A Quote by Paul Johnson
A capitalist economy hums when leading businessmen are bubbling with animal spirits and are prepared to sink their money into risky ventures.
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I always believed in animal spirits. It's not their existence that is new. It's the fact that they are not random events, but actually replicate in-bred qualities of human nature which create those animal spirits.
Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the capitalist economy. If we ever do find a better system, I'll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist.
If the Chinese economy can be opened so that currencies are convertible, Chinese tourists can take money and go see the world. Chinese businessmen can go and buy property in the U.S. and France and every place. All of a sudden, it's just going to be a blossoming global economy. I think it's going to be good for everybody.
All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.
The last thing businessmen want to do is sit in a room filled with other businessmen. A room full of money is a pretty boring sight - unless it's yours, of course.
There is a new economy out there, what I call the Crypto-Tech Economy, that could be as big, if not bigger, than the web economy. So we have to be prepared for it.
Money, amazingly, is losing its power... Our economy is rapidly changing from a money economy to a satisfaction economy.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts slashes taxes on the very wealthy and kills regulations with the idea that rich businessmen will invest their money into the economy to support workers - the same idea that Republicans embraced in the 1920s.
My claim is that we do not have a market economy, but a capitalist economy.
No economic activity was more irrepressible [in the 14th century] than the investment and lending at interest of money; it was the basis for the rise of the Western capitalist economy and the building of private fortunes-and it was based on the sin of usury.
But public works, economic protectionism, cheap money, "deficit-financed government spending," and "the animal spirits of the spendthrift in the service of boosting "consumption demand"... Doesn't Keynesianism simply appeal to the worst in human nature?
In a capitalist system, there's a principle that if you invest, especially in a long-term risky investment, if something comes out of it, you're supposed to get the profit. It doesn't happen in our system. The taxpayer paid for it and gets nothing - assumes all of the risk, gets zero. The money goes into the pockets of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who are ripping off decades of work in the public sector.
Man is a thinking animal, a talking animal, a toolmaking animal, a building animal, a political animal, a fantasizing animal. But, in the twilight of a civilization he is chiefly a taxpaying animal.
A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!
The seriousness of my situation started to sink in, and again I fought panic. I pushed it down, but it was harder this time, like my insides were an open can of shaken soda and I was trying to keep it from bubbling up out of the top.
Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as do the wordsmith intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces that animus.
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