Economic Limits Quotes

…set bounds to the quest of wealth…

Economists are very good at saying that something cannot go on forever, but not so good at saying when it will stop.

It is quite plausible that the process of increased fragmentation of production across borders is subject to 'diminishing returns' and has its natural limits.

Both a priori reasoning and experience teach us that as as these funds grow larger the geometrical rate of growth by compound interest ultimately defeats itself.

The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.

The Fed cannot save us from ourselves.

The promoters of the global economy...see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world.

We can’t go on pretending to Americans that we can have everything.

Even the wealth of the U.S. cannot protect against the levels of environmental destruction that we are unleashing.

Both the United States and the world economy have already reached - and surpassed - their sustainable physical limits. Ground water is being drawn down, soils eroded, forests cut faster than they grow, fish caught faster than they reproduce, non-renewable fossil fuels burnt without developing substitutes.

We are a small, open economy, highly dependent on global flows. It is inevitably a demand that dramatically alters and that is reflected in what we feel here in New Zealand. So there is at its most basic level a limit to what we can do and that is true everywhere.

Advanced industrialised economies like ourselves cannot afford to go on growing, particularly if we want to give people in poorer countries a chance of being able to at least meet their basic needs.

In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.

There are limits to how much countries can spend.

There are limits to monetary policy.

There is no limit to the amount of money that can be created by the banking system, but there are limits to our productive facilities and our labor supply ...

We must prevent the transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.

Investors have to remember: corporate profits are going up, but stocks are going up faster. How can that continue indefinitely? Investors can only earn what companies themselves can earn; the government or the markets themselves don't kick anything in. How can you get anything more out of a farm than what it grows?

There seems to be a happy concurrence of causes in human affairs, which checks the growth of trade and riches, and hinders them from being confined entirely to one people.

Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.

The very fact that we find it hard to conceive of an alternative to limitless economic growth is an indication of our spiritual condition.

Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it there, and even spurn it back when it wishes to get farther.

My goal is first of all to promote a public debate about where markets serve the public good and where they don't belong. That's my first goal.

There is a religious principle: Love thy neighbour as thyself. But it's also an economic asset. If you've got a neighbour, you've got help, and this implies another limit. If you want to have neighbours, you can't have a limitless growth economy. You have to prefer to have a neighbour rather than to own your neighbour farm.

I do not think you can push public expenditure significantly above 60 per cent and maintain the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice. We are here close to one of the frontiers of social democracy.