Jerry Z. Muller Quotes

Capitalism’s intrinsic dynamism, however, produces insecurity along with benefits and so its advance has always met resistance…. It was only the creation of the modern welfare state in the middle of the 20th century that finally enabled capitalism and democracy to coexist in relative harmony.

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

Right now people seem to be very tentative about the positive benefits of capitalism.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

Inequality is a good thing. You can’t have a capitalistic system without it. But we have excessive inequality now. Virtually all the benefits are going to a small group of people.

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

For most of history, the prime source of human insecurity was nature. Capitalist societies have been oriented toward innovation and dynamism, to the creation of new knowledge, new products, and new modes of production and distribution. All this has shifted the locus of insecurity from nature to the economy.

No society is healthy when the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

One of the flaws in the American dream is that there isn't as much of a safety net as you may get in other countries.

I'm a capitalist, and I believe that universal basic income is necessary for capitalism to continue.

You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

The perennial conviction that those who work hard and play by the rules will be rewarded with a more comfortable present and a stronger future for their children faces assault from just about every direction. That great enemy of democratic capitalism, economic inequality, is real and growing.

The market economy is very good at wealth creation but not perfect at all about wealth distribution.

We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don't accept is the idea that some folks won't even get a chance.

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.

The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

... the problem isn't that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France, before the revolution. And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won't last.

. As labor becomes a less important factor in production as compared to owning intellectual capital, a majority of citizens may find the value of their labor insufficient to pay for a socially acceptable standard of living. These changes will require a political, rather than a purely economic, response concerning what kind of social safety nets should be in place to protect people from large, structural shifts in the economy. Absent mitigating policies, the beneficiaries of these shifts may be a small group at the upper stratum of the society

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

We have now had a long period of very limited participation in the growth of our society…. If you are going to have broad based political support for economic policies, you have to have broad based participation in the benefits of those policies…. This is a change of historic proportions.