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The Salary Of The Chief Executive Of A Large Corporation Is Not A Market Award For Achievement. It Is Frequently In The Nature Of A Warm Personal Gesture By The Individual To Himself.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

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The Salary Of The

John Kenneth Galbraith

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The Salary Of The Chief Executive Of A Large Corporation Is Not A Market Award For Achievement. It Is Frequently In The Nature Of A Warm Personal Gesture By The Individual To Himself.

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The Power Of The Corporate Bureaucracy - The Power Of Technostructure (a Term That Did Not Take Off) - Is Something To Which I Still Adhere.

No Society Ever Seems To Have Succumbed To Boredom. Man Has Developed An Obvious Capacity For Surviving The Pompous Reiteration Of The Commonplace.

It's Great To Be With William Buckley, Because You Don't Have To Think. He Takes A Position And You Automatically Take The Opposite One And You Know You're Right.

Educators Have Yet To Realize How Deeply The Industrial System Is Dependent Upon Them.

If You're Rich You Can Buy Books. If You're Poor, You Need A Library.

Much Literary Criticism Comes From People For Whom Extreme Specialization Is A Cover Either For Grave Cerebral Inadequacy Or Terminal Laziness, The Latter Being A Much-cherished Aspect Of Academic Freedom.

It Has Been The Acknowledged Right Of Every Marxist Scholar To Read Into Marx The Particular Meaning That He Himself Prefers And To Treat All Others With Indignation.

In Recent Times No Problem Has Been More Puzzling To Thoughtful People Than Why, In A Troubled World, We Make Such Poor Use Of Our Affluence.

The Notion Of A Formal Structure Of Command Must Be Abandoned. It Is More Useful To Think Of The Mature Corporation As A Series Of Concentric Circles.

In Numerous Years Following The War, The Federal Government Ran A Heavy Surplus. It Could Not (however) Pay Off Its Debt, Retire Its Securities, Because To Do So Meant There Would Be No Bonds To Back The National Bank Notes. To Pay Off The Debt Was To Destroy The Money Supply.

I Think Without A Doubt, That What Is Called "financial Genius" Is Merely A Rising Market.

There's No Question That In My Lifetime, The Contrast Between What I Called Private Affluence And Public Squalor Has Become Very Much Greater.

It Was Herbert Spencer, Not Charles Darwin, Who Coined The Phrase Survival Of The Fittest.

Survival Of The Fittest

A Very Complicated Mass Of Things Influences The Economy - The Speculative Effect, Government Policy, Consumer Borrowing And Spending, The Level Of Technical Innovation (which I Concede, Although Everyone Emphasizes It Too Much), And Much More - Including, Of Course, The Rate Of Inflation.

I Begin With The Renaming Of The System. It Used To Be Capitalism. But That Evokes [karl] Marx And [john] Rockefeller. So Now We Speak Of The Market System. That Is A Nice Bland Expression, Which Forgets Those Off-color References.

Nothing So Denies A Person Liberty As The Total Absence Of Money.

It Is In The Long Run That The Corporation Lives.

There Was The Missile Crisis, But One Can't Attribute To The [j.f.] Kennedy Years Anything Like The Problems That [franklin] Roosevelt Stood Over And Surmounted.

People Who Are In A Fortunate Position Always Attribute Virtue To What Makes Them So Happy.

Agreeable As It Is To Know Where One Is Proceeding, It Is Far More Important To Know Where One Has Arrived.

I Feel Very Angry When I Think Of Brilliant, Or Even Interesting, Women Whose Minds Are Wasted On A Home. Better Have An Affair. It Isn't Permanent And You Keep Your Job.

It Takes Some Skill To Spoil A Breakfast - Even The English Can't Do It.

Decision Has Greater Virtue And Force If Taken After There Has Been Eloquent Dissent.

Economic Theory Is The Most Prestigious Subject Of Instruction And Study. Agricultural Economics, Labor Economics And Marketing Are Lower Caste Fields Of Study.

Much Of The World's Work, It Has Been Said, Is Done By Men Who Do Not Feel Quite Well. Marx Is A Case In Point.

Originality Is Something That Is Easily Exaggerated, Especially By Authors Contemplating Their Own Work.

But There Is Merit Even In The Mentally Retarded Legislator. He Asks The Questions That Everyone Is Afraid To Ask For Fear Of Seeming Simple.

The Genius Of The Industrial System Lies In Its Organized Use Of Capital And Technology. This Is Made Possible, As We Have Duly Seen, By Extensively Replacing The Market With Planning.

Ideas May Be Superior To Vested Interest. They Are Also Very Often The Children Of Vested Interest.

It Is A Far, Far Better Thing To Have A Firm Anchor In Nonsense Than To Put Out On The Troubled Seas Of Thought.

Of All The Mysteries Of The Stock Exchange There Is None So Impenetrable As Why There Should Be A Buyer For Everyone Who Seeks To Sell.

Faced With The Choice Between Changing One's Mind And Proving That There Is No Need To Do So, Almost Everyone Gets Busy On The Proof.

Emancipation Of Belief Is The Most Formidable Of The Tasks Of Reform And The One On Which All Else Depends.

It Is A Well Known And Very Important Fact That America's Founding Fathers Did Not Like Taxation Without Representation. It Is A Lesser Known And Equally Important Fact That They Did Not Much Like Taxation With Representation.

There Is An Old Saying, Or Should Be, That It Is A Wise Economist Who Recognizes The Scope Of His Own Generalizations.

I Am For A Close Global Association In Trade And Financial Matters, Rather Than The Opposite Possibility Of Excessive Nationalism, As Manifested In The Two World Wars.

People Are The Common Denominator Of Progress. So No Improvement Is Possible With Unimproved People, And Advance Is Certain When People Are Liberated And Educated. It Would Be Wrong To Dismiss The Importance Of Roads, Railroads, Power Plants, Mills,and The Other Familiar Furniture Of Economic Development. But We Are Coming To Realize That There Is A Certain Sterility In Economic Monuments That Stand Alone In A Sea Of Illiteracy. Conquest Of Illiteracy Comes First.

There Are A Significant Number Of Learned Men And Women Who Hold That Any Successful Effort To Make Ideas Lively, Intelligible And Interesting Is A Manifestation Of Deficient Scholarship. This Is The Fortress Behind Which The Minimally Coherent Regularly Find Refuge.

Banking May Well Be A Career From Which No Man Really Recovers.

Of All The Weapons In The Federal Reserve Arsenal, Words Were The The Most Unpredictable In Their Consequences.

Federal Reserve

World War Ii Revealed Two Of The Enduring Features Of The Keynesian Revolution. One Was The Moral Difference Between Spending For Welfare And Spending For War. During The Depression Very Modest Outlays For The Unemployed Seemed Socially Debilitating, Economically Unsound. Now Expenditures Many Times Greater For Weapons And Soldiers Were Perfectly Safe. It's A Difference That Still Persists.

The Drive Toward Complex Technical Achievement Offers A Clue To Why The U.s. Is Good At Space Gadgetry And Bad At Slum Problems.

No Ethic Is As Ethical As The Work Ethic.

The Stock Market Is But A Mirror Which Provides An Image Of The Underlying Or Fundamental Economic Situation. Cause And Effect Run From The Economy To The Stock Market, Never The Reverse. In 1929 The Economy Was Headed For Trouble. Eventually That Trouble Was Violently Reflected In Wall Street.

It Is The Good Fortune Of The Affluent Country That The Opportunity Cost Of Economic Discussion Is Low And Hence It Can Afford All Kinds.

The Foresight Of Financial Experts Was, As So Often, A Poor Guide To The Future.

Even In Such A Time Of Madness As The Late Twenties, A Great Many Man In Wall Street Remained Quite Sane. But They Also Remained Very Quiet. The Sense Of Responsibility In The Financial Community For The Community As A Whole Is Not Small. It Is Nearly Nil. Perhaps This Is Inherent. In A Community Where The Primary Concern Is Making Money, One Of The Necessary Rules Is To Live And Let Live. To Speak Out Against Madness May Be To Ruin Those Who Have Succumbed To It. So The Wise In Wall Street Are Nearly Always Silent. The Foolish Thus Have The Field To Themselves. None Rebukes Them.

Ideas Are Inherently Conservative. They Yield Not To The Attack Of Other Ideas But To The Massive Onslaught Of Circumstance With Which They Cannot Contend.

These Are The Days When Men Of All Social Disciplines And All Political Faiths Seek The Comfortable And The Accepted; When The Man Of Controversy Is Looked Upon As A Disturbing Influence; When Originality Is Taken To Be A Mark Of Instability; And When, In Minor Modification Of The Original Parable, The Bland Lead The Bland.

Marx Profoundly Affected Those Who Did Not Accept His System. His Influence Extended To Those Who Least Supposed They Were Subject To It.

