Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it.
Under communism (socialism), there is no incentive to supply people with anything they need or want, including safety.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
There is nothing inherently wrong with greed as a human motivator - greed motivating evolution. But there's a huge disconnect between the classes. It is very demoralizing to work for someone who makes a billion dollars a year while you make just barely enough to make it.
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
If you want poor people to work you restore their incentive by giving them less, such as by cutting social services. If you want rich people to work you restore their incentive by giving them more, such as by cutting taxes.
I've had an ambition to be somebody since I was 13 years old because I wanted to help my family. I wanted to hurry and grow up so I could make enough money to buy my father a big car and my mother a beautiful home with an electric washing machine and all those things she used to see in the newspapers.
Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces
What is it that brings the capitalist to the market? It is the urge to get rich, to increase his capital, to gratify his ambitions and social vanities, to be able to indulge in all conceivable pleasures. And what brings the worker to the market? Hunger, the necessity of eating today and tomorrow.
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
Textbooks describe economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. That definition may be the 'what,' but it certainly is not the 'why.'
Racism will disappear when it's no longer profitable, and no longer psychologically useful. And when that happens, it'll be gone. But at the moment, people make a lot of money off of it, pro and con.
When advertisers ignore diversity, it is because they don't think the lives of others matter. There is not enough of a financial imperative for those lives to matter.
Money is far more persuasive than logical arguments.
Whether we, as individuals, are motivated by simple humanity or by simple economics, we can no longer permit profits to be dependent upon an unsafe or unhealthy work site.
Most of the people living in New York have come here from the far to try to make enough money to go back to the farm
Everybody in life is pursuing money: left, right, charity, nonprofits, everybody's pursuing money. Everybody wants a raise. Everybody wants to improve their standard of living. Everybody wants to be rich, and especially those that go to Washington.
I'm going to miss Blockbuster. I'm gonna miss being CEO and all that stuff. We had an atmosphere where everybody was happy. When people make money, they're happy.
We live in a capitalist society. I think if anyone, in any field, was approached and someone said, 'Hi! You know that job you are already doing? Would you like to do it next week for quadruple your normal pay?' Show me one person who would say no.
People today don't become economists to make the world a better place.
I can't think of a scenario under which [Vladimir Putin] would gradually resign from power. For him and those around him, power became a source of unlimited enrichment. A loss of power would be tantamount to an annihilation of the economic success that has been achieved so far.
When we realize we can make a buck cleaning up the environment, it will be done!
Of course we're doing it for the money. We've always done it for the money.
But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.
