Economic right

“ The common run of political economists confuse these together, under the designation of economic laws, which they deem incapable of being defeated or modified by human effort; ascribing the same necessity to things dependent on the unchangeable conditions of our earthly existence, and to those which, being but the necessary consequences of particular social arrangements, are merely co-extensive with these: given certain institutions and customs, wages, profits, and rent will be determined by certain causes ”

“ But the flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State and have bred individuals greater than themselves, and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master instead of servant, property in many necessaries of life becoming monopoly of the necessaries of life. ”

“ During a ceremony at the Jefferson Memorial here in Washington, we discussed the four basic economic freedoms: the freedom to work, the freedom to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, the freedom to own and control one's property, and the freedom to participate in a free market. ”

“ People who opposed some long-overdue measure of State regulation believed themselves to be justified by the eternal verities of economic law, and this claim even the advocates of the measure seldom ventured to dispute. They took refuge rather in a conception of economic law as a dangerous monster, whose claws must be clipped in the interests of the higher good. ”

“ This general tendency of present day capitalist policies determines the policies of the individual states as their supreme blindly operating law, just as the laws of economic competition determine the conditions under which the individual manufacturer shall produce. ”

“ No, I mean that economic policy which is best calculated to promote, together with the physical well-being, also the moral health of the people, and thus to strengthen the foundations of our institutions of democratic government. There is little danger that this nation will not be rich, but there is danger that it may be rich and rotten.
I have always been in sympathy with some of the objects which the protectionists profess to have in view. I believe in diversification of the occupations and industries of the people as an element of enlightenment and progress. ”

“ At the heart of our efforts is one idea vindicated by 25 straight months of economic growth: Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress. We have begun to increase the rewards for work, savings, and investment; reduce the increase in the cost and size of government and its interference in people's lives. ”

“ The question of the play of economic forces thus generally reduces itself to a problem which may be thus stated: What are the conditions of industrial equilibrium? How must prices, rates of wages, and profit be related in order that the various classes concerned may receive such proportions of produce as are compatible with the maintenance of the existing system of organisation? If any specified change occurs, if production becomes easier or more difficult, if a tax be imposed, or a regulation of any kind affects previous conditions, what changes will be necessary to restore the equilibrium? ”

“ Economic freedom is, in fact, the requisite of greater prosperity for every American who earns his own living.
In the field of labor legislation, only a law that merits the respect and support of both labor and management can help reduce the loss of wages and of production through strikes and stoppages, and thus add to the total economic strength of our Nation. ”

“ The social economic system must conform to the principles of equity with the special object of guaranteeing an honourable livelihood to all. Within these limits economic freedom shall be secured to each individual. ”

“ As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions which abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State which should abolish capitalism. ”

“ In carrying out this policy of government regulation and supervision of corporations he became involved in a great struggle with the powerful financial interests whose profits were threatened, and with those legislators who sincerely believed that government should solely concern itself with protecting life and property, and should leave questions of individual and social relations in trade and finance to be settled by the operation of so-called natural economic laws. ”

“ Resources of government.—All expenditures of government are as subject to economic laws with reference to consumption of wealth as are those of individuals. Actual result in welfare is the only reason for such expenditure. Hence the same tests of economy are applied. Government makes but few expenditures for the immediate purpose of reproducing and increasing wealth. So far as its investments sustain productive industry, and the products of that industry enter into the world's market, they are subject to the same economic laws of supply and demand that govern all production of wealth. ”

“ Economic "states rights" or individualism—the theory upon which the present day industry as well as the modern state was founded. Under this theory each economic group must be free to go its way, cutting a path for itself through the ranks of its competitors, and making its triumphant advance over their prostrate remains. ”

“ Demand for commodities stimulates and regulates the machinery of production.
Those in control of the modern economic system have no choice but to produce surplus, and once having produced it, they have no choice except to dispose of it. An inexorable fate drives them onward—augmenting their burdens as it multiplies their labors.
Investment opportunities, of necessity, are eagerly sought by the plutocracy, since the law of their system is "Invest or perish"! ”

“ Fair exchange above laws.—Under perfect freedom of exchange, the general law of supply and demand already illustrated is more effective than any laws can be in adjusting wages or profit to efforts in production, and in adjusting interest or rent or both to the capital employed or to other means of production controlled. ”

“ No one can question the control which business interests exercise over the jobs, the industrial product, and the economic surplus of the community. These facts are universally admitted. But the corollaries which flow naturally from such axioms are not so readily accepted. Yet given the economic power of the business world, the control over the channels of public opinion and over the machinery of government follows as a matter of course. ”

“ There is a decided tendency at present to a strengthening of the regulative power of the state for the protection of the weaker classes of society. And yet on the whole the institution of private property, free competition, and a maximum of individual liberty remain the fundamental conditions of our economic life.
But while under the system of individualism, industrial activities have been multiplied, wealth has been enormously increased, and human progress has been greatly advanced, many abuses and evils still remain. Many practical economic problems still await solution. ”

