Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.
Interpretation
The stability of our economy and democracy relies on providing jobs to those who are unemployed.
In this quote, Franklin D. Roosevelt emphasizes that both economic soundness and the integrity of democratic institutions are closely linked to the government's commitment to creating job opportunities for the unemployed. He suggests that addressing unemployment is not just an economic imperative, but also a foundational aspect of maintaining a healthy democracy, as it helps to prevent social unrest and promotes civic participation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech advocating for job creation programs.
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.
Unless you reduce the long-term spending burden, you cannot cut taxes in any lasting way, but can only shift the burden of taxes from the present to the future.
The best and most sustainable love story for markets is one based on a healthy and dynamic real economy that creates jobs and opportunities for many more people.
There's a long list of investments that governments could and should be making. There is strengthening infrastructure, such as transport and communications; there is investment in education; there is investment in families, particularly putting measures in place that free women from having to make the choice between raising a family and work.
A policy of subsidizing failures will end in an economy strewn with capital-guzzling industries long past their time of profitability - old companies that cannot create jobs themselves, but can stand in the way of job creation.
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.
THE CORRECTION, when it finally came, was not an overnight bursting of a bubble but a much more gentle letdown, a year-long leakage of value from key financial markets, a contraction too gradual to generate headlines and too predictable to seriously hurt anybody but fools and the working poor.
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