Economists From Canada

"The budget targets imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions, combined with the effects of the devaluation, trigger the collapse of public investment."

"Macro-economic reform undermined the legal economy, reinforced illicit trade and contributed to the recycling of "dirty money" towards Peru's official and commercial creditors."

"The collapse of the standard of living, engineered as result of macro-economic policy, is without precedent in Russian history: " We had more to eat during the Second World War.""

"Indeed, if communist central planners could have organized the economy with as much detail, precision, and flexibility as a modern-day Toyota or Wal-Mart, communism would probably still exist!"

"The problem is not scarcity; the problem is power."

"Try this: say the words "global, global, global" aloud several times, as fast as you can. You'll find yourself sounding like a turkey ("gobble, gobble, gobble")."

"The only factor that poses a genuine challenge to the current order is the willingness of human beings to reject the injustice and irrationality of this economy, and stand up for something better. Capitalism will not fall-rather, it must be pushed."

"This relationship is the foundation for the argument, made by some trade unionists and labour advocates, that high wages can actually be "good for business". The precedent set by Henry Ford in 1914, who offered workers $5.00 per day (a very high wage at the time) so they could afford to buy the same cars they made, is often invoked."

"We know that investment causes growth. But it is also true that growth causes investment."

"One of the glaring failures of capitalism is the continuing widespread existence of poverty - often extreme poverty. Even in the advanced economies, many millions of people endure terrible economic and social deprivation, despite the incredible wealth all around them."

"Like a forensic accountant trying to solve a corporate fraud, following the trail of money around the circle is a good way to understand what actually happens as capitalism unfolds."

"Apart from their work and production, households perform other important economic functions. Most CONSUMPTION occurs within the household. … In developed capitalist economies, private consumption spending accounts for half or more of GDP."

"Competition-ruthless, unforgiving, to-the-death competition-is a crucial feature of capitalism."

"Growth can also involve producing services instead of goods. In particular, a major expansion of public and caring services (like child care, education, elder care, and other life-affirming programs) would generate huge increases in GDP and incomes, with virtually no impact on the environment."

"Proving that profit is economically and morally justifiable, rather then the result of exploitation, has been a central preoccupation of neoclassical economists."

"Economic systems come, and economic systems go. No economic system lasts forever. Capitalism is not likely to last forever, either."

"With joint-stock corporations, investors can place bets on the success of many different companies, without having to play a central management role in any one of them. This allows investors to diversify their financial holdings. It also allows them to capture profits on their investments, without having to get involved in the dirty, troublesome business of actually running a company."

"Economics is a social science, not a physical science."

"Forget about the market updates. Here's a better way to find out about the economy-your economy. Take a walk. And ask some questions."

"Capitalism, in contrast, has existed for fewer than 300 years. If the entire history of Homo sapiens was a 24-hour day, then capitalism has existed for two minutes."

"Employers crave the power to fire workers whose performance is judged inferior-not just to get rid of those particular workers, but more importantly to motivate and discipline the rest of the workforce."

"Everyone has an interest in the economy: in how it functions, how well it functions, and in whose interests it functions."

"Kalecki thus precisely predicted the economic and political U-turn that occurred with the advent of neoliberalism. Kalecki also argued that fundamental institutional changes, especially regarding wage-setting and other aspects of the employment relationship, would be essential if full employment was to be sustained."

"Never trust an economist with your job. Learn about economics yourself. And make up your own mind about what might protect your job – and what might destroy it."

"Innis made the study of technology and civilization (Canada as a big "staples commodity") an opportunity for the development of a distinctive Canadian way of thinking. In the Innisian world of technological realism, there emerges an epistemological toolkit for the exploration of dependency and emancipation as the two faces of technological society. Innis's thought is perfectly styled to the historical specificity of Canada's political economy and culture because it is a constant reflection on the great tension between centre/periphery in Canada's historical formation."

"It is easy to criticize Innis's negativism and his encouragement of an apolitical stance for the intellectual in society. But to see only the negative side of his outlook --- his economic determinism, relativism, and apoliticism --- is to miss a positive central thread that runs through his work, from the investigation of the fur staple to his defence of scholarship, and later, his explorations in the biases of communications: to understand limits is to enhance the freedom of the nation and the individual."

"Innis's work, despite its maddeningly obscure, opaque and elliptical character, is the great achievement in communications on this continent. In The Bias of Communication, Empire and Communications, Changing Concepts of Time and in the essays on books on the staples that dominated the Canadian economy, Innis demonstrated a natural depth, excess, and complexity, a sense of paradox and reversal that provides permanent riddles rather than easy formulas. His texts continue to yield because they combine, along with studied obscurity, a gift for pungent aphorism, unexpected juxtaposition, and sudden illumination. Opening his books is like reengaging an extended conversation: they are not merely things to read but things to think with."

