Paul Krugman Quotes

By adopting programs to distribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways.

Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.

We've got communism. We have Bushism. We have Clintonism. But there isn't a Trumpism. Bullet-point for me what the Trump political philosophy is and you can't do it, because he's not a political guy.

protected businesses never, never become competitive ... Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot - all at taxpayer expense.

The State is the coldest of all cold monsters.

Any allegation of runaway capitalism has to be tempered by the observation that today we have the largest public sectors and the highest taxes the world has ever known.

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

The government is largely influenced by people who advocate corporate welfare and advocate these policies that create this two-tiered society...

Washington, where an insignificant individual may trespass on a nation's time.

The government competes in the private sector the way an alligator competes with a duck.

You can see it in the worship of [Ronald] Reagan, which portrays him as somebody who saved us from government. Actually he was an apostle of big government.

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

The government of the United States, under Lyndon Johnson, proposes to concern itself over the quality of American life. And this is something very new in the political theory of free nations. The quality of life has heretofore depended on the quality of the human beings who gave tone to that life, and they were its priests and its poets, not its bureaucrats.

People invest in companies in order to get a share of the profit that company will make. If the Government increases its share of the profits, potential profits, at the expense of the owners of the company, the shareholders, then that makes investment in that company less attractive.

Economic policy and decision making do not function in a political vacuum.

If we look around, then, at the crucial problem areas of our society - the areas of crisis and failure - we find in each and every case a “red thread” marking and uniting them all: the thread of government. In every one of these cases, government either has totally run or heavily influenced the activity.

Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.

I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, 'I'm in favor of privatization,' or, 'I'm deeply in favor of public ownership.' I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case.

The scandalous question that hangs over modern government and excites perpetual outrage is about political money and what it buys. What exactly do these contributors get in return for the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars they funnel to the politicians?

...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.

Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.

The Federal Reserve and Congress have systematically taught the American people to trust the government and that caution in spending is harmful to the economy.

Democratic capitalism: A cooperative enterprise to earn enough money to buy enough Congressional influence to gain control over the government's guns so as to get even more money for your special-interest group.Social democratic capitalism: A cooperative enterprise to promise sufficient government benefits to enough voters to gain control over the government's guns so as to keep any other special-interest group from getting as much power as yours.

When the private sector fails, the solution is more government. When the government fails, the solution is more government.