James Wolcott Quotes

At the moment, in Britain we're facing such enormous cutbacks in education programs and music programs and art programs that you feel you are knocking your head against a brick wall.

The reality for us in America is that we will never get out of debt with more than 15 million people out of work.

When our economy is not growing, those least able to look after themselves are the first thrown overboard ...

Unfortunately, the music programs are being stripped out of the schools these days. We have to change that.

Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

I think that this is the most significant financial crisis in the post-War period for the United States, and it has in fact a global reach.... I think it is extraordinarily important to understand that, as we have seen in many previous examples of different countries and different times, choking up of credit is like taking the lifeblood away from the economy.

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

It is impossible, financially and politically, to lower expenditure to the level of our revenues in the calamitous times in which we live, and so, however painful and afflicting the idea may be, we must exist from day to day and simply await the outcome of events yet in the making …

A recession forces excruciatingly difficult choices.

Job loss is coming like a tsunami.

I was the governor that drew a tough, tough straw. I was governor during the worst recession since the 1930s, and I had to cut $5 billion from the state budget.

More than 50 percent of kids who play an instrument go on to college, yet music education programs at the inner city public schools who need them most continue to be hit hard with budget cuts.

So much value has been lost in the housing market that people are now buying. If there's any activity in the housing market, it's because values have plummeted to such depths that the 47% can now afford to live in a government-purchased house, or something like that.

The way you create deflation is you create an asset bubble.

You raise taxes during an economic crisis time, as we did in - back in the time of Herbert Hoover, you send the country into a depression.

Unfortunately, in a recession, the people who suffer the most aren't the rich, but the wanna-be rich and the poor.

Disgracefully, the arts have too often borne the brunt of short-sighted cuts to educational budgets.

Sometimes, the aftermath is more devastating than the storm. That is the story of the 2008 financial crisis. It was disastrous at the time, but what has been worse is how long it has lingered.

Fear causes individuals to restrain their spending and firms to withhold investments; as a result, the economy weakens, confirming their fear and leading them to restrain spending further. The downturn deepens, and a vicious circle of despair takes hold.

America's fiscal future is frightening.

Drama schools say if arts funding is cut, people can't afford to go, but I didn't go to drama school.

Every serious deflation I've looked at is preceded by an asset bubble, and then it bursts.

When budget cuts happen - which has been happening a lot in this country - after-school athletics and after-school music are some of the first things to go.

I've benefited enormously from an arts education and a music education in New York. When they cut the programs for funding, I was devastated.

NASCAR is not immune to the down economy.