No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.
Interpretation
Wasting human potential through unemployment harms society and the economy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote highlights the crucial importance of human resources for any nation's prosperity. He argues that when individuals are left unemployed and demoralized, it not only represents a significant waste of potential but also poses a moral threat to the fabric of society, as it can lead to social unrest and disintegration.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, a leader might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of investing in job creation.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.
If the job of capitalism is to create wealth for those who put up the capital, no fund group comes close to Vanguard's success in serving its owners. So we're probably as far away from communism as is realistically possible.
Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.
Zoning laws making housing more expensive? That's less of a problem with a universal basic income and more of a reason to put money directly into people's hands.
Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.
Long-term unemployment can make any worker progressively less employable, even after the economy strengthens.
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