Those Who Yearn For The End Of Capitalism Should Pray For Government By Men Who Believe That All Positive Action Is Inimical To What They Call Thoughtfully The Fundamental Principles Of Free Enterprise.

Nothing In Our Time Is More Interesting Than The Erstwhile Capitalist Corporation And The Erstwhile Communist Firm Should, Under The Imperatives Of Organization, Come Together As Oligarchies Of Their Own Members.

Capitalism Is Chronically Unstable.boom And Bust Has Always Marked Capitalism In The United States. There Were Panics In 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 And 1987.in Economies And Politics, As In War, An Astonishing Number Of People Die, Like The Man On The Railway Crossing, Defending Their Right Of Way. This Is A Poorly Developed Instinct In Switzerland. No Country So Firmly Avows The Principles Of Private Enterprise But In Few Have The Practical Concessions To Socialism Been More Numerous And Varied.

Commencement Oratory Must Eschew Anything That Smacks Of Partisan Politics, Political Preference, Sex, Religion Or Unduly Firm Opinion. Nonetheless, There Must Be A Speech: Speeches In Our Culture Are The Vacuum That Fills A Vacuum.

The Line Dividing The State From What Is Called Private Enterprise, Orat Least Fromthehighlyorganized Part Of It, Is A Traditional Fiction.

Talk Of Revolution Is One Of Avoiding Reality.

In The Autumn Of 1929 The Mightiest Of Americans Were, For A Brief Time, Revealed As Human Beings.

I Predict, Not Because I Know, But Because I'm Asked.

Wisdom... Is Often An Abstraction Associated Not With Fact Or Reality But With The Man Who Asserts It And The Manner Of Its Assertion.

We Live Surrounded By A Systematic Appeal To A Dream World Which All Mature, Scientific Reality Would Reject. We, Quite Literally, Advertise Our Commitment To Immaturity, Mendacity And Profound Gullibility. It Is As The Hallmark Of The Culture. And It Is Justified As Being Economically Indispensable.

Power Is Not Something That Can Be Assumed Or Discarded At Will Like Underwear.

Man, At Least When Educated, Is A Pessimist. He Believes It Safer Not To Reflect On His Achievements; Jove Is Known To Strike Such People Down.

Oligopoly Is An Imperfect Monopoly. Like The Despotism Of The Dual Monarchy, It Is Saved Only By Its Incompetence.

Things That Come From The Private Sector Are In Abundant Supply; Things That Depend On The Public Sector Are Widely A Problem. We're A World, As I Said In The Affluent Society, Of Filthy Streets And Clean Houses, Poor Schools And Expensive Television.

The Size Of General Motors Is In The Service Not Of Monopoly Or The Economies Of Scale But Of Planning.

Every Corner Of The Public Psyche Is Canvassed By Some Of The Most Talented Citizens To See If The Desire For Some Merchandisable Product Can Be Cultivated.

The Traveler To The United States Will Do Wellto Prepare Himself For The Class-consciousness Of The Natives. This Differs From The Already Familiar English Version In Being More Extreme And Based More Firmly On The Conviction That The Class To Which The Speaker Belongs Is Inherently Superior To All Others.

In Economics, Unlike Fiction And The Theater, There Is No Harm In A Premature Disclosure Of The Plot: It Is To See The Changes Just Mentioned And Others As An Interlocked Whole.

There Can Be Few Fields Of Human Endeavor In Which History Counts For So Little As In The World Of Finance.past Experience, To The Extent That It Is Part Of Memory At All, Is Dismissed As The Primitive Refuge Of The Those Who Do Not Have Insight To Appreciate The Incredible Wonders Of The Present.

If Inheritance Qualifies One For Office, Intelligence Cannot Be A Requirement.

The Only Function Of Economic Forecasting Is To Make Astrology Look Respectable.

A More Important Antidote To American Democracy Is American Gerontocracy. The Positions Of Eminence And Authority In Congress Are Allotted In Accordance With Length Of Service, Regardless Of Quality.

Preservationists Are The Only People In The World Who Are Invariably Confirmed In Their Wisdom After The Fact.

Liberalism Is, I Think, Resurgent. One Reason Is That More And More People Are So Painfully Aware Of The Alternative.

The Modern Corporation Must Manufacture Not Only Goods But The Desire For The Goods It Manufactures.

Pundits Forecast Not Because They Know, But Because They Are Asked.

Those Days [of The Vietnam War] You Couldn't Get On A Bus Going To The South Without Expecting A Riot Over Something Or The Other. All Of That Has Disappeared Thanks To Lyndon Johnson.

