#economy

There is a difference between strategic or technical default and default where you really don't have the economy to support the spending. We are not at that point yet. We could be. We could be, like some European nations. ↗

— Charles F. Bass

#could #default #difference #economy #european

Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem—unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and ani­mals just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions. On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to the soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you, one would, in one blow, turn one's entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with things they want. Markets are brought into existence as a side effect. ↗

— David Graeber

#market #soldiers #family

The confounding Political Economy with the Sciences and Arts to which it is subservient, has been one of the principal obstacles to its improvement. ↗

— Nassau William Senior

#been #confounding #economy #improvement #obstacles

The President also talked at length about how well the American economy is doing. Apparently, he got his information on this topic from his millionaire supporters. For the average working family, these are trying economic times. ↗

— Jose Serrano

#also #american #american economy #apparently #average

You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place. ↗

— Bruce Sterling

#life #news #politics #truth #life

Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#economy #life

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ↗

— Adam Smith

#stupidity #work #life

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#interest #men

Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow’s book buyers for today’s dollars, especially when it’s obvious that the source in question doesn’t have any more dollars to give you. ↗

— Courtney Milan

#economy #libraries #library #money #readingy

For the sake of “job creation,” in Kentucky, and in other backward states, we have lavished public money on corporations that come in and stay only so long as they can exploit people here more cheaply than elsewhere. The general purpose of the present economy is to exploit, not to foster or conserve. (from 'Compromise, Hell!' published in the November/December 2004 issue of ORION magazine) ↗

— Wendell Berry

#economy #exploitation #money