Cameron’s Reviews > Economics in One Lesson > Status Update

Page 209 “ The result is that today, for the first time in history, no nation is on a metallic standard, and practically every nation is swindling its own people by printing a chronically depreciating paper currency.”

Page 199 “this is the insane doctrine of wealth through scarcity. It is a doctrine that may always be privately true, unfortunately, for any particular group of producers considered in isolation.. But is the doctrine that is always publicly false. It can never be applied all around the circle. For its application would mean economic suicide.”

Page 174 “Inflation is the auto suggestion, the hypnotism, the anesthetic, has dulled the pain of the operation for him. Inflation is the opium of the people.”

Page 162 “Therefore the largest profits go to the firms that have achieved the lowest costs of production. These expand at the expense of the inefficient firms with higher costs.”

How do we balance this need for efficiency & low costs of production with the fact that many companies can achieve higher margins by outsourcing to cheap foreign labor/materials which would lead to domestic unemployment?

Page 162 “For profits may not only go to zero, they may quickly turn into losses; and a man will put forth greater efforts to save himself from ruin than he will merely to improve his position.”

Page 158 “If we try to run the economy for the benefit of a single group or class, we shall injure it destroy all groups, including the members of the very class for whose benefit we have been trying to run it. We must run the economy for everybody.”

Page 139 “The best way to raise wages, therefore, is to raise marginal labor productivity… Real wages come out of production, not out of government decrees.”

Page 125 “Each one of us, in brief, has a multiple economic personality. Each one of us is producer, taxpayer, consumer. The policies he advocates depend upon the particular aspect under which he thinks of himself at the moment. For he is sometimes Dr. Jekyll and sometimes Mr. Hyde.”

Page 97, “We could solve the matter simply, on the other hand, by ending both the parity-price system and the protective-tariff system. Meanwhile they do not, in combination, even out anything. The joint system means merely that Farmer A and Industrialist B both profit at the expense of Forgotten Man C.”