No Intelligence System Can Predict What A Government Will Do If It Doesn't Know Itself.

What Is Called A High Standard Of Living Consists, In Considerable Measure, In Arrangements For Avoiding Muscular Energy, For Increasing Sensual Pleasure And Enhancing Caloric Intake Above Any Conceivable Nutritional Requirement.

Technology Means The Systematic Application Of Scientific Or Other Organized Knowledge To Practical Tasks.

In The Old Days, Land Was Important As The Giver Of All Things. That Period Is Gone Now. Technology And Brainpower Are All That Matters And Yet Conflicts Over Land, Specially One Like On The India-china Border, That Yields Nothing, Continue. This Is A Burden Of Ancient History That We Continue To Carry. If Tomorrow There Is Settlement On Planet Mars, We Will Begin To Worry If Others Are Interested.

One Of The Greatest Pieces Of Economic Wisdom Is To Know What You Do Not Know.

A Bad Book Is The Worse That It Cannot Repent. It Has Not Been The Devil's Policy To Keep The Masses Of Mankind In Ignorance; But Finding That They Will Read, He Is Doing All In His Power To Poison Their Books.

Economists Are Economical, Among Other Things, Of Ideas; Most Make Those Of Their Graduate Days Do For A Lifetime.

To Add To The Technostructure Is To Increase Its Power In The Enterprise.

Politics Is The Art Of Choosing Between The Disastrous And The Unpalatable.

Increasingly In Recent Times We Have Come First To Identify The Remedy That Is Most Agreeable, Most Convenient, Most In Accord With Major Pecuniary Or Political Interest, The One That Reflects Our Available Faculty For Action; Then We Move From The Remedy So Available Or Desired Back To A Cause To Which That Remedy Is Relevant.

We Shall Have A Race Of Men Who Are Strong On Telemetry And Space Communications But Who Cannot Read Anything But A Blueprint Or Write Anything But A Computer Program.

The Industrial System Requires That Prices Be Under Effective Control. And It Seeks The Greatest Possible Influence Over What Buyers Take At The Established Prices.

My Rule On Honorary Degrees Has Always Been To Have One More Than Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Speeches In Our Culture Are The Vacuum That Fills A Vacuum.

The Ideas By Which People . . . Interpret Their Existence And In Measure Guide Their Behavior, Were Not Forged In A World Of Wealth.

The Oldest [john Kenneth] Galbraith Rule Is That When You Hear That A New Era Has Dawned, You Should Take Cover.

The More Underdeveloped The Country, The More Overdeveloped The Women.

We're All Subject To The Daily Pressures Of Consumer Persuasion.

Nothing Is More Portable Than Rich People And Their Money

Financial Capacity And Political Perspicacity Are Inversely Correlated. Long-run Salvation By Men Of Business Has Never Been Highly Regarded If It Means Disturbance Of Orderly Life And Convenience In The Present. So Inaction Will Be Advocated In The Present Even Though It Means Deep Trouble In The Future. Here, At Least Equally With Communism, Lies The Threat To Capitalism. It Is What Causes Men Who Know That Things Are Going Quite Wrong To Say That Things Are Fundamentally Sound.

There Was Something Superficial In Attributing Anything So Awful As The Great Depression To Anything So Insubstantial As Speculation In Common Stocks.

Great Depression

Franklin Delano Roosevelt And J.f Kennedy Were Presidents In Very Different Times.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

In 1736, Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette Printed An Apology For Its Irregular Appearence Because Its Printer Was "with The Press, Labouring For The Publick Good, To Make Money More Plentiful." The Press Was Busy Printing Money.

If A Man Didn't Make Sense, The Scotch Felt It Was Misplaced Politeness To Try To Keep Him From Knowing It. Better That He Be Aware Of His Reputation, For This Would Encourage Reticence Which Goes Well With Stupidity.

The Oldest Problem In Economic Education Is How To Exclude The Incompetent. A Certain Glib Mastery Of Verbiage-the Ability To Speak Portentously And Sententiously About The Relation Of Money Supply To The Price Level-is Easy For The Unlearned And May Even Be Aided By A Mildly Enfeebled Intellect. The Requirement That There Be Ability To Master Difficult Models, Including Ones For Which Mathematical Competence Is Required, Is A Highly Useful Screening Device.

Humor Is Richly Rewarding To The Person Who Employs It. It Has Some Value In Gaining And Holding Attention, But It Has No Persuasive Value At All.

