Kenneth E. Boulding Quotes

In the old days the problems of government were few and political, now they are many and are economic and sociological ...

I think that the future belongs to democracy, but not to capitalism, because they are opposite camps.

Economics, never a science, has always been politics in disguise

Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently.

Our society is intertwined with the economy that we've built, which is a fantastically complex system. I hope that my writing about it might do some good, but that's not why I do it.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.

Capitalism without Judaism, Christianity, or some other moral basis is just pure greed.

All systems of political administration or governmental machinery are but the reflex of the economic forms which underlie them

There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible.

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth—not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced—to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery.

An economic failure becomes a radicalizing force only when an alternative exists

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power, the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority.

We have to stop allowing economics to be used as a trump card. Capitalism is like math. It is amoral. It is good at producing wealth; it's bad at distributing wealth. Unless it operates within a moral framework it will produce an unjust society.

I was certain that I was not a Marxist, but I did believe firmly that a connection between economics and politics existed

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

Since Mill, in 1848, wrote his chapter on the future of the working classes, the question of the distribution of wealth has be-come of still greater importance. We cannot look round on the political phenomena of to-day without seeing that this question is at the root of them. We see the perplexity in which men stand, and the divisions springing up in our great political parties, because of the uncertainty of politicians how to grapple with it.

[Should we] pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings, an ignorant and helpless rural family, for the purpose of parading the nakedness, disadvantage and humiliation of these lives before another group of human beings, in the name of science, of ‘honest journalism”?

In 10 years, ... you're going to see the most valuable economy in the world -- the largest economy in the world -- is going to be a country run by communists. The Chinese seem to be very good at capitalism. And this is going to have fundamental problems and present an identity crisis for the United States. Because for a long time, free markets coincided with liberties such as free speech, free press, free religion. And all of a sudden, this equation is going to be decoupled. And when it gets decoupled, we might find that democracy, the multitude of voices, actually impedes capitalism because a state that does not have any pretense of limited government can very quickly mandate a regulatory framework for drones, for electric cars, for self-driving cars, for any new innovation where they feel that they can leapfrog Western societies. And this is a very unique thing in the American experience. And this is why it's very important to think of American capitalism as an operating system and not as an ideology. Because when you think about it as an ideology, you can have good politics make for very, very bad policy. That market outcomes and democratic voices and battles for votes can end up stifling progress.

History and social sciences were my interests. I was always interested in knowing how societies get organized, why there is rich and poor divide, why there are classes. I was never apolitical. I think we are all political in a way. Politics decides our day-to-day life.

Economics and ethics have little in common.

Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty.

The problem is that once we focus on economic policy, much that is not science comes into play. Politics becomes involved, and political posturing is amply rewarded by public attention.

We may forget it, among the glitz of the Christmas lights, but capitalism can be a profoundly moral force.