"I am pleased to think of my own book The Gutenberg Galaxy as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences, first of writing then of printing."

"To this day, in my opinion, the last chapter of Innis's The Fur Trade in Canada still represents the most concentrated and profound single piece of writing for anyone seeking to understand the nature of Canada."

"Industrialism implies technology and the cutting of time into precise fragments suited to the needs of the engineer and the accountant."

"The Middle Ages burned its heretics and the modern age threatens them with atom bombs."

"The overwhelming pressure of mechanization evident in the newspaper and the magazine, has led to the creation of vast monopolies of communication. Their entrenched positions involve a continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity."

"The discovery of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century implied the beginning of a return to a type of civilization dominated by the eye rather than the ear."

"We must appraise civilization in relation to its territory and in relation to its duration. The character of the medium of communication tends to create a bias in civilization favourable to an over-emphasis on the time concept or on the space concept and only at rare intervals are the biases offset by the influence of another medium and stability achieved."

"The full impact of printing did not become possible until the adoption of the Bill of Rights in the United States with its guarantee of freedom of the press. A guarantee of freedom of the press in print was intended to further sanctify the printed word and to provide a rigid bulwark for the shelter of vested interests."

"Modern civilization, characterized by an enormous increase in the output of mechanized knowledge with the newspaper, the book, the radio and the cinema, has produced a state of numbness, pleasure and self-complacency perhaps only equalled by laughing-gas. In the words of Oscar Wilde we have sold our birthright for a mess of facts. The demands of the machine are insatiable. The danger of shaking men out of the soporific results of mechanized knowledge is similar to that of attempting to arouse a drunken man or one who has taken an overdose of sleeping tablets. The necessary violent measures will be disliked. We have had university professors threatened with the loss of their positions for less than this."

"The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West."

"Graham Wallas has reminded us that writing as compared with speaking involves an impression at the second remove and reading an impression at the third remove. The voice of a second-rate person is more impressive than the published opinion of superior ability."

"Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers."

"Innis comments on how the invention of writing and the advancement of military techniques led to the founding of ancient empires: The sword and the pen worked together. Power was increased by concentration in a few hands, specialization of function was enforced, and scribes with leisure to keep and study records contributed to the advancement of knowledge and thought. The written record signed, sealed, and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the extension of government. Small communities were written into large states and states were consolidated into empire. The monarchies of Egypt and Persia, the Roman empire and the city states were essentially products of writing."

"The significance of a basic medium to its civilization is difficult to appraise since the means of appraisal are influenced by the media, and indeed the fact of appraisal appears to be peculiar to certain types of media. A change in the type of medium implies a change in the type of appraisal and hence makes it difficult for one civilization to understand another."

"Following the invention of writing, the special form of heightened language, characteristic of the oral tradition and a collective society, gave way to private writing. Records and messages displaced the collective memory. Poetry was written and detached from the collective festival."

"The effect of the discovery of printing was evident in the savage religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Application of power to communication industries hastened the consolidation of vernaculars, the rise of nationalism, revolution, and new outbreaks of savagery in the twentieth century."

"In his office or his study, with his long legs stretched out and his chair tilted back, he would exchange stories with unhurried delight; and the deep stream of his conversation rambled amiably through generous meanderings and over laughing shallows."

"The Canadian government has a closer relation to economic activities than most governments. The trade in staples, which characterizes an economically weak country, to the highly industrialized areas of Europe and latterly the United States, and especially the fur trade, has been responsible for various peculiar tendencies in Canadian development. The maintenance of connections with Europe, at first with France and later with Great Britain has been a result. The diversity of institutions which has attended this relationship has made for greater elasticity in organization and far greater tolerance among her peoples."

"Canada came under the sweep of the Industrial Revolution at one stroke whereas the western movement of the United States was a gradual development. There are no transcontinental railroads controlled by one organization in the United States. In Canada transcontinental roads are distinct entities controlled in eastern Canada. Similarly in financial institutions the branch bank system with its headquarters in the east has been typical of Canada but not of the United States. No such tendency toward unity of structure in institutions and toward centralized control as found in Canada can be observed in the United States."

"The diversity of institutions has made possible the combination of government ownership and private enterprise which has been a further characteristic of Canadian development. Canada has remained fundamentally a product of Europe."

"We have not yet realized that the Indian and his culture were fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions."

"The history of Canada has been profoundly influenced by the habits of an animal which very fittingly occupies a prominent place on her coat of arms."

"Canada emerged as a political entity with boundaries largely determined by the fur trade. These boundaries included a vast north temperate land area extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific and dominated by the Canadian Shield. The present Dominion emerged not in spite of geography but because of it."