One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that viewing the economy as fixed and unchanging is a significant mistake.
John Kenneth Galbraith argues that perceiving the economy as a stable and unchanging entity is a major flaw in economic thought. He suggests that the economy is in fact dynamic, influenced by human behavior, societal changes, and various external factors, and should be viewed as fluid rather than rigid.
In practice
In a lecture about economic theories, one could use this quote to challenge conventional thinking.
One of the little-celebrated powers of Presidents (and other high government officials) is to listen to their critics with just enough sympathy to ensure their silence.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.
Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not.
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
What many economists fail to understand is that poor people are no less concerned about improving their lot and that of their children than rich people are.
After the 1929 crash, the Federal Reserve mistakenly focused its policies on preserving the gold value of the dollar rather than on stabilizing the domestic economy.
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough jobs or enough profits
To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward mobility we once considered normal will require another era of fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.