We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays.
Interpretation
Self-interest can harm both morality and economics.
Franklin D. Roosevelt underscores the idea that prioritizing one's own self-interest, without regard for the broader community, leads to both moral failures and economic consequences. The collapse of a seemingly prosperous economy serves as a lesson that ethical considerations in economic practices ultimately lead to sustained success and welfare for society as a whole.
In practice
During a business seminar focusing on ethical leadership, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of integrity in economic decision-making.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back.
The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP.
Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark.
The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.
Thus, the same blow that strikes interest down will send wages up.
Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you'll create credit... So you reach a certain point that that you can't do that anymore... There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?
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