Quotes from Jeffrey D. Sachs

America cut back on "welfare" from the 1970s onward. Family income support fell from 0.4 percent of GDP in 1970 to under 0.2 percent in 2010.16 Welfare still looms large in the public's imagination, but it plays little role in the budget and the deficit. It's been a long time since America was generous to its poor families with children! The

The supposition that there is massive waste to be cut in the civilian budget is simply a myth. To recapitulate: ending all earmarks and foreign aid and achieving all of the specific cuts on civilian programs proposed by the deficit commission, even if such choices were meritorious, would amount to less than 1 percent of GDP. True

Basic survival goods are cheap, whereas narcissistic self-stimulation and social-display products are expensive. Living doesn't cost much, but showing off does.3 For

it is the provision of public services, notably the universal access to affordable day care, even more than income support to families, that is key to the elimination of poverty among families with children. Sweden's public services, of uniformly high quality, ensure a decent start for all children. Sweden

It is easy to lose sight of the ultimate purpose of economic policy: the life satisfaction of the population. That ultimate goal should be unassailable for a country founded precisely to defend the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.

With higher saving and investment rates, both public and private, directed towards productive capital, the United States could overcome secular stagnation.

humans have a profound ability both to cooperate and nurture and to shun others and fight.8 In our advanced technological age, with the capacity of our weapons to end human life, our ability to master our baser emotions and channel them toward constructive and cooperative outcomes will provide the basis for our survival.

Our greatest national illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth.

measures like GDP per person give only a rough reflection of the overall level of wellbeing of an individual or a nation. But for sustainable development we are interested in raising human wellbeing, not just in raising income, still less in a mad race for more riches for people who are already rich. Therefore, it is important to ask how we can best measure wellbeing (or life satisfaction) beyond GDP per capita.

The compromises made with the rich are consistently out of line with public opinion. The public desires to tax the rich more heavily, cut military spending, and develop renewable energy alternatives to oil. The outcome instead is tax cuts for the rich, unchecked military spending, and a continued stagnation in alternatives to oil, gas, and coal. Both

We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology. That, in a nutshell, is how we have lurched into the early twenty-first century."9

When libertarians deride the idea of social fairness as just one more nuisance, they unleash greed. The kind of unconstrained greed that is now loose in America is leading not to real liberty but to corporate criminality and deceit; not to democracy but to politics dominated by special interests; and not to prosperity but to income stagnation for much of the population and untold riches at the very top.

is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights—the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation—the right to breathe air as nature provided it—the right of future generations to a healthy existence?10 Kennedy

our common humanity made it possible to find common cause in the midst of competition and that peace depended on our own virtue and ethical behavior.

A considerable amount of American consumption spending is not for the enjoyment of consumption per se, but to show off wealth, status, or sexual allure. In the famous phrase of the economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen, this is "conspicuous consumption," that is, consumption whose main purpose is to impress others rather than to be enjoyed by oneself.2

Is there a way forward, when campaign financing and mega-lobbying have displaced the common good and have led Americans to despair about the functioning of the political system? Since incumbent politicians won't vote for campaign reform on their own, are we doomed to a vicious circle of big money, big corruption, failing public services, and a collapse of democratic rule?

we may well look back at the 2016 election as the moment when the corruption and sheer incompetence of Washington became so large and transparent that an era of reform finally got underway. Even if Washington goes badly in the wrong direction in 2017 and beyond, the American people may begin to mobilize for true and deep political reforms.

The end result of all this consumption is a society running furiously to stay in place. The overwork by each member of society puts a burden (a negative externality) on others, who must also run hard to keep up. Consumers also run because others are running, with everybody finding themselves in a race they'd rather do without. The

This is an age of impunity, a time when the rich and powerful get away with their misdeeds, and are even lauded for them in some quarters.

According to the latest wealth data of the Federal Reserve Board in the Flow of Funds, the total net worth of households is around $56.8 trillion.27 The wealth of the top 1 percent is therefore around $20.6 trillion. With roughly 113 million households, the average wealth of the richest 1 percent is roughly $18.2 million per household.

The combination of higher income taxation and wealth taxation would thereby raise at least 2 percentage points of GDP from the very top earners. But even if they had to pay another 2 percent of GDP, there would certainly be no need to shed tears for the rich. Their net-of-tax income would remain around 10 percent of GDP, a share of national income two-thirds higher than the 6 percent of GDP in 1980. There

My point here is to insist that the rich should pay their way, and that they can easily afford to do so. All of the angst of canceling vital government programs to close the deficit is a charade put on by the rich for the rich. With a fair tax structure and a just contribution of the rich to the rest of society, we can afford a truly civilized America. Let

We need the rich today to do their modest part to enable all of society to share in prosperity. By passing that hurdle, we would reduce the need for long-term transfers from rich to poor in the future. The

Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit.