Economics

"Even if the Democratic administration were resoundingly successful on all fronts, its initiatives would still be utterly insufficient to resolve the existential threat of climate breakdown and the devastation of our planet’s life-support systems. That’s because the multiple problems confronting us right now are symptoms of an even more profound problem: The underlying structure of a global economic and political system that is driving civilization toward a precipice... As long as government policies emphasize growth in gross domestic product and transnational corporations relentlessly pursue shareholder returns, we will continue accelerating toward global catastrophe... We need to forge a new era for humanity — one that is defined, at its deepest level, by a transformation in the way we make sense of the world, and a concomitant revolution in our values, goals, and collective behavior. In short, we need to change the basis of our global civilization. We must move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to one that is life-affirming: an ecological civilization..."

"We complain of the increased tempo of our lives, but our frenetic lives are just reflection of the economic system that we have created."

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

"The old economics is correct, of course, that competition plays a crucial role in how markets work, but what it fails to see is that it is largely a competition between highly cooperative groups -- competition between firms, competition between networks of firms, competition between nations -- and anyone who has ever run a successful business knows that building a cooperative team by including the talents of everyone is almost always a better strategy than just a bunch of selfish jerks. So how do we leave neoliberalism behind and build a more sustainable, more prosperous and more equitable society? The new economics suggests just five rules of thumb. First is that successful economies are not jungles, they're gardens, which is to say that markets, like gardens, must be tended, that the market is the greatest social technology ever invented for solving human problems, but unconstrained by social norms or democratic regulation, markets inevitably create more problems than they solve. Climate change, the great financial crisis of 2008 are two easy examples."

"In the infinitely complex economic system on which we rely for our daily bread, no productive function is more important than that of our business leaders. These men are charged with the responsibility of giving direction and unity to the efforts of the many who participate in economic activity. It is their job to make the plans and decisions which will transform economic effort into the particular goods and services wanted by a myriad of consumers. Conversely, it is their job also to translate consumers' needs into employment opportunities for labor and other economic resources"

"When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker."

"Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt. This could be accomplished, if we implement a resource-based economy."

"Inclusion creates economic growth. So the neoliberal idea that inclusion is this fancy luxury to be afforded if and when we have growth is both wrong and backwards. The economy is people. Including more people in more ways is what causes economic growth in market economies...The third principle is the purpose of the corporation is not merely to enrich shareholders. The greatest grift in contemporary economic life is the neoliberal idea that the only purpose of the corporation and the only responsibility of executives is to enrich themselves and shareholders. The new economics must and can insist that the purpose of the corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders: customers, workers, community and shareholders alike."

"I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognise from the beginning as of unequal value."

"So far we have studies how, for each commodity by itself, the law of demand in connection with the conditions of production of that commodity, determines the price of it and regulates the incomes of its producers. We considered as given and invariable the prices of other commodities and the incomes of other producers; but, in reality the economic system is a whole of which the parts are connected and react on each other. An increase in the incomes of the producers of commodity A will affect the demand for commodities Band C, etc., and the incomes of their producers, and, by its reaction will involve a change in the demand for A. It seems, therefore, as if, for a complete and rigorous solution of the problems relative to some parts of the economic system, it were indispensable to take the entire system into consideration. But this would surpass the powers of mathematical analysis and of our practical methods of calculation, even if the values of all the constants could be assigned to them numerically."

"The state of an economy is the resultant of real flows and money flows. The financial institutions operating through capital and money markets is institutional infrastructure. It lubricates the wheel of the economic system"

"The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors."

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

"There can be no peace in the world so long as a large proportion of the population lack the necessities of life and believe that a change of the political and economic system will make them available. World peace must be based on world plenty."

"(Capitalism is) an economic system based on private, rather than state, ownership of businesses, factories, transport services, etc, with free competition and profit-making."

"The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market."

"It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system."

"When Roosevelt came along, I approved of his program, generally. I figured an economic system should work for people, not vice versa."

