I don't think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.
Interpretation
Democracies require economic stability and job security for their citizens to function effectively.
Joseph Stiglitz emphasizes that the success of democracies is closely tied to the economic well-being of the populace. When the majority of people feel insecure about their jobs and economic prospects, it undermines the foundations of democratic governance, leading to discontent and instability. Therefore, economic benefits and job security are essential for a healthy democratic society.
In practice
This quote could be used in a political debate to highlight the importance of economic issues in democratic societies.
Free migration within Europe means that countries that have done a better job at reducing unemployment will predictably end up with more than their fair share of refugees. Workers in these countries bear the cost in depressed wages and higher unemployment, while employers benefit from cheaper labor.
Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It's not going to happen in the United States, and it's not going to happen in Europe.
What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.
One of the arguments I make for the failure of the euro is that, at the time it was being constructed, there was a 'neo-liberal' ideology which said that all we need to do to make this thing work is to get deficits low, keep inflation low, and take down barriers, and then everything would be fine.
Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies - whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico - are stronger. But Trump's approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.
We have a locale-based education system; we have increasing economic segregation. We clearly need a larger federal program to try to help disadvantaged districts.
The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.
Look: I don't want to live with a nuclear Iran. I would like to make it uncomfortable for them to seek it.
Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.
Politics are not a science based on logic; they are the capacity of always choosing at each instant, in constantly changing situations, the least harmful, the most useful.
Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.
We can't have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.
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