All countries will eventually need to rebuild their growth models around digital technologies and the human capital that supports their deployment and expansion.
Michael SpenceRead
Reforms aimed at increasing an economy's flexibility are always hard - and even more so at a time of weak growth - because they require eliminating protections for vested interests in the short term for the sake of greater long-term prosperity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Implementing reforms for an economy can be difficult as it often requires sacrificing current interests for future benefits.
This quote highlights the inherent challenges in making economic reforms, particularly during periods of low growth. It suggests that in order to improve flexibility and promote long-term prosperity, policymakers must confront and dismantle existing protections that benefit certain interests, which can be politically and socially contentious in the short term.
Themes
ReformsEconomyFlexibilityGrowthProsperityShort TermInterests
In practice
Example use cases
During a government meeting discussing economic strategies, this quote could be referenced to emphasize the need for necessary reforms.
More from Michael Spence
All quotes →Developing economies may not have much control over the headwinds that they face today, but that does not mean that they are powerless. Much can be done not just to sustain moderate growth but also to secure a more prosperous and resilient future.
Michael SpenceRead
One way to measure the size of a company, industry, or economy is to determine its output. But a better way is to determine its added value - namely, the difference between the value of its outputs, that is, the goods and services it produces, and the costs of its inputs, such as the raw materials and energy it consumes.
Michael SpenceRead
Similar quotes
The high cost of housing is crushing poor families and sending them to a state of desperation.
Matthew DesmondRead
The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead
There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
A healthy economy is largely a result of a reasonable balance between consumption today and consumption deferred, and it's pretty clear that balance has been ridiculously out of whack for a while.
Adam DavidsonRead
If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.
Noam ChomskyRead
In financial terms, my sense is that the distribution of wealth, unequal as it is, is self-perpetuating, and, especially in a linked and accelerating world, the rich get ever more quickly richer while the poor get ever more speedily poorer.
Pico IyerRead