economy-of-the-united-states

"The parties in So. C. [South Carolina] are arming on both sides, & drilling in the night, & I expect soon to hear that a civil war of extermination has commenced. I will meet all things with deliberate firmness & forbearence, but wo, to those nullifiers who shed the first blood. The moment I am prepared with proof I will direct prosecutions for treason to be instituted against the leaders, and if they are surrounded with 12,000 bayonets our marshall shall be aided by 24,000 & arrest them in the midst thereof—nothing must be permitted to weaken our government at home or abroad."

"Why Yankee land is at a stand, And all in consternation; For in the South they make a rout, And all about Nullification. Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo, Yankee doodle dandy, Our foes are few our hearts are true, And Jackson is quite handy.Those Southern knaves are blustering blades, Their cash they think is handy, But we of the North are the right sort, And the Union is the dandy Sing Yankee doodle doodle doo, Yankee doodle dandy, Stand to your arms nor fear alarms, Just play Yankee doodle dandy."

"Sir, if a Confederacy of the Southern States could now be obtained, should we not deem it a happy termination—happy beyond expectation, of our long struggle for our rights against oppression? I fear that there is no longer hope or liberty for the South, under a Union, by which all self-government is taken away. A people, owning slaves, are mad, or worse than mad, who do not hold their destinies in their own hands. Do we not bear the insolent assumption by our rulers, that slave labour shall not come into competition with free? Nor is it our northern brethren alone—the whole world are in arms against your institutions. Every stride of this Government, over your rights, brings it nearer and nearer to your peculiar policy; and even now, it stands, with the Bill of Blood in one hand, and the Sword in the other, and Carolina must bow her dishonoured head, and breathe forth the slavish or hypocritical profession of "ardently attached to the Union of these States." Sir, let slaves adore and love a despotism—it is the part of freemen to detest and to resist it."

"The rich inheritance bequeathed by our fathers has devolved upon us the sacred obligation of preserving it by the same virtues which conducted them through the eventful scenes of the Revolution and ultimately crowned their struggle with the noblest model of civil institutions. They bequeathed to us a Government of laws and a Federal Union founded upon the great principle of popular representation. After a successful experiment of forty-four years, at a moment when the Government and the Union are the objects of the hopes of the friends of civil liberty throughout the world, and in the midst of public and individual prosperity unexampled in history, we are called to decide whether these laws possess any force and that Union the means of self-preservation. The decision of this question by an enlightened and patriotic people can not be doubtful. For myself, fellow-citizens, devoutly relying upon that kind Providence which has hitherto watched over our destinies, and actuated by a profound reverence for those institutions I have so much cause to love, and for the American people, whose partiality honored me with their highest trust, I have determined to spare no effort to discharge the duty which in this conjuncture is devolved upon me."

"And we, the people of South Carolina, to the end that it may be fully understood by the government of the United States, and the people of the co-States, that we are determined to maintain this our ordinance and declaration, at every hazard, do further declare that we will not submit to the application of force on the part of the federal government, to reduce this State to obedience; but that we will consider the passage, by Congress, of any act authorizing the employment of a military or naval force against the State of South Carolina, her constitutional authorities or citizens; or any act abolishing or closing the ports of this State, or any of them, or otherwise obstructing the free ingress and egress of vessels to and from the said ports, or any other act on the part of the federal government, to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce or to enforce the acts hereby declared to be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union; and that the people of this State will henceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States; and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do."

"To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure."

"I consider the tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick [sic] institution of the Southern States and the consequent direction which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union, against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states they must in the end be forced to rebel, or, submit it to have their paramount interests sacrifices, their domestick [sic] institutions subordinated by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves and children reduced to wretchedness. Thus situated, the denial of the right of the State to interpose constitutionally in the last resort, more alarms the thinking, than all the other causes; and however strange it may appear, the more universally the state is condemned, and her right denied, the more resolute she is to assert her constitutional powers lest the neglect to assert should be considered a practical abandonment of them, under such circumstances."

"The southern people have a right to complain of the tariff in that I join them—it is a foolish as well as an unjust policy. But has a child son a right to cut his mothers [sic] throat to rip open the womb which conceived him—because his mother may have exhibited a momentary partiality for his brothers, especially when that mother shows a sense of her injustice and is endeavouring to readjust the balance of her affections. The failure of the Nullifiers will cover them with confusion and popular odium—but their success would consign them to eternal infamy and endless execration. Forgive the earnestness of my language—but this nullification is a cancer in my heart, & I believe in that of every Citizen of the U. States who finds himself absent from that dear Country. I cannot sleep for it—and I sometimes think of going home immediately—for if there should be a civil contest I should feel myself bound in honour to take my part in all its melancholy horrors[.]"

