Money Making Quotes
Likely misattributed. The phrase was popularized by the writer Orville Schell in "To Get Rich Is Glorious: China in the '80s" (1984) but Schell never actually attributed the words to Deng, telling the L.A. Times's Evelyn Iritani in 2004 that it merely "grew out of the zeitgeist" of China's economic reforms.
Although England had benefitted more from the industrial revolution than most nations, the English Aristocracy and its intelligencia saw business as inherently corrupt with minimal ethical standards and almost no transparency. See {629121} for a Christian religious version of this secular quotation.
He observes that many of the richest people and businesses are those who have lobbied for laws that either enrich them or hinder their competitors. Reduced regulations turn into "gold" on several ways: The company no longer has the administrative cost of complying with the regulations—thus increasing their profits. At the same time often the regulation prevents taking advantage of consumers or other businesses and when repealed, the company can go back to the pre-regulation era and obtain more business or higher prices, both of which increase profits—gold.