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I grew up, until age 6, in Chicago. My parents rented their apartment and, at the end of the Depression, my parents wanted to replicate that situation. So, again, we lived in a somewhat suburban setting outside of New York City, and again, they rented.
Edmund Phelps -
The difficulties of many European countries derive from their corporatism: state projects serving cronies and vast social protection programmes, both run by elites. These surged in the 1970s and 1980s.
Edmund Phelps
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Without being aware, I think I was being indoctrinated into what was called Vitalism, the idea that what makes life worth living, the good life, consists of accepting challenges, solving problems, discovery, personal growth, personal change.
Edmund Phelps -
Statistical studies are all over the lot about the pluses and minuses of raising the minimum wage.
Edmund Phelps -
Most of the big banks were shot through with short-termism, deceptive practices and self-dealing. We must institute basic changes in corporate governance and in management practice to restore responsibility and honesty for the sake of the economy and for the self-respect of the country.
Edmund Phelps -
Some economists believe that the Greeks' work ethic and thrift can pull them through. But the classical virtues can do nothing to offset the dearth of innovation that plagues the economy.
Edmund Phelps -
I think the 19th century is an extraordinary period with a welling up of creativity and all kinds of experimentation and exploration going on at least until 1940.
Edmund Phelps -
To prosper and advance, the American business sector is going to need a financial system oriented toward business, not 'home ownership.'
Edmund Phelps
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A nation's economy is more than its markets, tastes, technologies and property rights.
Edmund Phelps -
In societies where one sees a higher prevalence of 'modern values' - individualism, vitalism and self-expression - there's also higher reported job satisfaction.
Edmund Phelps -
Italy and France could lop off their excessive wealth through a one-time tax on private wealth.
Edmund Phelps -
My thinking has always been that the worst problem we have with regard to lack of inclusion is the terribly low labor force participation rates and terribly high unemployment rates of young men, especially young men in ethnic minority groups and, in particular, young black men.
Edmund Phelps -
My God, I don't know anyone who likes to accumulate their wealth more than the Europeans.
Edmund Phelps -
In America, black urban teenagers have long been lacking in inclusion. In France, there is a comparable lack of inclusion among North Africans. In much of Europe, there has been little attempt to include the Roma.
Edmund Phelps
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An indictment of entitlements has to focus on the huge 'social wealth' that the welfare state creates at the stroke of the pen. Yet statistical tests of the effects of welfare spending on employment yield erratic results.
Edmund Phelps -
To pump up consumer or government demand would force interest rates up and asset prices down, possibly by enough to destroy more jobs than are created.
Edmund Phelps -
In the 1960s, and stretching back to the 1930s, it was felt by many economists that easy money is a reliable way to increase employment.
Edmund Phelps -
Raising the minimum wage seems to all economists to, at the very least, fail to 'raise' employment, and we'd all like to see better inclusion of low-skilled workers into good-paying jobs.
Edmund Phelps -
In essence, capitalist systems are a mechanism by which economies may generate growth in knowledge - with much uncertainty in the process, owing to the incompleteness of knowledge.
Edmund Phelps -
A system where self-employment and self-finance was typical gave way to a system of companies having various business freedoms and enabling institutions. This was the 'great transformation' on which historians and sociologists as well as business commentators were to write volumes.
Edmund Phelps
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The 1920s and 1930s were a period of sensational productivity growth: new products were springing up all over the place, and most of those new products and new methods were developed by people who started their own companies.
Edmund Phelps -
'Egalitarians' who complain about inequality view the wealth of the wealthiest as bad in itself: it disfigures society. They would enact a wealth tax to extirpate the offending wealth.
Edmund Phelps -
Corporatist attitudes against capitalism came to the fore in the 1920s. Corporatists, with their conservative values, hated the invasion of towns and regions by new businesses, upsetting traditional ways, wealth and status.
Edmund Phelps -
No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.
Edmund Phelps