The shortage of buyers, which the world is suffering from, is readily understood, not as due to people not wishing to obtain possession of goods, but as people being unwilling to part with something which might earn a regular income in exchange for those goods.
Interpretation
People are hesitant to trade valuable income-generating assets for goods.
This quote by Paul Dirac emphasizes the reluctance of individuals to exchange their income-generating possessions for goods, highlighting a broader economic issue where the desire for goods is impeded by the uncertainty of giving up stable income sources. It suggests that the market struggles not because of a lack of desire for goods, but rather due to a cautious attitude towards exchanging assets that can provide financial stability.
In practice
In a discussion about current economic conditions, this quote could illustrate why there is low market activity.
The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.
The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.
One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.
The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.
It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one's culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on...But mathematical beauty is of a rather different kind. I should say perhaps it is of a completely different kind and transcends these personal factors. It is the same in all countries and at all periods of time.
It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.
I think one of the most important facts of basic income would be that it's not only a redistribution of income, but also of power. So the cleaners and bin men would have a lot more bargaining power.
Economics is a choice between alternatives all the time. Those are the trade-offs.
Money is different from all other commodities: other things being equal, more shoes, or more discoveries of oil or copper benefit society, since they help alleviate natural scarcity. But once a commodity is established as a money on the market, no more money at all is needed. Since the only use of money is for exchange and reckoning, more dollars or pounds or marks in circulation cannot confer a social benefit: they will simply dilute the exchange value of every existing dollar or pound or mark.
Big companies are reliant on institutional investors on a punishing schedule which leads to ruthless behaviour. This form of capitalism with this structure and incentives will never deliver sustainability.
What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.
If the Republican Party continues to take the view that there must be no tax increases, we're stuck. Capitalism can't work without safety nets or fiscal prudence, and we need both in a sustainable balance.
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