Michael Tomasky > Quotes

“Freedom is not freedom if you work full time and live in poverty. Freedom is not freedom if a single medical crisis can drive you to bankruptcy. It is not freedom if child care is too expensive for you to hold a job, or if you are born poor and at every turn are blocked in your rise: by underfunded schools, overpriced colleges, and usurious college loans.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“For all intents and purposes, the Republican Party’s top economic advisers are Fox News and talk radio hosts. And Norquist, and Tom Donohue of the Chamber of Commerce, and the Koch brothers, and a few oilmen and bankers. Republicans do only what these people want, which is why, for example, they never passed an infrastructure bill when they had unified control of government in 2017 and 2018.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“Unchained capitalism operates under no rules of restraint, whereas democracy requires constant acts of self-restraint to work as intended.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“It’s a perfect case study proving that to today’s right no amount of evidence matters. Their economic beliefs are not rational. There is no Republican economic thought anymore. Reactionary posturing and reflexive anti-thought have taken over virtually every aspect of right-wing policy making.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“But the economy is something else, too. It’s a set of ideas. Ideas about human nature, about how generous or selfish we are; ideas about how and why people conduct commerce and about what motivates their economic decisions; ideas about what people want and need out of work; ideas about what constitutes the good life and how we as a society can best get there.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“The things they said were never true. Tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. Lower taxes don’t bring in more revenue. The unregulated market not only didn’t fix everything but made a lot of things worse. But Republicans and the right-wing media were so in lockstep in repeating these untruths, and Democrats so undisciplined about rebutting them at their philosophical root, that they stuck around long past their shelf life.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“A lot of liberals are impressively liberal until it comes to their kids.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity

“As a candidate, Clinton had—as all candidates do—torn into his predecessor for coddling China and promised that he would get tough on China’s human rights abuses. As president, Clinton had—as all presidents do—come to see that the reality was a bit more complicated.”
― Michael Tomasky, Bill Clinton: The American Presidents Series: The 42nd President, 1993-2001

“In a few months’ time, Jefferson laid the foundation for our political rights in Philadelphia and went to Richmond to curtail the unfettered economic rights of the rich. The Democrats need to say and say and say what Thomas Jefferson clearly believed: a healthy democracy depends on a fair economy.”
― Michael Tomasky, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity