21 quotes
When laissez-faire creates instability, the move to a freer market can be something less than pure gain.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
The economic illusion is the belief that social justice is bad for economic growth.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
In practice, a good deal of the outcomes produced by the market reflect nothing more than luck — good or bad.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Technological advance often thrives in sheltered and subsidized markets, which defy free trade.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Henry Ford, in a sense, was the first Keynesian. He paid his assembly workers high wages so they could afford to buy his cars.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Keynes, like Freud and Marx, deserves to be read in the original, not through the glosses of his lesser disciples.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
If social security depresses savings rates, it is only because it is unfunded.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
In America, we build public housing by creating lucrative inducements to private developers, and then wax indignant at the public waste.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
If Boeing got a big head start on the 707 from multibillion-dollar military contracts to develop an air force transport, is that a sin against free trade?
The Economic Illusion (1984)
It is more than a little ironic that "capital accumulation" once a rather tendentious Marxian view of a supposed capitalist obsession, should have become — of all things — Wall Street's own slogan.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Not surprisingly, extensive effort in Britain and America goes into finding tax shelter. the system is "efficient" for the shelter industry, not for the economy.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
In a world where technology and capital are highly transferable, there is a real risk that comparative advantage comes to be defined as whose labor force will work for the lowest wage.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Why, then, should we have to lower our living standards? What is the mysterious source of the economic loss? If productivity is increasing, why should we sacrifice services and wages?
The Economic Illusion (1984)
But of course you can have your cake and eat it, too — if you decide to bake a second cake. And you may well find that baking two cakes does not take twice the work of baking one.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
The total impact of the Reagan tax cuts on capital lowered the effective cost of capital to American industry by an estimated 1.2 percent. Unfortunately, the Laffer curve did not work as advertised. Lower tax rates did not produce more tax revenues. They produced deficits.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
I have tried to suggest that injustice is not necessary economics;that the economics can work, and has often worked, when the constituency for it is animated. The politics of equality — that is a little harder.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically "larger" public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
We are already well down the road toward a managed-trade regime. It would be far better to acknowledge that reality, and seek a set of reasonable rules, than to pretend that Ricardian trade is the norm and allow mercantilist states to overwhelm U.S. industry and ratchet down wages, in the name of free trade.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Britain, with the most completely socialized health system in the West, now spends the lowest fraction of GNP on health care of any major nation. There are frequent complaints of excessive waits for elective surgery and other inconveniences, but British citizens live slightly longer than Americans, on average, and our overall health conditions are comparable.
The Economic Illusion (1984)
Political conservatives have focused on tax reduction as an economic growth strategy for three reasons. First it is self-serving; it saves rich people lots of money. Second, it comports with their ideological allegiance to laissez-faire economics. And third, tax incentives are less intrusive to business-as-usual than any other form of government planning.
The Economic Illusion (1984)