"The United States of America and the people of every State of which they are composed are each of them sovereign powers. The legislative authority of the whole is exercised by Congress under authority granted them in the common Constitution. The legislative power of each State is exercised by assemblies deriving their authority from the constitution of the State. Each is sovereign within its own province. The distribution of power between them presupposes that these authorities will move in harmony with each other. The members of the State and General Governments are all under oath to support both, and allegiance is due to the one and to the other. The case of a conflict between these two powers has not been supposed, nor has any provision been made for it in our institutions; as a virtuous nation of ancient times existed more than five centuries without a law for the punishment of patricide."

"If it be conceded, as it must by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign power is divided between the states and general government, and that the former holds its reserved rights, in the same high sovereign capacity, which the latter does its delegated rights; it will be impossible to deny to the states the right of deciding on the infraction of their rights, and the proper remedy to be applied for the correction. The right of judging, in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty of which the states cannot be divested, without losing their sovereignty itself; and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. In fact, to divide power, and to give to one of the parties the exclusive right of judging of the portion allotted to each, is in reality not to divide at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the general government, (it matters not by what department it be exercised,) is in fact to constitute it one great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to reduce the states to mere corporations."

"She [South Carolina] cannot bring herself to believe, that standing as she does on the basis of the constitution, and the immutable principles of truth and justice, any attempt will be made by her confederate States, and least of all by the Government which they have created, for special purposes, to reduce her to subjection by military force. A confederacy of sovereign states, formed by the free consent of all, cannot possibly be held together, by any other tie than mutual sympathies and common interest. The unhallowed attempt to cement the union with the blood of our citizens, (which if successful would reduce the free and sovereign States of this confederacy to mere dependent provinces) South Carolina has solemnly declared, would be regarded by her, as absolving her "from all further obligation to maintain or preserve her political connexion with the people of the other States.""

"[T]he tariff was only the pretext and disunion & a southern confederacy the real object—the next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question."

"Should the nullifiers succeed in their views of separation, and the Union be in consequence dissolved, the following will be an appropriate epitaph. [...] HERE, To the ineffable joy of the Despots, and Friends of Despotism, throughout the world, and the universal distress and mortification of the noblest fabric of Government, ever devised by man, The Constitution of the United States. The fatal result of its dissolution was chiefly produced, by the unceasing efforts of some of the most highly gifted men in the U. S. whose labours, for a series of years have had this sinister tendency, by the most exaggerated statements of the distress and sufferings of South Carolina, (unjustly ascribed to the tariffs of duties on imports) which, whatever they were, arose from the blighting, blasting, withering effects of SLAVERY; together with the depreciation of the great Staple of the State, : caused, in a great degree, by the depression of the Manufactures of the country, in 1816, 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820 & 1821, for want of protection of the government, WITHHELD BY THE MISERABLE TARIFF OF 1816: which overspread the land with distress, and wretchedness, and bankruptcy; and produced in three years more decay and ruin of national prosperity, than a war of equal duration would have done."

"Resolved, That whilst this Convention as an offering to the peace and harmony of this Union, in a just regard to the interposition of the highly patriotic Commonwealth of Virginia, and with a proper deference to the united vote of the whole Southern States in favor of the recent accommodation of the tariff, has made the late modification of the tariff, approved by the act of Congress of the 2nd March, 1833, the basis of the repeal of her Ordinance of the 24th November, 1832—Yet this Convention owes it to itself, to the people they represent, and the posterity of that people, to declare that they do not, by reason of said repeal, acquiesce in the principle of the substantive power existing on the part of Congress to protect domestic mannfactures [sic]: and hence, on the final adjustment in 1842, of the reductions, under the act of the 2nd March, 1833, or any previous period, should odious discriminations be instituted for the purpose of continuing in force the protective principle, South Carolina will feel herself free to resist such a violation of what she conceives to be the good faith of the act of the 2nd March, 1833, by the interposition of her sovereignty, or in any other mode she may deem proper."

