If you don't talk about families, then it's easy to disembody subprime mortgages and asset securitization and unemployment rates without remembering that every one of those numbers is a million families.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing the human impact behind economic statistics.
Elizabeth Warren's quote highlights the disconnect that can occur in discussions about economic issues, where statistics such as unemployment rates and mortgage-backed securities fail to account for the real families affected by these numbers. By urging us to talk about families, she reminds us that behind every statistic lies a personal story, and these issues are not just abstract numbers but represent the struggles and lives of countless individuals.
In practice
During a presentation on economic policy, this quote can be used to stress the human aspect behind the numbers.
Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most - who struggle to make ends meet - too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.
There's been such a sense that there's one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It's so pervasive that it's not even hidden.
Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.
I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters - people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them - not one - stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.
Does anyone believe that Goldman Sachs is gonna give up a deal that would yield millions of dollars because someone fussed at them behind closed doors?
I look under the skin of countries' economies, and I help them make better decisions and be stronger, to prosper and create employment.
No government can give a selective advantage to a specific company, because that would make competition unfair.
The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.
There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high, whether measured by the currency in which they are paid or by their power to supply the necessaries and comforts of life.
Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers solves two problems. The companies could hire the educated workers they need. And those workers would compete with high-income people, driving more income equality.
A just wage for the worker is the ultimate test of whether any economic system is functioning justly.
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