Jan Chipchase Quotes

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

We all know that China is industrializing at a growth rate of 8 to 10 percent per year. China is on track to pass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 20 to 25 years, and China is determined to give its people a chance at this high standard of living that we enjoy.

In China, you've got six people buying for one child. But the thing is, you've got the largest rising upper-middle class in the world.

Our goal is to upgrade the life of China's middle class. We all want to live better.

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.

If India is an emerging economy with millions of new consumers, sell them the Volvo. Sell them the Cielo car. Sell them whatever you can, hamburgers and KFCs. It’s the middle classes who have moved into being able to own a car, a refrigerator. For them there is this mantra that the General Electric refrigerator is better than some other model, that the Cielo car is fancier than the Ambassador.

You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.

If you go and stop people at a supermarket and ask them for their receipt and say, 'Hey how much did you just spend?' middle class shoppers have no idea. The poor know what they just spent.

In modern society, where most people live in cities, and where both needs and wishes are absolved through the same remote agency - money - the distinction between wishes and needs has altogether vanished.

Japan has only 100m people. Asia has 4bn. At least one-third, maybe nearly half, will become middle class, and this is a big opportunity for Japanese businessmen.

I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.

I understand demographics.

If Jeff Bezos and I had started Amazon.com in a poverty-stricken corner of Africa, there would have been no job creation because there would be no people to buy the stuff from Amazon.com. The difference here is the American middle class, which is by every measure the most extraordinary economic achievement in the history of the world.

For a number of years, I've wondered if people like us are the forgotten. We're not the poor, and we're not the rich. We're not the very young or the aged. We're the average American family.

You are the biggest part of the population in the state. You create its wealth.

Fewness of people, is real poverty; and a Nation wherein are Eight Millions of people, are more than twice as rich as the same scope of Land wherein are but Four

A rising tide lifts all boats but if you can’t afford a boat, the tide goes up your nose.

The middle class is the engine of this economy.

If, in a country, the wealth is concentrated in the hands of only the few, it cannot witness harmony and stability.

…the ownership of slaves brought men great gain from the multitude of their progeny, who increased because they were exempt from military service. Thus certain powerful men became extremely rich and the race of slaves multiplied throughout the country, while the Italian people dwindled in numbers and strength, being oppressed by penury, taxes, and military service.

Although the market and opportunities for consumption seem to offer a counterbalance to the government's authoritarian powers, many Chinese are ambivalent about the forces of Westernization and marketization and the rapidly growing gap between rich and poor

Americans have historically been more willing than Europeans to tolerate high inequality levels if accompanied by strong economic growth and a healthy middle class.

A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have something equivalent in an additional decade.

This nation is notorious for its ability to make or fake anything cheaply. “Made-in-China” goods now fill homes around the world. But our giant country has a small problem. We can’t manufacture the happiness of our people.

So far, the United States knows nothing of the difficulties of over-population; and historic realities of a nature to hamper the free play of economic forces exist only in a very limited degree. Quite the reverse is true in Europe.