There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
Noam ChomskyRead
Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.
Interpretation
Chomsky suggests that perpetual economic growth can distract from societal inequalities and privileges.
In this quote, Noam Chomsky critically assesses the notion of unlimited economic growth, pointing out that it serves to placate dissatisfaction among the populace while simultaneously upholding the privileges of the few. This phenomenon occurs when the promise of growth overshadows underlying issues of inequality, highlighting a tension in liberal economic thought that is often overlooked.
In practice
During an economic summit, this quote can be used to critique policies that favor growth over equity.
There is no plausible theory under which the record of the Pentagon Papers can be interpreted as relating to the national defense.
The 'free-floating intellectual' may occupy himself with problems because of their inherent interest and importance, perhaps to little effect.
If you're teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.
There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster;' instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.
The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it's hardly a traditional political party anymore.
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.
We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.
Markets as well as mobs respond to human emotions; markets as well as mobs can be inflamed to their own destruction.
Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.
The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
The problem is this. The spread of markets outpaces the ability of societies and their political systems to adjust to them, let alone to guide the course they take
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