"Was this to be permitted the Government would loose [sic] the confidence of its citizens & it would induce disunion every where[.] No my friend, the crisis must be now met with firmness, our citizens protected, & the modern doctrine of nullification & secession put down forever—for we have yet to learn, whether some of the eastern states may not secede or nullify, if the tariff is reduced. I have to look at both ends of the union to preserve it."

"But it is understood that the nullifying doctrine imports that the decision of the State is to be presumed valid, and that it overrules the law of the United States, unless overruled by three fourths of the States.Can more be necessary to demonstrate the inadmissibility of such a doctrine, than that it puts it in the power of the smallest fraction over one fourth of the United States, that is, of seven states out of twenty four, to give the law, and even the Constitution to seventeen States; each of the seventeen having as parties to the Constitution, an equal right with each of the seven, to expound it, and to insist on the exposition. That the seven might, in particular instances be right, and the seventeen wrong, is more than possible. But to establish a positive and permanent rule giving such a power, to such a minority, over such a majority, would overturn the first principle of free government, and in practice necessarily overturn the government itself.It is to be recollected that the Constitution was proposed to the people of the States as a whole, and unanimously adopted by the States as a whole, it being a part of the Constitution that not less than three fourths of the States should be competent to make any alteration in what had been unanimously agreed to."

"Were we mistaken, my countrymen, in attaching this importance to the Constitution of our country? Was our devotion paid to the wretched, inefficient, clumsy contrivance, which this new doctrine would make it? Did we pledge ourselves to the support of an airy nothing—a bubble that must be blown away by the first breath of disaffection? Was this self-destroying, visionary theory the work of the profound statesmen, the exalted patriots, to whom the task of constitutional reform was intrusted? Did the name of Washington sanction, did the States deliberately ratify, such an anomaly in the history of fundamental legislation? No. We were not mistaken. The letter of this great instrument is free from this radical fault; its language directly contradicts the imputation; its spirit, its evident intent, contradicts it. No, we did not err. Our Constitution does not contain the absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist them. The sages, whose memory will always be reverenced, have given us a practical, and, as they hoped, a permanent constitutional compact."

"The bipartisan commitment to funding USAGM reflects continued congressional support for America’s role in promoting the free flow of news and information abroad, a long-standing foundation of its soft power around the world. Congress’s funding proposal comes after a dire year for USAGM. Trump signed an executive order in March calling for the dismantlement of the government agency, which oversees Voice of America and funds nonprofit groups including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. To carry out the order, Lake placed more than 1,300 Voice of America staffers on paid administrative leave — many of whom are still not working — and halted broadcasting operations the same month. It was the first time VOA went dark since it was first set up in 1942 to combat Nazi propaganda. In response, VOA’s director, Michael Abramowitz, and a separate group of USAGM staffers sued the Trump administration, arguing that its actions were illegal. Lake, a former Arizona television anchor who lost high-profile races for governor and U.S. Senate in recent years, has defended the cuts and called for the agency’s eventual elimination. She told Congress in a June hearing that USAGM was “incompetent, corrupt, biased, and a threat to America’s national security and standing in the world.” She has also said USAGM is “not salvageable.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment."

"Anytime the EPA wants to issue a new regulation — say, revising how much mercury a power plant is allowed to emit — it looks at both the costs and the benefits before finalizing the rule. The EPA adds up how much companies would likely have to spend on things like installing upgraded scrubbers in smokestacks. Then the agency estimates the economic benefit of imposing the regulation, such as more days with cleaner air or fewer workers calling out sick. The biggest benefits usually come from improving health through things like avoiding hospital visits and reducing early deaths. There is some fuzziness in the numbers on both sides of the ledger though. If a bunch of companies turn to a handful of suppliers for pollution control equipment, that could drive up compliance costs. And how exactly do you price a hypothetical emergency room trip that didn’t happen? “In my experience at EPA, there’s never a perfect estimate of costs or benefits,” McCabe said. Yet even with imperfect calculations, regulators could get a decent sense of whether the juice was worth the squeeze when it comes to a new pollution standard, and the public would get a window into how the decision was made. Under the Biden administration, the EPA found that enforcing the more stringent PM2.5 regulations it issued in 2024 would add up to $46 billion in health benefits by 2032, vastly more than the cost of complying with the rule. The EPA now effectively wants to put receipts from the benefits side of the ledger through the shredder."

