Wisdom Quotes - Page 185

Thus, the capital owner is not a parasite or a rentier but a worker - a capital worker. A distinction between labor work and capital work suggests the lines along which we could develop economic institutions capable of dealing with increasingly capital-intensive production, as our present institutions cannot.

That which is inherently nonfinanceable is financed. That which is inherently financeable is not financed. And the illogic of poverty amidst eagerness and ability to produce plenty goes on.

The purpose of finance is to enable business to acquire the ownership of capital instruments before it has saved the funds to buy and pay for them. The logic used by business in investing is things that will pay for themselves is not today available to the 95% born without capital. Most of us owe instead of own. And the less the economy needs our labor, the less able we are to "save" our way to capital ownership.

While no inference is intended here, it is worth noting, in connection with Milton Friedman's comment that "Kelso just turned Marx upside down," that it is not necessarily amiss to turn a fellow upside down if that in fact straightens out his thinking.

If capital produces most of the economy's wealth and income is distributed on the basis of productive input, the individual can hardly reach his goal - an affluent level of income - solely by means of his labor.

The way the system now works, credit is extended to those who don't need it and denied to those who are in desperate need of it.

Two-factor economics makes it clear that our economic problem is not what one-factor (labor-centric) thinkers assert: an inequitable distribution of income. It is an inequitable distribution of productive power, from which an unworkable distribution of income results.

The sole missing link is the recognition that the acquisition of capital ownership by the millions is an indispensable goal. That is the turning point - our recognition of the proper goal.

There's only one honest way to measure affluence; that's by comparing the capability of producing goods and services with the desire of people to enjoy them. It's a lousy, crooked trick to compare this society with China or some such place and then say we're affluent. It's a piece of intellectual crookery even to compare this economy with itself ten or twenty years ago. We should compare what we have with what we could have.

We have an economic policy that is just about 10,000 years out of date.

All this plan does is make everybody a capitalist. I know that the New York Stock Exchange says there are 25 million shareholders in the United States, but let me tell you something: about 15 million of those people could save their dividends for 10 years and maybe buy a new suit. That's not what I call capitalism.

But would the young do any better under the same circumstances? Will they do any better when their turns come? The answer is that youth would not and cannot, given the financial and economic framework within which the elders are operating. While the moral convictions of individuals are important in the long run, it is institutions that determine the immediate course of events - particularly the institutions of finance.

The poor lack money. They lack money because they do not know the secret of productive wealth. They know it is possible to be old, unemployed, uneducated, lazy - even halt, deaf, dumb, and blind-and still be excessively rich. But you have to be in on the secret, and the poor by definition are not.

Technology has no function except to save labor. Yet how often do we hear that the purpose of new capital formation is to create jobs?

Full employment is a socially hazardous goal. In effect, it aspires to restore through political expedients the pre-industrial state of toil that science, engineering, technology and modern management are pledged to overcome.

Most of us owe instead of own. And the less the economy needs our labor, the less able we are to "save" our way to capital ownership.

The path the capitalist revolution will take faces in exactly the opposite direction from that taken by the communist revolution. It seeks to diffuse the private ownership of capital instead of abolishing it entirely. It seeks to make all men capitalists instead of preventing anyone from being a capitalist by making the State the only capitalist.

The point is to make the pie grow faster and distribute the new growth more equitably.

A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: "Do it yourself" is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials.

It is often argued that the people who will be affected by a major decision should be involved in it. Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal in southern Africa, once resolved a dispute between two brothers about a land inheritance they were to share. Kruger's decision: let one brother divide the land, and let the other brother have first choice.

Wise people may say what they will, but one passion is never cured by another.

Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.

At the end of knowledge, wisdom begins, and at the end of wisdom, there is not grief...but hope

It is not that which is beautiful that pleases us, but that which pleases is is called beautiful.

There is no greater mistake in the world than the looking upon every sort of nonsense as want of sense.