemony and abused its power, losing allies and emboldening enemies."

"In the period of crisis the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly, and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom."

"U.S. hegemony in the post–Cold War era was like nothing the world had seen since the Roman Empire. Writers are fond of dating the dawn of “the American century” to 1945, not long after the publisher Henry Luce coined the term. But the post–World War II era was quite different from the post-1989 one. Even after 1945, in large stretches of the globe, France and the United Kingdom still had formal empires and thus deep influence. Soon, the Soviet Union presented itself as a superpower rival, contesting Washington’s influence in every corner of the planet."

"According to Pompeo [U.S. Secretary of State], Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) harbor a “decades-long desire for global hegemony.” This is ironic. Only one country – the US – has a defense strategy calling for it to be the “preeminent military power in the world,” with “favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.” China’s defense white paper, by contrast, states that “China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony,” and that, “As economic globalization, the information society, and cultural diversification develop in an increasingly multi-polar world, peace, development, and win-win cooperation remain the irreversible trends of the times.”"

"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away. They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25."

"Does the rampant commercialization of all aspects of American society, and much of academic life, matter for the purposes of the University, the fulfillment of our telos [ultimate object or aim]? I believe it does."

"The more the capitalist has accumulated, the more he is able to accumulate."

"For over a century the US has conducted an experiment in commercialized journalism by treating news as both a commodity and a public service."

"By reducing our movement for liberation to a system of commercial products and institutions—bars, publications, gyms, fashions, cruises, ... we become accomplices in an economic system that causes untold suffering for others. Not surprisingly, these others fail to see us as comrades in the struggle for justice."

"During the past decade there has been a rapid increase in the number of private providers of education in many developing countries, with many schools and educational establishments not being registered and being funded and managed by individual proprietors or enterprises... As a result, education is being commercialized and for-profit education is flourishing as an attractive business, with scant control by public authorities."

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it."

"The construction of a multipolar world...obviously means the defeat of Washington’s hegemonist project for military control of the planet. In my eyes it is an overweening project, criminal by its very nature, which is drawing the world into wars without end and stifling all hope of social and democratic advance, not only in the countries of the South but also, to a seemingly lesser degree, in those of the North."

"The hegemonist strategy of the United States, which operates within the framework of the new collective imperialism, seeks nothing less than to establish Washington’s military control over the entire planet. This is the means to ensure privileged access to all of the world’s natural resources, and to compel subaltern allies, Russia, China and the whole third world to swallow their status as vassals. Military control of the planet is the means to impose, as a last resort, the draining of ‘tribute’ through political violence – as a substitute for the ‘spontaneous’ flow of capital that offsets the American deficit, the Achilles heel of US hegemony."

"In order to protect its position as a valuable trade and security partner, the United States should find ways to reassure Asian countries that it continues to be invested in the security, stability, and prosperity of the region. Such reassurances must include a demonstrated willingness to respect and accommodate its partners, old and new. Even after hegemony, a global order, based on multilateral cooperation, can yield shared benefits for all its members, including the United States."

"We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people."

"The commercialization of computing in the 1970s and 1980s introduced a very different dynamic to software development. As software programming moved from universities to the marketplace, a closed, proprietary process arose. Yet lurking in the shadow of this mighty new industry, the free software movement has quietly persisted and grown..."

"Much of what ails our media system stems from its extreme commercialism. The always-controversial Trump was irresistible for ratings-driven news outlets, and their endless profit-seeking helped legitimize a dangerous politics... Media are beholden to their owners and to the advertisers who pay them."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."