I Am Not Quite Sure What The Advantage Is In Having A Few More Dollars To Spend If The Air Is Too Dirty To Breathe, The Water Too Polluted To Drink, The Commuters Are Losing Out In The Struggle To Get In And Out Of The City, The Streets Are Filthy, And The Schools So Bad That The Young Perhaps Wisely Stay Away, And The Hoodlums Roll Citizens For Some Of The Dollars They Saved In The Tax Cut.

[franklin Delano] Roosevelt Was The Central World Figure In The Two Great Disasters Of This Century - The Great Depression And World War Ii. By Contrast, Jfk Came In Relatively Peaceful, Agreeable Times.

In Any Great Organization It Is Far, Far Safer To Be Wrong With The Majority Than To Be Right Alone.

I React Pragmatically. Where The Market Works, I'm For That. Where The Government Is Necessary, I'm For That. I'm Deeply Suspicious Of Somebody Who Says, 'i'm In Favor Of Privatization,' Or, 'i'm Deeply In Favor Of Public Ownership.' I'm In Favor Of Whatever Works In The Particular Case.

There's No Question That In My Lifetime, The Contrast Between What I Called Private Affluence And Public Squalor Has Become Very Much Greater. What Do We Worry About? We Worry About Our Schools. We Worry About Our Public Recreational Facilities. We Worry About Our Law Enforcement And Our Public Housing. All Of The Things That Bear Upon Our Standard Of Living Are In The Public Sector.

From The Spring Of 1941, I Controlled All Prices In The United States. You Could Lower A Price Without My Permission, But You Couldn't Raise A Price Without My Permission Or That Of My Staff.

Good Writing, And This Is Especially Important In A Subject Such As Economics, Must Also Involve The Reader In The Matter At Hand. It Is Not Enough To Explain. The Images That Are In The Mind Of The Writer Must Be Made To Reappear In The Mind Of The Reader, And It Is The Absence Of This Ability That Causes Much Economic Writing To Be Condemned, Quite Properly, As Abstract.

Then Came The Second Amsterdam Discovery, Although The Principle Was Known Elsewhere. Bank Deposits...did Not Need To Be Left Idly In The Bank. They Could Be Lent. The Bank Then Got Interest. The Borrower Then Had A Deposit That He Could Spend. But The Original Deposit Still Stood To The Credit Of The Original Depositor. That Too Could Be Spent. Money, Spendable Money, Had Been Created. Let No One Rub His Or Her Eyes. It's Still Being Done-every Day. The Creation Of Money By A Bank Is As Simple As This, So Simple, I've Often Said, That The Mind Is Slightly Repelled.

The Seminar In Economic Theory Conducted By Hayek At The L.s.e. In The 1930s Was Attended, It Came To Seem, By All Of The Economists Of My Generation - Nicky Kaldor , Thomas Balogh, L. K. Jah, Paul Rosenstein-rodan, The List Could Be Indefinitely Extended. The Urge To Participate (and Correct Hayek) Was Ruthlessly Competitive.

Partly, The Russian System Succeeds Because, In Contrast To The Western Industrial Economies, It Makes Full Use Of Its Manpower.

That One Never Need To Look Beyond The Love Of Money For Explanation Of Human Behavior Is One Of The Most Jealously Guarded Simplification Of Our Culture.

We All Agree That Pessimism Is A Mark Of Superior Intellect.

Any Country That Has Milton Friedman As An Adviser Has Nothing To Fear From A Few Million Arabs.

This Is A World Inhabited Not By People Who Have To Be Persuaded To Believe But By People Who Want An Excuse To Believe.

In Economics It Is A Far, Far Wiser Thing To Be Right Than To Be Consistent

It Would Be Foolish To Suggest That Government Is A Good Custodian Of Aesthetic Goals. But, There Is No Alternative To The State.

When You See Reference To A New Paradigm You Should Always, Under All Circumstances, Take Cover. Because Ever Since The Great Tulipmania In 1637, Speculation Has Always Been Covered By A New Paradigm. There Was Never A Paradigm So New And So Wonderful As The One That Covered John Law And The South Sea Bubble - Until The Day Of Disaster.

Where Humor Is Concerned There Are No Standards - No One Can Say What Is Good Or Bad, Although You Can Be Sure That Everyone Will.

In The United States All Business Not Transacted Over The Telephone Is Accomplished In Conjunction With Alcohol Or Food, Often Under Conditions Of Advanced Intoxication. This Is A Fact Of The Utmost Importance For The Visitor Of Limited Funds... For It Means That The Most Expensive Restaurants Are, With Rare Exceptions, The Worst.

