#economic

If all you think we need to do to get this economy going and get this country on the right track is to cut government and reduce taxes, you don't understand America. America is a moral enterprise, not an economic enterprise. ↗

— Rick Santorum

#country #cut #economic #economy #enterprise

It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#economics #herd-behavior #behavior

What was the reason for invading Iraq' Was it a humanitarian crusade or an economic one' I would be inclined to say the latter. It was the same with the Civil War, because the landed gentry's money was being stolen by the king. ↗

— Dougray Scott

#being #civil #civil war #crusade #economic

Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature. ↗

— Ludwig von Mises

#age

Productivity and the growth of productivity must be the first economic consideration at all times, not the last. That is the source of technological innovation, jobs, and wealth. ↗

— William E. Simon

#consideration #economic #first #growth #innovation

The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent. ↗

— Edward Gibbon

#design

Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe. ↗

— Friedrich A. von Hayek

#equality

I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the "shock therapy" they had pushed in the former Soviet Union and its satellites played an important role in the failure of the transition. ↗

— Joseph E. Stiglitz

#imf #politics #life

(1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can’t succeed in 4, burn 3. This I do often. ↗

— Alfred Marshall

#life

Facing a deteriorating economy and a weakening hold over the populace, the Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein opted to revitalize tribal leaders and conservative practices as a means of stabilizing state power; those conservative practices were not an inherent feature of a predominantly Muslim country. ↗

— Nadje Al-Ali

#foreign-policy #government #iraq #iraqi-state #islam