It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
Winston ChurchillRead
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the futile approach of trying to achieve prosperity through excessive taxation.
Winston Churchill's quote illustrates the absurdity of a nation attempting to achieve prosperity by heavily taxing its citizens. Just as a man cannot lift himself by pulling on the handle of a bucket he is standing in, a government cannot create wealth or prosperity through taxation alone; rather, it must foster conditions for economic growth and innovation to thrive.
In practice
In a political speech discussing economic policies.
It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.
The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lit under it, there's no limit to the power it can generate.
Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.
I will not pretend that if I had to choose between communism and Nazism I would choose communism.
Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them.
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
The economic dynamic in Zimbabwe is perversely robust: while ordinary people suffer, black-market dealers and people with foreign bank accounts prosper, making them powerful stakeholders in the perpetuation of devastating economic policies.
The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.
Trade is now clearly designed to favor the wealthiest and most powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The three wealthiest people on earth now control more assets than the combined incomes of 600 million people in the world's 48 poorest countries.
Automation provides us with wondrous increases of production and information, but does it tell us what to do with the men the machines displace? Modern industry gives us the capacity for unparalleled wealth - but where is our capacity to make that wealth meaningful to the poor of every nation?
All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital -- ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.
The great thing about fiscal policy is that it has a direct impact and doesn't require you to bind the hands of future policymakers.
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