The Family Which Takes It Mauve And Cerise, Air Conditioned, Power-steered, And Power Braked Automobile Out For A Tour Passes Through Cities That Are Badly Paved, Made Hideous By Litter, Blighted Buildings, Billboards, And Posts For Wires That Should Long Since Have Been Put Underground.

Very Important Functions Can Be Performed Very Wastefully And Often Are.

Meetings Are A Great Trap. Soon You Find Yourself Trying To Get Agreement And Then The People Who Disagree Come To Think They Have A Right To Be Persuaded. However, They Are Indispensable When You Don't Want To Do Anything.

All Successful Revolutions Are The Kicking In Of A Rotten Door.

In All Modern Depressions, Recessions, Or Growth-correction, As Variously They Are Called, We Never Miss The Goods That Are Not Produced. We Miss Only The Opportunities For The Labour - For The Jobs - That Are Not Provided.

Complexity And Obscurity Have Professional Value - They Are The Academic Equivalents Of Apprenticeship Rules In The Building Trades. They Exclude The Outsiders, Keep Down The Competition, Preserve The Image Of A Privileged Or Priestly Class. The Man Who Makes Things Clear Is A Scab. He Is Criticized Less For His Clarity Than For His Treachery.

All Successful Revolutions Are The Kicking In Of A Rotten Door. The Violence Of Revolutions Is The Violence Of Men Who Charge Into A Vacuum.

If We Are Concerned About Our Great Appetite For Materials, It Is Plausible To Decrease Waste, To Make Better Use Of Stocks Available, And To Develop Substitutes. But What About The Appetite Itself? The Major Cause Of The Continued Deterioration Of The Global Environment Is The Unsustainable Pattern Of Consumption And Production, Particularly In Industrialised Countries

The Man Who Is Admired For The Ingenuity Of His Larceny Is Almost Always Rediscovering Some Earlier Form Of Fraud. The Basic Forms Are All Known, Have All Been Practiced. The Manners Of Capitalism Improve. The Morals May Not.

The Overall Effect Of The Rise Of The Industrial System Is Greatly To Reduce The Union As A Social Force. But It Will Not Disappear Or Become Entirely Unimportant.

A Businessman Who Reads Business Week Is Lost To Fame. One Who Reads Proust Is Marked For Greatness.

If We Were Not In Vietnam, All That Part Of The World Would Be Enjoying The Obscurity It So Richly Deserves.

Both We And The Soviets Face The Common Threat Of Nuclear Destruction And There Is No Likelihood That Either Capitalism Or Communism Will Survive A Nuclear War.

In Europe And The United States The Two Decades Following The Second World War Will For Long Be Remembered As A Very Good Time, The Time When Capitalism Really Worked. Everywhere In The Industrialized Countries Production Increased. Unemployment Was Everywhere Low. Prices Were Nearly Stable. When Production Lagged And Unemployment Rose, Governments Intervened To Take Up The Slack, As Keynes Had Urged.

Economists, On The Whole, Think Well Of What They Do Themselves And Much Less Well Of What Their Professional Colleagues Do.

I Accept The Global Complex And Global Trade More Than Do Some Of My Liberal Colleagues Because I Consider This A Wise Alternative To National Tension And Conflict.

The Masters Thought They Were Loved Until One Day One Of Their Favorites Farted Loudly While Serving Dinner And The Next Day Was Gone. The Very First Manifestation Of The Classless Society Is The Disappearance Of The Servant Class.

Few Can Believe That Suffering, Especially By Others, Is In Vain. Anything That Is Disagreeable Must Surely Have Beneficial Economic Effects.

There Are Two Kinds Of Forecasters: Those Who Don’t Know, And Those Who Don’t Know They Don’t Know.

Men Are, In Fact, Either Sustained By Organization Or They Sustain Organization.

It Was Not Hard To Persuade People That The Market Was Sound; As Always In Such Times They Asked Only That The Dispiriting Voices Of Doubt Be Muted And That There Should Be Tolerably Frequent Expressions Of Confidence.

It Is Not The Individual's Right To Buy That Is Being Protected. Rather, It Is The Seller's Right To Manage The Individual.

Wealth Is Not Without Its Advantages And The Case To The Contrary, Although It Has Often Been Made, Has Never Proved Widely Persuasive.

In A Community Where Public Services Have Failed To Keep Abreast Of Private Consumption Things Are Very Different. Here, In An Atmosphere Of Private Opulence And Public Squalor, The Private Goods Have Full Sway.

Inventions That Are Not Made, Like Babies That Are Not Born, Are Rarely Missed. In The Absence Of New Developments, Old Ones May Seem Very Impressive For Quite A Long While.

It Takes A Certain Brashness To Attack The Accepted Economic Legendsbut Noneat All Toperpetuatethem. So Theyare Perpetuated.

The Great Dialectic In Our Time Is Not, As Anciently And By Some Still Supposed, Between Capital And Labor; It Is Between Economic Enterprise And The State.

The Accepted Ideas Of Any Period Are Singularly Those That Serve The Dominant Economic Interest...what Economists Believe And Teach, Whether In The United States Or In The Soviet Union, Is Rarely Hostile To The Institutions - The Private Business Enterprise, The Communist Party - That Reflect The Dominant Economic Power. Not To Notice This Takes Effort, Although Many Succeed.

Those Who Had Been Riding The Upward Wave Decide Now Is The Time To Get Out. Those Who Thought The Increase Would Be Forever Find Their Illusion Destroyed Abruptly, And They, Also, Respond To The Newly Revealed Reality By Selling Or Trying To Sell. And Thus The Rule, Supported By The Experience Of Centuries: The Speculative Episode Always Ends Not With A Whimper But With A Bang.

All Writers Know That On Some Golden Mornings They Are Touched By The Wand; They Are On Intimate Terms With Poetry And Cosmic Truth. I Have Experienced These Moments Myself. Their Lesson Is Simple: It's A Total Illusion. And The Danger In The Illusion Is That You Will Wait For Those Moments.

I'm Certainly Going To Support Al Gore Because, On The Whole, He's The More Sensible Figure And You Vote Not For The Perfect But For The Best. Coupled With That Is A Special Situation.

American University Presidents Are A Nervous Breed; I Have Never Thought Well Of Them As A Class.

American Universities

Third Party Politics, At Least Since La Follette, Has Always Had An Element Of Romance.

What Was Needed Was A Policy That Increased The Supply Of Money Available For Use And Then Ensured Its Use. Then The State Of Trade Would Have To Improve.

The Sense Of Responsibility In The Financial Community For The Community As A Whole Is Not Small. It Is Nearly Nil.

I React To What Is Necessary. I Would Like To Eschew Any Formula.

In Public Administration Good Sense Would Seem To Require That Public Expectation Be Kept At The Lowest Possible Level In Order To Minimize Eventual Disappointment.

When People Are Least Sure, They Are Often Most Dogmatic.

Writing Is A Long And Lonesome Business; Back Of The Problems In Thought And Composition Hover Always The Awful Questions: Is This The Page That Shows The Empty Shell? Is It Here And Now That They Find Me Out?

The Threat To Men Of Great Dignity, Privilege And Pretense Is Not From The Radicals They Revile; It Is From Accepting Their Own Myth. Exposure To Reality Remains The Nemesis Of The Great -- A Little Understood Thing.

Had The Bible Been In Clear Straightforward Language, Had The Ambiguities And Contradictions Been Edited Out, And Had The Language Been Constantly Modernised To Accord With Contemporary Taste It Would Almost Certainly Have Been, Or Become, A Work Of Lesser Influence.

The Commencement Speech Is Not, I Think, A Wholly Satisfactory Manifestation Of Our Culture.

I Talked About The Consolidation Of Power In The Hands Of The Corporate Bureaucracy, As Distinct From The Stockholders. To This View, I Still Strongly Adhere.

No Solution [to The Problem Of Poverty] Is So Effective As Providing Income To The Poor. Whether In The Form Of Food, Housing, Health Services, Education Or Money, Income Is An Excellent Antidote For Deprivation. No Truth Has Spawned So Much Ingenious Evasion.

Few Things In Life Can Be So Appalling As The Difference Between A Dry Antiseptic Statement Of A Principle By A Well Spoken Man In A Quiet Office, And What Happens To People When That Principle Is Put Into Practice.

Clerks In Downtown Hotels Were Said To Be Asking Guests Whether They Wished The Room For Sleeping Or Jumping. Two Men Jumped Hand-in-hand From A High Window In The Ritz. They Had A Joint Account.

Happiness Does Not Require An Expanding Economy

One Can Relish The Varied Idiocy Of Human Action During A Panic To The Full, For, While It Is A Time Of Great Tragedy, Nothing Is Being Lost But Money.

