#economy

You know what—gyms make the largest chunk of their profit from clients who pay their monthly dues on auto-pay but never bother to show up and use the gym. The DVD-rental companies make a good chunk of their profits from late fees; the credit-card companies make a fortune on sundry fines and penalties; the airlines’ margins are highest on ticket changes and cancellations… So, the key to running a successful business in America is to sign up a customer and pray he’ll somehow screw up… ↗

— Ali Sheikh

#economy #jobs #success #business

Nothing is illegal so long as you correct it before the SEC catches it. ↗

— Ali Sheikh

#economy #law #sec #business

For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. ↗

— Clay Shirky

#organization #business

If we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of the earth, but also the earth's ability to produce. We will see that beauty and utility are alike dependent upon the health of the world. But we will also see through the fads and the fashions of protest. We will see that war and oppression and pollution are not separate issues, but are aspects of the same issue. Amid the outcries for the liberation of this group or that, we will know that no person is free except in the freedom of other persons, and that man's only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy his place - a much humbler place than we have been taught to think - in the order of creation. (pg.89, "Think Little") ↗

— Wendell Berry

#creation #earth #economy #freedom #nature

Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key - and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy.[...] Because if the food wasn't under lock and key, Julie, who would work? ↗

— Daniel Quinn

#food #my-ishmael #philosophy #food

Without "the people," there is no country. ↗

— John David

#freedom #liberty #patriotism #politics #freedom

Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#economy #exploration #inspirational #progress #inspirational

Manufacturing and other unskilled professions that were union jobs, that allowed people to live a middle-class life, are disappearing both because unions are disappearing and because of the global nature of the economy. ↗

— Andy Stern

#because #both #disappearing #economy #global

The power to tax is the power to destroy. ↗

— John Marshall

#taxes #taxing #economy

Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value. ↗

— Joe Biden

#budgeting #economy #value #economy