"Although the term “Gross National Happiness” was first coined by the Fourth King of Bhutan the concept has a much longer resonance in the Kingdom of Bhutan. The 1729 legal code, which dates from the unification of Bhutan, declared that “if the Government can not create happiness (dekid) for its people, there is no purpose or the Government to exist"."

"Gross National Happiness’ is one of the most beautiful and inclusive expressions in the corpus of the 21st century sustainable development discourse. Today, GNH is more than a confluence of three loaded terms that define the vision of one country. It carries a meaning that is universal in scope and compelling in relevance."

"Bhutan measures prosperity by gauging its citizens' happiness levels, not the GDP. Now its ideas are attracting interest at the UN climate change conference in Doha."

"Since 1971, the country [Bhutan] has rejected GDP as the only way to measure progress. In its place, it has championed a new approach to development, which measures prosperity through formal principles of gross national happiness (GNH) and the spiritual, physical, social and environmental health of its citizens and natural environment."

"To help the government in its meaningful work to achieve Bhutan’s development goal of Gross National Happiness and to continue the development success the country has achieved so far, the Bhutan Foundation aligns its programs to support initiatives under all four pillars of GNH."

"The Gross National Happiness Index is often used by cities, campuses, communities, companies and other groups to assess their area or group's well-being."

"Our philosophical mission of maintaining GNH generates great interest, yet it creates more responsibility to us in Bhutan to ensure that we don’t lose that special and unique perspective for our country. So how does GNH translate to life in Bhutan? GNH comprises four pillars: Conservation of the Environment, Equitable and Sustainable Development, Good Governance, and Preservation of Culture."

"This remote kingdom, a place of ancient monasteries, fluttering prayer flags and staggering natural beauty. Less than 40 years ago, Bhutan opened its borders for the first time. Since then, it has gained an almost mythical status as a real-life Shangri-La, largely for its determined and methodical pursuit of the most elusive of concepts – national happiness."

"The pursuit of happiness is a deeply moral obligation, on both the personal and the national level... we have the right to pursue happiness. But we also have an ethical responsibility to exercise that right, and to guide our values, policies, and politics as a nation in a way that makes it possible for our fellow-citizens and those around the world to pursue happiness as well."

"The level and extent of global interest in Gross National Happiness in the wake of the General Assembly resolution and the Bhutan-sponsored High Level Meeting at the UN Headquarters in New York on April 2, 2012 have been truly astounding and inspiring as well as deeply humbling. Some of the finest minds in the world today are engaged in exploring and understanding the scope and sweep of this revolutionary ideal of human well-being and societal progress."

"Today, there is an increasing need for an integrated solution to problems and GNH provides a systematic approach. In a world drenched with materialism, the human heart yearns for something beyond material possessions, and that is one of the reasons that GNH is attracting so many people."

"Gross National Happiness is a function of personal decisions and individual actions as surely as little drops of water make the mighty ocean. Gross National Happiness is more than an antidote to Gross National Product. It is an anodyne that can heal the wounds of our ailing planet and still the tooth that nibbles at the soul."

"To begin with, Gross Domestic Product excludes a great deal of production that has economic value. Neither volunteer work nor unpaid domestic services (housework, child rearing, do-it-yourself home improvement) make it into the accounts, and our standard of living, our general level of economic well-being, benefits mightily from both. Nor does it include the huge economic benefit that we get directly, outside of any market, from nature. A mundane example: If you let the sun dry your clothes, the service is free and doesn’t show up in our domestic product; if you throw your laundry in the dryer, you burn fossil fuel, increase your carbon footprint, make the economy more unsustainable — and give G.D.P. a bit of a bump."

