#economic

These are challenging times for all Americans. We face the specter of war abroad and a steady stream of bad economic news at home. ↗

— Robert Matsui

#all americans #bad #challenging #challenging times #economic

There's a war on coal coming from this administration, and Congress seems to be going with it. Coal is West Virginia. It's the backbone of our budgets. To have this war on coal is destructive to our ability to maintain economic viability in the state. ↗

— David McKinley

#administration #backbone #budgets #coal #coming

In my view, the future of politics is, without a doubt, social liberalism married to economic conservatism. Which means we have to make an economic argument to social liberals, that it's OK to vote for us. But we won't run the economy into the ground at the same time. ↗

— Louise Mensch

#conservatism #doubt #economic #economy #future

High gas prices are eating away at consumer's disposal income and could lead to a further economic downturn, especially for those whose livelihood depend on gasoline and diesel fuel. ↗

— Major R. Owens

#consumer #could #depend #diesel #disposal

People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#economics #hard-work #poverty #poverty

In a basic agricultural society, it's easy enough to swap five chickens for a new dress or to pay a schoolteacher with a goat and three sacks of rice. Barter works less well in a more advanced economy. The logistical challenges of using chickens to buy books on Amazon.com would be formidable. ↗

— Charles Wheelan

#economics #science

When the solution to a given problem doesn’t lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong. This is not to say the world is perfect. Nor that all progress is always good. Even widespread societal gains inevitably produce losses for some people. That’s why the economist Joseph Schumpeter referred to capitalism as “creative destruction.” But humankind has a great capacity for finding technological solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and this will likely be the case for global warming. It isn’t that the problem isn’t potentially large. It’s just that human ingenuity—when given proper incentives—is bound to be larger. Even more encouraging, technological fixes are often far simpler, and therefore cheaper, than the doomsayers could have imagined. Indeed, in the final chapter of this book we’ll meet a band of renegade engineers who have developed not one but three global-warming fixes, any of which could be bought for less than the annual sales tally of all the Thoroughbred horses at Keeneland auction house in Kentucky. ↗

— Steven D. Levitt

#incentives #imagination

Recent evidence confirms that retail prices of essential consumer goods in poor countries are not appreciably lower than in the United States or Western Europe. In fact, with deregulation and "free trade", the cost of living in many Third World cities is now higher than in the United States. My experience in Latin America and Haiti is that the prices of meat, fish and fresh vegetables are about the same as in the United States. Can you imagine eating on less than one dollar a day? ↗

— Vincent A. Gallagher

#globalization #injustice #poverty #experience

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth. ↗

— Leonard E. Read

#capitalist #economics #inspirational #libertarian #politics

The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#economics #humor #money #humor