Matt Taibbi Quotes

In the democratic western countries so-called capitalism leads a saturnalia of 'freedom', like a bastard brother of reform.

Private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise. Private enterprise indeed became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise

Somehow, failures in the public sector are always judged as systematic. The private sector thus exists to ride to the rescue - and their failures are only judged anomalies. A pretty nice arrangement for investors. The only people who suffer are the citizens.

Unlike the Tea Party, who see themselves as the customers of government, people in the Occupy Wall Street movement understand that we are the government. Stated most simply, we are trying to run a 21st-century society on a 13th-century economic operating system. It just doesn't work.

No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

Capitalism unchecked is not a democratic system.

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.

Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way.

The collusion of big business, big labor, and big government threaten the spirit of small business that makes America great.

Capitalism in Russia has spawned far more Al Capones than Henry Fords.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

For a free country to continue thriving, there have to be regular reforms, because any society, any economy that stays in place, you're going to see repeated attempts to exploit the openings for twisting policy to the advantage of those who already have wealth and power.

Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.

Any of the social changes in American history are because people thought there was injustice. We have to show that this corporate welfare and cronyism is unjust - and that it's not only rigging the system so people get wealthy who don't deserve to get wealthy.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

The American people are being victimized more than any free market would warrant.

The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists—they're too greedy.

Capitalism will kill competition.

From time to time, capitalism has a tendency to implode.

It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the common good.

Capitalism is taking away all the opportunity from our children and grandchildren.

The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

Treason is a strong word but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful. Indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be, and vastly more dangerous interests that manipulate the prosperity produced by all, so that it heaps up riches for a few. .

It was the use of public policy to create economics that favored the big players. There were only a handful of channels. And only some people were going to get them and become fabulously wealthy.

The ultimate credo of capitalism is to exploit people. It's not like this is just an incidental problem; it's inherent in the system.