"A new Gallup poll showed that just 33 percent of Americans are satisfied with the nation's position in the world today. This is down from 65 percent in 2000. As Donald Trump and Joe Biden—two historically old and deeply unpopular presidential candidates—square off yet again for America's top job, it's not hard to understand these sentiments. America is in decline in the 21st century in measure after measure, from numerous public-policy failures, to increasingly dysfunctional politics, to an epidemic of mental health issues among young people. This predicament raises two essential questions: Is America's downturn merely another dip in a long arc of non-linear, yet essentially upward, progress? Or is it, rather, the first phase of steep and irreversible national decline? The answer lies with the American people. Like all nations, America is, above all, the hearts and minds of its people. And the trend line is moving hard in the wrong direction: Things are getting worse, not better. Tribalism is intensifying. Social-media platforms are getting smarter at manipulating human cognition. The political system's defects are worsening. And America's public-policy failures are deepening."

"The Environmental Protection Agency is taking a major step toward changing its math to favor polluters over people: It’s going to stop tallying up the dollar value of lives saved and hospital visits avoided by air pollution regulations. Instead, the agency will consider the effects of regulations without attaching a price tag to human life. In particular, the EPA is changing how it conducts the cost-benefit analysis of regulations for two major pollutants, fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns — usually referred to as PM2.5 — and ozone. The change was buried in a document published this month analyzing the economic impacts of final pollution regulations for power plants, arguing that the way the EPA historically calculated the economic benefits of regulations had too much uncertainty and gave people “a false sense of precision.” So to fix this, the EPA will stop tabulating the benefits altogether “until the Agency is confident enough in the modeling to properly monetize those impacts.” The news was first reported by the New York Times. On X, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin pushed back on the reporting, calling it “another dishonest, fake news claim” and that the agency is still considering lives saved when setting pollution limits."

"The U.S. experienced negative net migration in 2025 for the first time in at least half a century as a result of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, according to a report released Tuesday by the Brookings Institution. Although the administration has undertaken aggressive removal efforts, the negative number is mostly due to a significant drop in entries into the U.S., the report said. "We estimate net flows of -295,000 to -10,000 for the year," the Brookings study stated. "Though a high degree of policy uncertainty remains, continued negative net migration for 2026 is also likely." The report attributed the shift to combination of the large drop in entries and an increase in enforcement activity leading to removals and voluntary departures. The Trump administration's suspension of many humanitarian programs -- including most refugee programs with the exception of those involving white South Africans -- and a decline in temporary visas also contributed to the negative net migration, the report said. The report's authors estimate there were between 310,000 and 315,000 removals in 2025, a figure lower than what the administration has claimed. Department of Homeland Security officials claim that, so far, more than 600,000 people have been removed during the crackdown. "At 310,000 to 315,000, the 2025 removals are not much higher than the 2024 removals of around 285,000," the report states."

"I spoke with several experts, including former EPA officials, and in fact, the change could lead to worsening air quality and harm public health. The EPA exists to regulate pollution that harms people, and when it comes to things like ozone and tiny particles, there is robust evidence of the damage they can do, contributing to heart attacks and asthma attacks. Measured over populations, air pollution takes years off of people’s lives. Every year in the United States alone, air pollution pushes 135,000 people into early graves. “There is a lot of science that shows very clearly that being exposed to increasing levels of PM2.5 has significant health impacts,” said Janet McCabe, who served as the EPA’s deputy administrator under President Joe Biden."

"As former United States CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a September 2023 Foreign Affairs essay, The Dysfunctional Superpower, geopolitical threats to America are multiplying: "The United States finds itself in a uniquely treacherous position: facing aggressive adversaries with a propensity to miscalculate yet incapable of mustering the unity and strength necessary to dissuade them." According to Gates, "The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own. Not since the Korean War has the United States had to contend with powerful military rivals in both Europe and Asia." But it's not just America's biggest rivals that matter. Within a few decades it's likely that even small countries will have military capacities that in key respects exceed those of the superpowers today. Given the dominance and cohesion of America's military, another civil war is highly unlikely. The worst-case scenario arising from America's dysfunction isn't domestic mismanagement; it's foreign policy miscalculation."

"Experts sounded a dire alarm after the Trump administration pulled the plug on nearly $2 billion in substance abuse and mental health funding, leaving thousands of providers scrambling and patients in a lurch. Up to 2,800 grantees through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration received termination letters immediately — wiping out about 26% of the agency's entire budget with zero warning, The Guardian reported Wednesday. “It feels like Armageddon for everyone who’s on the frontlines of the addiction and mental health space,” Ryan Hampton, founder of Mobilize Recovery, a national advocacy organization for people in and seeking recovery, told the outlet. “The scope of care that’s disrupted by these grants is catastrophic. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will die.”"