"Several alternatives to Gross Domestic Product have been proposed, and each tackles the central problem of placing a value on goods and services that never had a dollar price. The alternatives are controversial, because that kind of valuation creates room for subjectivity – for the expression of personal values, of ideology and political belief....It’s admittedly difficult to set a dollar price on such things – but this is no reason to set that price at zero, as gross domestic product currently does"

"Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G.D.P. is one measure of national income, of how much wealth Americans make, and it’s a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing. It ought to join buggy."

"We are consuming the past, present, and future of this biosphere, our only home, in an unthinking rush for profits and GDP that we call 'progress', belying our species name homo sapiens."

"Economics also succeeded in grafting onto the countries of the third world impressive theories and isolated important concepts such as gross national product, gross domestic product, and income per capita. These concepts served as building blocks with which economics constructed elaborate and impressive theories of development, including formula for predicting the rate of economic development of a given nation. According to economics, gross national product (GNP) is the total value of goods and services produced by a given country during a specified time period, such as a year. Gross domestic product (GDP), on the other hand, is gross national product minus the net income the nation earned abroad."

"For 60 years Gross Domestic Product, or GDP for short, has been the yardstick by which the world has measured and understood economic and social progress. However, it has failed to capture some of the factors that make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to their happiness, such as security, leisure,income distribution and a clean environment–including the kinds of factors which growth itself needs to be sustainable."

"It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don't riot when oil prices rise. But the problem with cheap, subsidized fuel is that it creates more demand, and thus costs the governments more money. Countries like Iran, Yemen, Colombia, and Nigeria could go broke if they keep providing cheap gas to keep people happy."

"India needs to be liberated both from the 'high GDP growth hedgehogs' and the 'conservation at all costs hedgehogs.'"

"The way in which economists incorporate inequality into their analyses can have a significant impact on their policy recommendations. If all costs are evaluated in dollars, a loss of, say, 10% of GDP in a poor country is likely to be much less than a loss of 3% of GDP in a rich country. Thus the damages from climate change in poor countries, which may be large as a percentage of GDP, would receive relatively little weight because the losses are relatively small in dollar terms... Stern estimates that, without the effects of inequity, the costs of a BAU scenario will be 11-14% of global GDP. Weighing the impacts on the world’s poor more heavily gives a cost estimate of 20% of global GDP."

"Basically, GDP is a concept of value added. It is the sum of gross value added of all resident producer units (institutional sectors or, alternatively, industries) plus that part (possibly the total) of taxes, less subsidies, on products which is not included in the valuation of output. Gross value added is the difference between output and intermediate consumption."

"Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessities of life; which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another."

"We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is humankind's collective GDP."

"I define it, I think we're in a recession until real per capita GDP gets back up to where it was before. That is not the way the National Bureau of Economic Research measures it. But I will tell you that to any, on any common sense definition, the average American is below where he was before, or his family, in terms of real income, GDP. We're still in a recession. And, and we're not gonna be out of it for awhile, but we will get out of it."

"Veronica: Another thing girls love are Jimmy Choos, Dolce & Gabbana, and convertibles that cost more than the gross national product of Sri Lanka."

"But, but I mean, we've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's nine percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. I mean, that is more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II."

"Economics also succeeded in grafting onto the countries of the third world impressive theories and isolated important concepts such as gross national product, gross domestic product, and income per capita. These concepts served as building blocks with which economics constructed elaborate and impressive theories of development, including formula for predicting the rate of economic development of a given nation. According to economics, gross national product (GNP) is the total value of goods and services produced by a given country during a specified time period, such as a year. Gross domestic product (GDP), on the other hand, is gross national product minus the net income the nation earned abroad."

"Government [the US] is taking 40 percent of the GDP. And that's at the state, local and federal level. President Obama has taken government spending at the federal level from 20 percent to 25 percent. Look, at some point, you cease being a free economy, and you become a government economy. And we've got to stop that."

"The dominant role played by... exporters’ and importers’ GNP and distance in explaining trade flows."

"Dorian Tyrell: Okay, Twinkle-Toes, I want to know where my money is and I want to know right now!"

"I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it."