“ That stability must, of course, take into consideration the right of labor to have a living wage. Higher wages built on high and efficient production provide purchasing power for goods and start the cycle of production for consumption, which should be the goal of our economic development. ”

“ One will be inclined to numerous offices, large salaries, and an expensive government; the other, from the moderate fortunes of the inhabitants, and their simple way of life will prefer low taxes, small salaries, and a very frugal civil establishment. One imports almost every article of consumption and pays for it in produce; the other is far removed from navigation, has very little to export, and must therefore supply its own wants. Consequently one will favour commerce, the other manufactures; one wishes slaves, the other will be better without them. ”

“ We the people, deserve to know that our jobs, paychecks, homes, and pensions are safe from the taxers and regulators of big government. Jefferson warned us of this threat 200 years ago. Our Economic Bill of Rights is designed to protect the economic freedom of all Americans and to keep our country growing and prospering. ”

“ The economic system we should ultimately wish to see would be one in which the state would be the sole recipient of economic rent, while private capitalistic enterprises should be replaced by self-governing combinations of those who actually do the work. ”

“ In the opening section of this text attention was called to the fact that economic freedom or liberty was one of the corner stones of our modern industrial society. But freedom can best be secured by securing equality and responsibility. Factory legislation and labor laws are designed to correct the inequalities imposed by nature or involved in the very nature of capitalistic production. ”

“ Economic systems are concerned essentially with the production and distribution of material goods. Our present system is wasteful on the production side, and unjust on the side of distribution. It involves a life of slavery to economic forces for the great majority of the community, and for the minority a degree of power over the lives of others which no man ought to have. ”

“ They resented the taxes, the social welfare legislation, and all the halfway measures of regulated capitalism that sought to redistribute economic burdens without affecting the structure of the profit system. ”

“ Our economic system is topsyturvy. It makes the interest of the individual conflict with the interest of the community in a thousand ways in which no such conflict ought to exist. Under a better system the benefits of free trade and the evils of tariffs would be obvious to all. ”

“ Whatever power they did secure, whether as potent subsidiary organs of the municipal polity for the regulation of trade, or as the chief or sole medium for the acquisition of citizenship, or as integral parts of the common council, was, generally speaking, the logical sequence of a gradual economic development, and not the outgrowth of a revolutionary movement by which oppressed craftsmen endeavoured to throw off the yoke of an arrogant patrician gild merchant. ”

“ The essential economic decisions, however, are still made by the owners of private wealth. If there is to be an organization of economic society that will function successfully and autonomously, the knowledge on which the decisions affecting economic policy are made must be public property. Until that step is taken the economic life of society will be directed by the chance desires of those who own the machinery of production. ”

“ Another group of problems affecting business, which cannot be termed specific abuses, gives us food for grave thought about the future. Generically such problems arise out of the concentration of economic control to the detriment of the body politic--control of other people's money, other people's labor, other people's lives.
In many instances such concentrations cannot be justified on the ground of operating efficiency, but have been created for the sake of securities profits, financial control, the suppression of competition and the ambition for power over others. ”

“ Such arguments, at least, cannot be worth considering. But, to say nothing of cases which may be put by an ingenious disputant in which this may not quite apply, we have to consider reasons which may be extra-economical. When it is suggested, for example, that the economic disadvantage is a fair price for political independence; or, on the other hand, that the stimulus of competition is actually good for the trade affected; or, again, that protection tends naturally to corruption; we have arguments which, good or bad, are outside the sphere of economics proper. ”

“ Land Ownership and Liberty
The owners of American wealth have been molded gradually into a ruling class. Years of brutal, competitive, economic struggle solidified their ranks,—distinguishing friend from enemy; clarifying economic laws, and demonstrating the importance of coördination in economic affairs. Economic control, once firmly established, opened before the wealth owning class an opportunity to dominate the entire field of public life. ”

“ This may hold true even of a trade union or a sense of "fair wages." The business of economic theory is not to justify a regime of laissez-faire, still less to show the folly of bringing morals into business. Its value is rather that it may help us, by improving our understanding, to shape our institutions, and to adopt our moral sentiments so as to promote the public welfare. With these general notions in our minds, let us turn to see how stands the case with Labor. ”

“ In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands, or in the hands of our legislators, than it does with America's workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny, just as they always have. ”

“ The inspiration and outcome of a reforming movement ought to be freedom and a generous spirit, not niggling restrictions and regulations.
The present economic system concentrates initiative in the hands of a small number of very rich men. Those who are not capitalists have, almost always, very little choice as to their activities when once they have selected a trade or profession; they are not part of the power that moves the mechanism, but only a passive portion of the machinery. ”

“ For this reason the attenuation of the rights at present involved in the private ownership of industrial capital, or their complete abolition, is not the demand of idealogues, but an indispensable element in a policy of economic efficiency, since it is the condition of the most effective functioning of the human beings upon whom, though, like other truisms, it is often forgotten, {148} economic efficiency ultimately depends. ”