It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.
E. B. WhiteRead
The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The profit system primarily benefits a small number of individuals while disadvantaging the majority.
E. B. White's quote highlights a fundamental issue with the profit system, suggesting that while it generates wealth, it tends to disproportionately favor those at the top, leaving many people experiencing unprofitability. This reflects the systemic inequalities and challenges that arise within economic structures where profits are prioritized over equitable distribution of resources and opportunities.
Themes
ProfitSystemEconomicsInequalityOpportunity
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing economic policies during a community meeting.
More from E. B. White
All quotes βIt isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
E. B. WhiteRead
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
E. B. WhiteRead
A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
E. B. WhiteRead
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
E. B. WhiteRead
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
E. B. WhiteRead
Similar quotes
America's role in the global economy inevitably was going to diminish; we're smaller relative to - as China, India, other emerging markets grow.
Joseph StiglitzRead
Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught
John Maynard KeynesRead
The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
Milton FriedmanRead
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
Milton FriedmanRead
When people from organizations like the World Bank descended on Third World countries, they always tried to remove obstacles to development, to reduce economic anxiety and uncertainty.
Malcolm GladwellRead
What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.
Muhammad YunusRead