Economic Evolution Quotes

Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

The economy of tomorrow is unlikely to look much like that of yesterday.

I wonder how many people would have thought at the end of World War II that the capitalist system would be one that was meeting the challenges and making things better for people as we approach the 21st century.

Apart from finding a first job, college graduates seem to adapt more easily than those with only a high school degree as the economy evolves and labor-market needs change.

I think we live in a period of profound transformation. Very similar to when we had a transition from agricultural societies to industrial societies.

We used to be hunter-gatherers, now we're shopper-borrowers.

Any existing structures and all the conditions of doing business are always in a process of change. Every situation is being upset before it has had time to work itself out. Economic progress, in a capitalist society, means turmoil.

There's always a mismatch. I mean, you know, as the economy evolves, it reallocates resources. Now, the real problem, in my view, is - this has been - the prosperity has been unbelievable for the extremely rich people. If you go to 1982, when Forbes put on their first 400 list, those people had $93 billion. They now they have $2.4 trillion, 25 for one. That is - this has been a prosperity that's been disproportionately rewarding to the people on top.

Capitalism is not so much an aberration as a step on an evolutionary path, and one that contains within it some of the answers to its own contradictions.

When I was a teenager, the most valuable American companies were in finance and manufacturing.

The great mass of people are incapable of realizing that in economic life nothing is permanent except change. They regard the existing state of affairs as eternal; as it has been so shall it always be.

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.

The China of the 1970s was a communist dictatorship. The China of the twenty-first century is a one-party state without a firm ideological foundation, more similar to Mexico under the PRI than Russia under Stalin. But the measurement of the political and the economic evolution has not yet been completed, and is one of the weak points of the system.

The one thing people don't appreciate, I think, is that central banking is not a new development. It's been around for a very long time.

I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution.

The merchant created the industrialist.

This capitalist society has not lasted forever; it's only a few hundred years old.

They [leaders in Western Europe] do not misuse financial instruments, financial injections, but, first of all, seek structural change. This is urgent for our economy as well, maybe even more urgent bearing in mind the problem that we cannot yet deal with, namely the prevalence of the oil and gas sector in the Russian Federation and, as a result, dependence on revenue from oil and gas.

The history of economic growth is the history of people making more with less and shifting into new jobs that were unheard of in the previous generation.

Throughout the 20th century, we created wealth through vertically integrated corporations. Now, we create wealth through networks. We are at a turning point in human history, where the industrial age has finally run out of gas.

Every innovation makes its appearance as a 'luxury' of the few well-to-do. After industry has become aware of it, the luxury then becomes a 'necessity' for all.

The transformation of capitalism is unstoppable because we need limits on resources for humans to survive.

By that time this society is going to be completely different for one thing. Your own son or your own son's son is not going to have the needs for money that you feel you have now. The society itself will be less dependent on money and currency to get along.

Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world.