Martin Jacques Quotes

I believe that eventually, one of the next big issues that will have to be addressed globally is the role of state-owned enterprises. Because there is a disadvantage that's built in.

We saw that the free market economy was not enough when the Harvard boys failed to deliver free market capitalism to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action.

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

In 10 years, ... you're going to see the most valuable economy in the world -- the largest economy in the world -- is going to be a country run by communists. The Chinese seem to be very good at capitalism. And this is going to have fundamental problems and present an identity crisis for the United States. Because for a long time, free markets coincided with liberties such as free speech, free press, free religion. And all of a sudden, this equation is going to be decoupled. And when it gets decoupled, we might find that democracy, the multitude of voices, actually impedes capitalism because a state that does not have any pretense of limited government can very quickly mandate a regulatory framework for drones, for electric cars, for self-driving cars, for any new innovation where they feel that they can leapfrog Western societies. And this is a very unique thing in the American experience. And this is why it's very important to think of American capitalism as an operating system and not as an ideology. Because when you think about it as an ideology, you can have good politics make for very, very bad policy. That market outcomes and democratic voices and battles for votes can end up stifling progress.

Imagine a libertarian president ending impediments to free markets.

I support the state, but not the state-run economy. The state should intervene only to create the conditions necessary for the private sector to thrive.

Look, in neoliberalism the ruling elite understand something.

Essentially we need a new social consensus for economic reform as New Labour has achieved in Britain.

Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.

It should not be the government running the economy.

Thatcherite economic policy was most acutely felt in the coal industry, where tens of thousands of jobs were lost as pits were shut down.

The global policy shift toward neo-liberalism that took place during the 1980s and 1990s was supposed, according to its proponents, to bring a convergence of living standards of richer and poorer nations. This never actually happened.

In the 1980s, we were advised, why don't you follow Reaganomics or Thatcherite economics. We said, yes, there are good points, let's see how we can fit them in the Indian economy. Every country has its own way of moving forward.

There's not a single country that actually approaches economics in a pure, free market, capitalist way. I like the free market - but it very much exists only in textbooks. If I had a choice, and we could live in a very pure world, I would be a supporter of the free markets.

The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.

Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.

In the future, people will blame the Eighties for all societal ills in the same way that people have previously blamed the Sixties. The various Thatcherite Big Bangs - monetarism, deregulation, libertarianism - have been working their way through the culture ever since.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Discussions of the economy, especially during times of crisis, are often framed in terms of lessons we supposedly learned during the Depression of the 1930s. If we are not to endure terrible times like those again, we are told, we must support whatever form of state intervention is currently being peddled.

Either you believe in markets, or you believe in government.

All the actions of your government have been in favour of the markets, and against the people.

For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups, and the collapse of public services.

In the field of economy, for instance, we … members of the developing world follow the currents of globalization, with conditions set by the rich countries, and at a speed dictated without our slightest input.

The developing countries are scared out of their wits now, because they don’t understand what they’re being forced to sign. The agreements are going way outside the trade issues and involve a helluva lot of things like your access to oil, your access to intellectual property and capital controls…. When I looked through the investment agreements, it was worse than reading my insurance policy for the fine print. I couldn’t make anything out of it, and I’m a reasonably informed person, a pretty smart economist as they go.