"Providers awoke to devastation that they'd be forced to conduct staff layoffs, program shutdowns, and that services would be halted immediately. The cuts axe overdose prevention, naloxone distribution, school mental health support, and help for pregnant women struggling with substance abuse. “Overnight, our entire backbone and infrastructure of addiction and mental health in this country flipped up on its head,” Hampton said. “These grants are lifesaving tools that honestly are a good reason why we have started to see a reversal in trends of drug overdoses in this country.” The move comes as overdose deaths finally dropped 27% in 2024 after two decades of climbing rates. "All of us are in a state of complete and utter shock that the administration would take such a reckless action," Hampton said. Legal challenges loom, but Hampton warned the damage is happening now. "People will die. People will die.""

"The remedies are easy to prescribe. We must improve civic education in schools, raise awareness about cognitive biases throughout society, spend more time with people from other political tribes, reduce and regulate the use of social media, rework the political structure to foster more political parties and equal representation, double down on free speech, feverishly guard election integrity, and support a new Republican champion other than Donald Trump. Yet in practice these goals have been impossible to achieve. Two broad and overlapping global trends will only make reversing the free-fall harder as the 21st century marches on. First, technology is getting more sophisticated—at a dizzying pace. The positives are huge. The internet democratizes education. Streaming innovations like Netflix enrich entertainment. New products like self-driving cars revolutionize transportation. Highly sophisticated research dramatically improves medicine. Pioneering technologies substantially broaden the distribution of necessities like food and clothing."

"This change in math is part of a broader pattern at the EPA — and across the federal government — of just measuring and counting fewer things under the second Trump Administration. The EPA has already closed its Office of Research and Development, which was meant to provide the scientific basis for environmental regulations, like tracking the effects of toxic chemicals on the human body. With less data on science and economics, agencies like the EPA have less accountability for their actions as they face more pressure from the White House to cut regulations and craft policies benefiting politically favored industries. It also sets the stage for taking the teeth out of other regulations, like the Clean Air Act. The EPA has already dismantled its legal foundation for addressing climate change. Joseph Goffman, who served as assistant administrator of the EPA’s air and radiation office under Biden, said this change in how the EPA calculates health benefits is part of a broader campaign against air pollution regulations. “It really illustrates what the ulterior motive is and that is to mute or mask the true impact of [particulate matter] exposure and the huge benefits that flow from reducing it,” Goffman said. “Suddenly deciding that you can’t ascribe a dollar value to reducing PM really is convenient to the point of being instrumental to Zeldin’s efforts to weaken PM standards.” If the EPA never comes up with a new way to monetize the health benefits of regulations, it’s likely that improvements in air quality will stall, and air pollution could get worse. “One would anticipate that we could see PM 2.5 levels rising across the country,” Hasenkopf said."

"Unlike in 2024, most removals in 2025 were initiated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection from the country's interior, the report said, as opposed to being initiated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- despite the actions of some ICE officers dominating many news headlines. A spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CPB and ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News. The report's authors also predicted removals will increase in 2026 with funding from President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the report said will "likely allow for increased infrastructure and staffing to achieve a higher level of enforcement." According to the report, authorities also predict the net migration loss will see certain sectors of the economy experience "unexpectedly weak economic activity," specifically businesses that serve affected immigrant populations. "The slowdown implies weaker employment, GDP, and consumer spending growth," the report states, adding that consumer spending is expected to fall by between $60 billion and $110 billion over 2025 and 2026."

"Lawmakers from both parties and houses of Congress have agreed to provide about $653 million to fund Voice of America’s parent agency, rejecting President Donald Trump’s demand to defund the international broadcaster and shut it down. A bipartisan spending bill released Sunday would allocate $643 million for broadcasting from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, plus nearly $10 million for capital improvements. That figure is down from the $867 million appropriated for the agency each of the past two years, but it’s more than four times the $153 million Trump requested that Congress provide to “support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations.” The outlay is included in a broader bipartisan spending deal negotiated by House and Senate appropriators. The package still requires House and Senate approval before heading to Trump’s desk. “We understand the realities of the appropriations process, but I am disappointed that Congress is proposing half a billion dollars more in funding than we requested,” Kari Lake, the deputy CEO installed by Trump to shut down the agency, wrote in a statement Monday. “While reductions from prior years are a step in the right direction, USAGM can still advance President Trump’s message and share America’s story globally without wasting so much taxpayer money.”"

