Quotes About Policy

At the same time, most of what government does that helps them is now so deeply woven into the thread of daily life that it's no longer recognizable as government.

As the economic historian Karl Polanyi recognized, those who argue for "less government" are really arguing for a different government—often one that favors them or their patrons.1

With declining state and local spending, total public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12 percent of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3 percent in 2011.

Markets need rules for determining the degree to which economic power can be concentrated without damaging the system.

A market—any market—requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. The

truth, income and wealth increasingly depend on who has the power to set the rules of the game.

over the last 16 years, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars when we could have been investing that money productively.

protect biodiversity. It has used its political muscle in Washington to fight moves in other nations to ban

The rich are "job creators," so tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else while higher taxes on the rich hurt the economy and slow job growth. Untrue. Look at recent history. George W. Bush cut taxes on the rich, and what happened? A fraction of the number of jobs were created under Bush than had been created under Bill Clinton, and the median wage dropped, adjusted for inflation. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. As

the mammoth deficits that will be racked up beyond 2020 are due almost entirely to rapidly rising health-care costs along with seventy-seven million baby boomers whose bodies will slowly be deteriorating.

America is one of the few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs to consumers.

It's unfair that middle- and lower-income Americans have been paying a smaller share of federal income taxes and some pay no income tax at all. There's nothing unfair about it. Fairness requires that people who make more money pay a higher portion of their incomes in taxes than people with less money. That's called a progressive tax system, and it's been a foundation stone of America's tax code.

Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation's budget deficit in just two years.

The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003—and extended for two years in 2010—in 2011 saved the richest 1.4 million taxpayers (the top 1 percent) more money than the rest of America's 140,890,000 taxpayers received in total income. Leading to… The fifth dot: Government budgets are squeezed.

The French government classifies books as an "essential good," along with electricity, bread, and water.

It's scandalous that the four hundred richest Americans should pay an average of 17 percent tax on their incomes, a rate lower than that paid by many in the middle class.

In the half century spanning 1958 to 2008, the average effective tax rate of the richest 1 percent of Americans—including all deductions and tax credits—dropped from 51 percent to 26 percent.

During the same period the typical middle-class taxpayer went from paying 15 percent of income in taxes to 16 percent.

The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003—and extended for two years in 2010—in 2011 saved the richest 1.4 million taxpayers (the top 1 percent) more money than the rest of America's 140.89 million taxpayers received in total income.

Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society's evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them.

U.S. Internal Revenue Service: an agency modeled after the revenue raising concepts of the 19th century economist, Jesse James.

A computer program is a detailed description of the policy by which inputs are transformed into outputs.

The goal of the architect is to create a shape for the system that recognizes policy as the most essential element of the system while making the details irrelevant to that policy. This allows decisions about those details to be delayed and deferred.

First, let's consider the notion that using services, by their nature, is an architecture. This is patently untrue. The architecture of a system is defined by boundaries that separate high-level policy from low-level detail and follow the Dependency Rule. Services that simply separate application behaviors are little more than expensive function calls, and are not necessarily architecturally significant.