By All But The Pathologically Romantic, It Is Now Recognized That This Is Not The Age Of The Small Man.

War Remains The Decisive Human Failure.

In A World Where For Pedagogic And Other Purposes A Very Large Number Of Economists Is Required, An Arrangement Which Discourages Many Of Them From

Unemployment Is Rarely Considered Desirable Except By Those Who Have Not Experienced It.

Under Capitalism, Man Exploits Man. Under Communism, It's Just The Opposite.

Financial Operations Do Not Lend Themselves To Innovation. What Is Recurrently So Described And Celebrated Is, Without Exception, A Small Variation On An Established Design . . . The World Of Finance Hails The Invention Of The Wheel Over And Over Again, Often In A Slightly More Unstable Version.

The Conspicuously Wealthy Turn Up Urging The Character Building Values Of The Privation Of The Poor.

A Drastic Reduction In Weapons Competition Following A General Release From The Commitment To The Cold War Would Be Sharply In Conflict With The Needs Of The Industrial System.

Nostalgia Combines Regularly With Manifest Respectability To Give Credence To Old Error As Opposed To New Truth.

The First Goal Of The Technostructure Is Its Own Security.

Genius Is A Rising Stock Market.

In Economics, The Majority Is Always Wrong.

The Individual Serves The Planning System Not By Supplying It With Savings And The Resulting Capital; He Serves It Far More By Consuming Its Products.

Washington Is A Place Where Men Praise Courage And Act On Elaborate Personal Cost-benefit Calculations.

Few Things Are As Immutable As The Addiction Of Political Groups To The Ideas By Whichthey Have Once Won Office.

I Am Worried About Our Tendency To Over Invest In Things And Under Invest In People.

The Greater The Wealth The Thicker Will Be The Dirt.

The Miserable Consumption Of The Poor Is Partly The Result Of The Ostentatious Demands Of The Rich. There Isn't Enough For Both, And The Latter Get Far More Than They Need...but Could Anything Seriously Be Done About It?

The Modern Conservative Is Engaged In One Of Man's Oldest Exercises In Moral Philosophy; That Is, The Search For A Superior Moral Justification For Selfishness.

The Urge To Consume Is Fathered By The Value System Which Emphasizes The Ability Of The Society To Produce.

In The Assumption That Power Belongs As A Matter Of Course To Capital, All Economists Are Marxians.

While It Will Be Desirable To Achieve Planned Results, It Will Be Even More Important To Avoid Unplanned Disasters.

Anyone Who Says He Won't Resign Four Times, Will.

And There Was A Deeper, Less Visible Effect Of The Truman Loyalty Program. Seeing Its Consequences For Certain Individuals And Fearing Its Intrusion On Their Own Lives, Many In The Government Sought Protection By Strongly Asserting Their Anti-communism. In The Public Action That Ensued, Policy Was Based Not On Reality But, Instinctively Or Deliberately, On Personal Caution...those Who Urged A Militant And Sometimes Military Anti-communism Were Considered Sound, Trustworthy And Personally Safe; Those Who Questioned Such A Course Were Politically Unsafe, Possible Even Slightly Disloyal.

There Is An Insistent Tendency Among Serious Social Scientists To Think Of Any Institution Which Features Rhymed And Singing Commercials, Intense And Lachrymose Voices Urging Highly Improbable Enjoyment, Caricatures Of The Human Esophagus In Normal And Impaired Operation, And Which Hints Implausibly At Opportunities For Antiseptic Seduction As Inherently Trivial. This Is A Great Mistake. The Industrial System Is Profoundly Dependent On Commercial Television And Could Not Exist In Its Present Form Without It.

Authorship Of Any Sort Is A Fantastic Indulgence Of The Ego.

Only Men Of Considerable Vanity Write Books; Consistently Therewith, I Worried Lest The World Were Exchanging An Irreplaceable Author For A More Easily Purchased Diplomat.

The Senate Has Unlimited Debate; In The House, Debate Is Ruthlessly Circumscribed. There Is Frequent Discussion As To Which Technique Most Effectively Frustrates Democratic Process.

We Have A Swarm Of People In The Stock Market - Not Out Of Knowledge, Not Out Of Expectation, But Out Of Basically A Gambling Instinct, The Hope That Prices Will Go Up.

The Myth That Holds That The Great Corporation Is The Puppet Of The Market, The Powerless Servant Of The Consumer, Is, In Fact One Of The Devices By Which Its Power Is Perpetuated.

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