"These dynamics establish a striking truism that looms over humanity: The world's pre-eminent democracy and most powerful nation is in decline precisely when the challenges faced by the world are mounting and its need for rational leadership has never been more urgent. Somewhere beneath the thickening surface of tribal bedlam and political fervor, however, is still a core national impulse to confront and overcome big challenges. The question is how strong that impulse remains. The French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in 1831 and 1832. A close observer of human behavior, de Tocqueville traveled across the country taking copious notes on what he saw. His book, Democracy in America, is a classic text in political science. And he's been revered for capturing the true essence of America like few others have, either before or since. Perhaps de Tocqueville's most profound insight was that the "greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults." Twenty-first century America is putting this thesis through a searing test. Our nation is in decline—and the world will find out, soon enough, whether or not de Tocqueville's insight is still true."

"Europe’s once formidable industrial base has eroded in large part due to the ever rising burden of regulation. Germany’s economy, the most powerful economy in the EU, is barely the size of that of California."

"The struggle for employment has had a drastic effect on the black community. It perpetuates the breakdown of the black family structure. Many men who are unable to find employment leave their homes so that their wives can qualify for Aid to Dependent Children or welfare. Children growing up in a welfare situation often leave school because of a lack of incentive or because they do not have enough food to eat or clothes to wear. They in turn go out to seek jobs but only find a more negative situation than their fathers faced. So they turn to petty crime, pushing dope, prostitution (joining the Army if possible), and the cycle continues."

"The proposal includes a 3% surcharge on individual income above $5 million and a capital gains tax of 25%."

"Well, that’s the ordinary income. These great fortunes were not made through ordinary incomes. So you probably have to look to the capital gains rate and the estate tax if you want to, you know, create more equity there."

"I changed my mind about living here [won't cut it]"

"Next year, all my capital gains may be subject to a 25% cap gains rate"

"On Christmas Eve, two FBI agents arrived at Olden Manor and seized control of Oppenheimer's remaining classified papers. That same day, Oppenheimer received the AEC's letter of formal charges, dated December 23, 1953. ... The inclusion of Oppenheimer's opposition to the Super reflected the depth of McCarthyite hysteria that had enveloped Washington. Equating dissent with disloyalty, it redefined the role of government advisers and the very purpose of advice. The AEC's charges were not the kind of narrowly crafted indictment likely to bring conviction in a court of law. This was, rather, a political indictment and Oppenheimer would be judged by an AEC review panel appointed by the chairman of the AEC, Lewis L. Strauss."

"The US Atomic Energy Commission, created by Congress in 1946, grew into a uniquely powerful, mission-oriented bureaucracy. One of its main goals was the creation of a flourishing commercial nuclear power program. By the late 1950s, the AEC began to acquire frightening data about the potential hazards of nuclear technology. It decided, nevertheless, to push ahead with ambitious plans to make nuclear energy the dominant source of the nation's electric power by the end of the century. The AEC proceeded to authorize the construction of larger and larger nuclear reactors all around the country, the dangers notwithstanding. The AEC gambled that its scientists would, in time, find deft solutions to all the complex safety difficulties."

"Now, six years after the Commission had assumed responsibility for the nation's atomic energy commission, industry was becoming restive over the delay in realizing the commercial applications of nuclear power. While most of the nation was preoccupied with the election campaign during autumn 1952, a clamor for a greater role in the development of atomic energy was rising among power equipment manufacturers and the electric utility industry."

