William Greider famous quotes

A profound political question is suddenly on the table: Must the country continue to give precedence to private financial gain and market determinism over human lives and broad public values?
-- William Greider

#Country #Giving #Profound

Children born today have a fifty-fifty chance of living to 100.
-- William Greider

#Children #Fifty #Today

If we have wealth, it will be protected from inflation and possibly even enhanced in value.
-- William Greider

#Wealth #Inflation #Values

In 1900 Americans on average lived for only 49 years and most working people died still on the job.
-- William Greider

#Jobs #Average #Years

The do-it-yourself version of pensions is a flop, as many Americans have painfully learned.
-- William Greider

#Do It Yourself #Pension

The economy is not governed with the bottom half in mind.
-- William Greider

#Mind #Half #Economy

The regime of globalization promotes an unfettered marketplace as the dynamic instrument organizing international relations.
-- William Greider

#Globalization #Instruments #Regimes

If US per capita income continues to grow at a rate of 1.5 percent a year, the country will have plenty of money to finance comfortable retirements and high-quality healthcare for all citizens, including those at the bottom of the wage ladder.
-- William Greider

#Country #Retirement #Years

In the deregulated realm of US banking and finance, crime does occasionally pay for its foul deeds, not in prison time but by making modest rebates to the victims.
-- William Greider

#Banking #Deeds #Pay

The point is, the political reporters are the ones who no longer understand the ritual they are covering. They keep searching for political meanings in the tepid events when a convention is now essentially a human drama and only that.
-- William Greider

#Drama #Political #Events

The threat to globalization is not the wasted American dollars but Washington's readiness to mix US commercial interests with its self-appointed role as global protector.
-- William Greider

#Self #Dollars #Roles

If one benefits tangibly from the exploitation of others who are weak, is one morally implicated in their predicament? Or are basic rights of human existence confined to the civilized societies that are wealthy enough to afford them? Our values are defined by what we will tolerate when it is done to others.
-- William Greider

#Rights #Done #Benefits

Everyone cares for disabled people, right? What they don't care for are genuine civil rights for disabled people. MARY JOHNSON tells the tortuous, enraging story of how Congress enacted a law that instead of protecting against discrimination has turned 'the disabled' into a political punching bag.
-- William Greider

#Law #Rights #People

The brilliant creative core of capitalism ... is the story the entrepreneurs and capital investors tell themselves about the future. How they intend to alter it, what they expect to gain in return, where they will raise the capital to accomplish their vision. Many of their stories turn out to be flawed or mistaken, of course, but the capacity to envision a set of future events and then act to fulfill them is a central source of capitalism's strength and its dominance of society.
-- William Greider

#Entrepreneur #Creative #Vision

The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization.
-- William Greider

#War #Engineering #Echoes

Maybe the reason some folks lag behind in our free enterprise system is because they depend too much on the free part and not enough on their own enterprise.
-- William Greider

#Wisdom #Lag #Too Much

Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own.
-- William Greider

#Democracy #World #Teach

Folks in the bottom half of the economy are already squeezed hard. They will be bloodied and bankrupt if economic policy inadvertently induces a recession.
-- William Greider

#Half #Economic #Economy

If there is a mystical chord in democracy, it probably revolves around the notion that unexpected music can resonate from politics when people are pursuing questions larger than self... I have seen that ennobling effect in people many, many times- expressed by those who found themselves engaged in genuine acts of democratic expression, who claimed their right to define the larger destiny of their community, their nations.
-- William Greider

#Peace #Destiny #Self

The present struggle seems less about abolishing big government than about who gets to use it.
-- William Greider

#Struggle #Government #Liberty

In its present terms, the global system values property over human life.
-- William Greider

#Life #Term #Humans

Obviously, people with low or even moderate incomes could not afford such savings rates, and even diligent savings from their low wages would not be enough to pay for either retirement or healthcare.
-- William Greider

#Retirement #People #Saving

The burnt odor in Washington is from the disintegrating authority of the governing classes.
-- William Greider

#Class #Odor #Authority

Leaks and whispers are a daily routine of news-gathering in Washington.
-- William Greider

#Routine #News #Gathering

The quest for homeland security is heading ... toward the quasi-militarization of everyday life ... If danger might lurk anywhere, maybe everything must be protected and policed.
-- William Greider

#Everyday #Quests #Might

If you think about it, Washington's overwhelming power in the world is founded on death, the awesome arsenal for killing people.
-- William Greider

#Thinking #People #World

The ways in which people treat animals will be reflected in how people relate to one another.
-- William Greider

#Animal #People #Way

The scandalous question that hangs over modern government and excites perpetual outrage is about political money and what it buys. What exactly do these contributors get in return for the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars they funnel to the politicians?
-- William Greider

#Government #Political #Return

A newly elected representative quickly discovers that his job in government-aside from making new laws-is to act as a broker, middleman, special pleader and finagler.
-- William Greider

#Jobs #Government #Law

Money is power in American politics. It always has been.
-- William Greider

#Power

Fellow senators balked at punishing Senator Alfonse D'Amato of New York though he was caught in a series of transactions that earned him the label "Senator Sleaze." D'Amato explained their reluctance as he defended his own behavior. "There but for the grace of God go most of my colleagues," he said.
-- William Greider

#New York #Punishment #Grace

Aside from sending someone to war or to prison, government s ability to make people involuntarily give over their money is its strongest exercise of authority over private citizens and their institutions.
-- William Greider

#War #Exercise #Government

Everyone's values are defined by what they will tolerate when it is done to others.
-- William Greider

#Done #Tolerate #Values

Efficiency obliterates identity
-- William Greider

#Identity #Efficiency