Economic Policy Quotes
One economic view of economic development is that the government should invest in education, scientific research, and infrastructure which will produce and stimulate economic growth. The contrary is that taxation takes capital out of the private sector that is needed for investment to produce economic growth. Both sides are correct. In the United States for example three of the greatest economic stimulants were the building of the Railroads, the National Highway System, and the Internet all developed in large part with taxpayer dollars. At the same time taxes do diminish the amount of private capital available for the economy. These are tradeoff decisions like most things in economics.
There were almost no Blacks who agreed with him on this point. Nor do the vast majority of economists today. But Friedman believed that if there were no minimum wage scale, more lower wage workers would find jobs and learn skills to justify a higher wage later in their careers. To some extent, this used to be so for those occupations which require experience and/or apprenticeship. However, by the 21st century, people in minimum wage jobs can, from their jobs, rarely learn enough to economically justify a higher wage position. A minimum wage job became a dead end job for all but students and people in between other endeavors. Therefore the advocates of minimum wage argue that there should be a living wage so that as President Obama said, “No one should work full time, and not make enough to emerge from poverty.”
Ironically the far right wing Fascists and the far left wing Communists agreed on this point: nationalization.
He had just finished itemizing the poor economic performance of the Republicans under George W. Bush and comparing it with the thriving economy and millions of job opportunities created by the Democrats under William Clinton.
Johnson could be incredibly gross and earthy. However, as undignified as his analogy was, everyone understood his insult to Jerry Ford’s economic ideas. Ford was one of the House Republican leaders at the time.
