A Quote by Reinhold Niebuhr
The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes.
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The financial doctrines so zealously followed by American companies might help optimize capital when it is scarce. But capital is abundant. If we are to see our economy really grow, we need to encourage migratory capital to become productive capital - capital invested for the long-term in empowering innovations.
All that was clear that the profits to be had from smart people making complicated bets overwhelmed anything that could be had from servicing customers, or allocating capital to productive enterprise.
Capital must work, as it were, in concert with industry; and this concurrence is what I call the productive agency of capital.
It is the institutions of society, not parental genes, that bestow the blessings of ownership of productive capital.
It seems to me self-evident that we cannot have capitalism without capital and, very importantly, that the ultimate source of all economic capital is Nature's capital
During the period of capital moving from one employment to another, the profits on that to which capital is flowing will be relatively high, but will continue so no longer than till the requisite capital is obtained.
It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.
The brilliant creative core of capitalism ... is the story the entrepreneurs and capital investors tell themselves about the future. How they intend to alter it, what they expect to gain in return, where they will raise the capital to accomplish their vision. Many of their stories turn out to be flawed or mistaken, of course, but the capacity to envision a set of future events and then act to fulfill them is a central source of capitalism's strength and its dominance of society.
There's bound to be a recovery in [capital spending] sometime soon. We have had basically no capital investment for about year. At some point, machinery wears out, and you've got to replace it.
capital is the result of saving, and not of spending. The spendthrift who wastes his substance in riotous living decreases the capital of the country, and therefore the excuse often made for extravagance, that it is good for trade, is based upon false notions respecting capital.
There are but three political-economic roads from which we can choose... We could take the first course and further exacerbate the already concentrated ownership of productive capital in the American economy. Or we could join the rest of the world by taking the second path, that of nationalization. Or we can take the third road, establishing policies to diffuse capital ownership broadly, so that many individuals, particularly workers, can participate as owners of industrial capital. The choice is ours.
Those subject to capital punishment are real human beings, with their own backgrounds and narratives. By contrast, those whose lives are or might be saved by virtue of capital punishment are mere 'statistical people.' They are both nameless and faceless, and their deaths are far less likely to be considered in moral deliberations.
The invectives against capital in the hands of those who have it are double-faced, and when turned about are nothing but demands for capital in the hands of those who have it not, in order that they may do with it just what those who have it now are doing with it.
I don't want to overvalue Donald Trump as some historical rupture, and to admit that I do think Trump is an indication of a fairly profound change. But the change started a while ago, and it has taken a while to appear. Global capital, particularly western capital, has been in decline since the late 60s and early 70s. The softness appeared in the 60s, the profit rate fell off the table in 1972 - 73, and there have been very uneven recoveries. This has been an ongoing weakening of the productive economy of accumulation at a global scale, of capital's capacity to expand.
It's a tract against capital punishment in the genre of Swift's Modest Proposal. I was simply following a formula to its logical conclusion. Some people appear to have understood it. The publication of Naked Lunch in England practically coincided with their abolition of capital punishment. The book obviously had a certain effect.
Great leadership and great companies aren't built overnight, and they're not built without capital. And capital can sometimes be counter-productive to building a great culture.
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