"The factory farm industry and its armies of lobbyists wield great influence in the halls of federal and state power, while animal rights activists wield virtually none. This imbalance has produced increasingly oppressive laws, accompanied by massive law enforcement resources devoted to punishing animal activists even for the most inconsequential nonviolent infractions — as the FBI search warrant and raid in search of “Lucy and Ethel” illustrates. The , of course, has always protected and served the interests of industry. Beginning when most of the nation was fed by small farms, federal agencies have been particularly protective of [[w:Agriculture in the United States|agricultural] industry. That loyalty has only intensified as family farms have nearly disappeared, replaced by industrial factory farms where animals are viewed purely as commodities, instruments for profit, and treated with unconstrained cruelty. [...] Though it receives modest attention, this revolving door spins faster, and in more blatantly sleazy ways, when it comes to the USDA and its mandate to safeguard animal welfare. The USDA is typically dominated by executives from the very factory farm industries that are most in need of vibrant regulation. For that reason, animal welfare laws are woefully inadequate, but the ways in which they are enforced is typically little more than a bad joke. Industrial farming corporations like Smithfield know they can get away with any abuse or “mislabeling” deceit (such as misleading claims about their treatment of animals) because the officials who have been vested with the sole authority to enforce these laws — federal USDA officials — are so captive to their industry. Courts have repeatedly ruled that private individuals, animal rights groups, and even state authorities have no right to sue to enforce animal welfare laws, because the “exclusive authority” lies with the U.S. government, which has no real interest in actually enforcing those laws. [...] In sum, with industry insiders dominating the sole agency (USDA) with the authority to regulate factory farms, animals that are captive, abused, tortured, and slaughtered en masse have little chance, even when it comes to just applying existing laws with a minimal amount of diligence. The politics of the U.S. — including the fact that a key farm state, Iowa, plays such a central role in presidential elections — means there are massive forces arrayed behind factory farms, and very few in support of animal welfare."

"As institutions influence behavior and incentives in real life, they forge the success or failure of nations. Individual talent matters at every level of society, but even that needs an institutional framework to transform it into a positive force. Bill Gates, like other legendary figures in the information technology industry (such as Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos), had immense talent and ambition. But he ultimately responded to incentives. The schooling system in the United States enabled Gates and others like him to acquire a unique set of skills to complement their talents. The economic institutions in the United States enabled these men to start companies with ease, without facing insurmountable barriers. Those institutions also made the financing of their projects feasible. The U.S. labor markets enabled them to hire qualified personnel, and the relatively competitive market environment enabled them to expand their companies and market their products. These entrepreneurs were confident from the beginning that their dream projects could be implemented: they trusted the institutions and the rule of law that these generated and they did not worry about the security of their property rights. Finally, the political institutions ensured stability and continuity. For one thing, they made sure that there was no risk of a dictator taking power and changing the rules of the game, expropriating their wealth, imprisoning them, or threatening their lives and livelihoods. They also made sure that no particular interest in society could warp the government in an economically disastrous direction, because political power was both limited and distributed sufficiently broadly that a set of economic institutions that created the incentives for prosperity could emerge."

"In the United States (and to a lesser degree, in most of the advanced world) money is an economic good. Something that has value in and of itself, and so it should be applied with a degree of forethought for how efficiently it can be mobilized. This is why banks require collateral and/or business plans before they’ll fund loans."

"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?"

"We in America reject planning except for the private sector of the economy, so what we have is democratic socialization for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor."

"What the immigrant cannot help noticing is that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, "People Like Us", which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have television sets and microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception of America that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America"? He replied, "Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.""

"Only during two periods since 1776 has the government mostly left the economy alone: during the early years of the federal republic; and in the two decades previous to the Civil War. The political economist Condy Raguet called the first period of economic freedom, from 1783 to 1807, "the golden age" of the republic: Trade was free, taxes were low, money was sound, and Americans enjoyed more economic freedom than any other people in the world. Sumner thought the years from 1846 to 1860—the era of the independent treasury, falling tariffs, and gold money—was the true "golden age.""

"“This is just a huge economic fact that lies behind a lot of this sense of cultural dislocation among men, this sense of not really knowing whether you are going to be needed, or feeling like you’re failing against the standard that was set 50 years ago about the position of men and women in the labor market,” said Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, which he founded to study the unique problems males face. Reeves said his research indicates that a sense of economic and social dislocation could also be contributing to higher suicide rates among young men and wider substance abuse. “It’s a very, very difficult and painful transition right now between some of the cultural expectations we have about the role of men and the economic reality on the ground,” he said."

"The U.S. economy was organized differently from the New Deal until 1973. As incomplete, uneven, and racist as it was, social welfare and public housing worked to ameliorate the grossest injustices of the capitalist system. Capitalism was organized in a way that was less mean than it is now. The world can be organized such that it doesn’t simultaneously produce the people we call and the thinking that we have to get rid of them."

"The blood, sweat, tears, and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down. The immediate result of this destruction will be suffering and bloodshed. But the end result will be perpetual peace for all mankind."