Quotes About Economics

sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.… —THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to a friend, 1816

The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.

Well, if your books cost what they're worth, I couldn't afford them.

Si vuestros libros costaran lo que valen, yo no podría permitirme comprarlos.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.

As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty and special privilege grow.

Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out -- they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less.

Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist, and you will sweep war from the earth.

It is easier to make money from money than it is to make money from business. Don't take the acumen of bankers as any guide for business, all they know is money.

The healthy business, the business that is always making more and more opportunities for men to earn an honourable and ample living, is the business in which every man does a day's work of which he is proud. And the country that stands most securely is the country in which men work honestly and do not play tricks with the means of production. We cannot play fast and loose with economic laws, because if we do they handle us in very hard ways.

As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow. We

If we had borrowed we should not have been under the necessity of finding methods to cheapen production.

The amount of wealth produced is nowhere commensurate with the desire for wealth, and desire mounts with every additional opportunity for gratification.

As no man made the land, so no man can claim a right of ownership in the land.

If each laborer in performing the labor really creates the fund from which his wages are drawn, then wages cannot be diminished by the increase of laborers, but, on the contrary, as the efficiency of labor manifestly increases with the number of laborers, the more laborers, other things being equal, the higher should wages be.

All I wish to make clear is that, without any increase in population, the progress of invention constantly tends to give a larger proportion of the produce to the owners of land, and a smaller and smaller proportion to labor and capital.

Capital is but a form of labor, and its distinction from labor is in reality but a subdivision, just as the division of labor into skilled and unskilled would be.

We talk about over-production. How can there be such a thing as over-production while people want? All these things that are said to be over-produced are desired by many people. Why do they not get them? They do not get them because they have not the means to buy them; not that they do not want them. Why have not they the means to buy them? They earn too little. When the great masses of men have to work for an average of $1.40 a day, it is no wonder that great quantities of goods cannot be sold

Do not all improvements simply increase the value of land—the price that some must pay others for the privilege of living?

You find a passenger with his baggage strewn over the seats. You say: Will you give me a seat, if you please, sir? He replies: No; I bought this seat. Bought this seat? From whom did you buy it? I bought it from the man who got out at the last station, That is the way we manage this earth of ours.

what do they want with our land? They do not want it at all; it is not the land they want; they have no use for American land. What they want is the income that they know they can in a little while get from it. Where does that income come from? It comes from labour, from the labour of American citizens. What we are selling to these people is our children, not land.

There is no difficulty in discovering what makes those people poor. They have no right to anything that nature gives them. All they can make above a living they must pay to the landlord. They not only have to pay for the land that they use, but they have to pay for the seaweed that comes ashore and for the turf they dig from the bogs. They dare not improve, for any improvements they make are made an excuse for putting up the rent.