Quotes About Policy

There should be restriction on migration. Some people may criticize me for that. But the future generations will see the merit in my argument.

Clearly, Mayor Bloomberg did some things right. I think he did a very good job on public health. He did a very good job on environment. I think he was right to achieve mayoral control of education. I don't think he then applied it the right way.

Some things are too important to be left to the private sector.

I think that it's a mistake to assume that because you're taking a position from somebody else who you might disagree with - or you know you disagree with on some things - to assume that you disagree with on everything and to not look at each policy on its own merits.

If somebody had said to me in June or July of 1987, 'We'd like you to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, but you're never allowed to discuss any economics after you leave,' I'd have said, 'Forget it.' What do they want me to do? Become an anthropologist?'

Every president, Democrat or Republican, every Congress, has gotten behind the idea that we have to invest in our highways, our bridges, our roads, our airports. The idea that now this is somehow a partisan issue, it boggles the mind.

I disagree with the concept that somehow or another we're going to pack up 10, to 12, to 15 million people and ship them back to the country of origin. That's not going to happen.

Everything we do in public policy prevents us from doing something else. To govern is to choose.

If a private enterprise is a failure, it closes down—unless it can get a government subsidy to keep it going; if a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. I challenge you to find exceptions.

It is ironic that the Great Depression was produced by government but was blamed on the private enterprise system. The Federal Reserve System explained in its 1933 annual report how much worse things would have been if the Federal Reserve had not behaved so well, yet the Federal Reserve was the chief culprit in making the depression as deep as it was. So the government produced the depression, the private enterprise system got blamed for it, and there was a tremendous change in attitudes.

Highway Congestion We all complain about highway congestion. That is interesting for a different reason. The private automobile industry is able to produce all the automobiles anybody wants to drive, but the government is apparently not able to produce a comparably adequate highway system, a clear contrast.

government to force people to act against their own immediate interests in order to promote a supposedly general interest.

In a crisis we are all Keynesians.

After the fall of communism, everybody in the world agreed that socialism was a failure. Everybody in the world, more or less, agreed that capitalism was a success. And every capitalist country in the world apparently deduced from that what the West needed was more socialism.

A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty.

You can not simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

a private enterprise is a failure, it closes down—unless it can get a government subsidy to keep it going; if a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. I challenge you to find exceptions. The

Se colocarmos o Estado para administrar o Deserto do Saara, em 5 anos faltará areia.

A solução do governo para um problema é normalmente tão ruim quanto o próprio problema.

The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

Politics is almost never violent toward the people who are actually making the political decisions.

The theory of economic shock therapy relies in part on the roleof expectations on feeding an inflationary process. Reining in inflation requires not only changing monetary policy but also changing the behavior of consumers, employers and workers. The role of a sudden, jarring policy shift is that it quickly alters expectations, signaling to the public that the rules of the game have changed dramatically - prices will not keep rising, nor will wages.

The author and intellectual Cornel West has said that 'justice is what love looks like in public.' I often think that neoliberalism is what lovelessness looks like as policy.

The three policy pillars of this new era are familiar to us all: privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending.