John James Cowperthwaite cytaty (38 cytatów)

“Money cannot be converted into houses or trained teachers or hospitals at the touch of a magic wand.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 26, 1964, page 51.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council
Kontekst: Money cannot be converted into houses or trained teachers or hospitals at the touch of a magic wand. There are limitations to our physical and intellectual resources.

“If people want consultative government, the price is increased complexity and delay in arriving at decisions. If they want speed of government, then they must accept a greater degree of authoritarianism. I suspect that the real answer is that most people prefer the latter so long, that is, as government’s decisions conform with their own views.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 27, 1968, page 215.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“One trouble is that when Government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 27, 1963, page 47.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I do not think that when one is speaking of hardships or benefits one can reasonably speak in terms of classes or social groups but only in terms of individuals.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 29, 1963, page 135.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council
Kontekst: I should like to begin with a philosophical comment. I do not think that when one is speaking of hardships or benefits one can reasonably speak in terms of classes or social groups but only in terms of individuals.

“Simply put, money comes here and stays here because it can go if it wants to go.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 29, 1967, page 253.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council
Kontekst: Simply put, money comes here and stays here because it can go if it wants to go. Try to hedge it around with prohibitions, and it would go and we could not stop it; and no more would come.

“We suffer a great deal today from the bogus certainties and precisions of the pseudo-sciences which include all the social sciences including economics.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 27, 1968, page 213.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council
Kontekst: But what I really believe is that both he and Mr Wong are innocently guilty of the twentieth century fallacy that technology can be applied to the conduct of human affairs. They cannot believe that anything can work efficiently unless it has been programmed by a computer and have lost faith in the forces of the market and the human actions and reactions that make it up. But no computer has yet been devised which will produce accurate results from a diet of opinion and emotion. We suffer a great deal today from the bogus certainties and precisions of the pseudo-sciences which include all the social sciences including economics. An article I recently read referred to the academic’s “infernal economic arithmetic which ignores human responses”. Technology is admirable on the factory floor but largely irrelevant to human affairs.

“I am also, I must confess, a little sceptical of the theory that we have a right, if we could, to pass on our capital burden to future generations. I remarked last year in this context that our predecessors had not passed any significant part of their burden on to us.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 29, 1963, page 134.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“The fact that previous generations have handed down to us a substantial public heritage by way of roads, port, etc. almost completely free of debt, seems to me to impose some limitation on the validity of the theory that by borrowing we should, or could, pass on the burden of development to the next generation.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 28, 1962, page 55.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“My own views on all matters of public revenue and public expenditure are conditioned by an acute appreciation of whose is the sacrifice that produces public revenue and to whom accrues the benefit of public spending.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 24, 1966, page 216.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I have three objections to my honourable Friend’s wider proposal that exchange control powers be used to require the fixing of exchange by merchants on entering into both export and import contracts. The first is that I think it excessively paternalistic to require a merchant to protect himself against a risk he is prepared to take. Secondly, I think it wrong to impose a condition which is likely to cause one group of merchants a loss, for the purpose of providing the other group with protection at no cost to them. Thirdly, I do not think it is in fact practicable to enforce such a system. I am sorry to be so negative, but I am sure that the solution to my honourable Friend’s problem should not depend on compulsion but on the provision of voluntary protection on insurance principles.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 27, 1968, page 208.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“Over a wide field of our economy it is still the better course to rely on the nineteenth century's "hidden hand" than to thrust clumsy bureaucratic fingers into its sensitive mechanism. In particular, we cannot afford to damage its mainspring, freedom of competitive enterprise.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 30, 1962, page 133.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“What mystifies me is how he or any one else can determine what is a desirable type of industry such as should qualify for special assistance of this kind. In my own simple way I should have thought that a desirable industry was, almost by definition, one which could establish itself and thrive without special assistance in ordinary market conditions. Anything else suggests a degree of omniscience which I, at least, am not prepared to credit even the most expert with. I trust the commercial judgment only of those who are themselves taking the risks.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 27, 1968, page 212.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“We enjoy a considerable net inflow of capital and I am sure that a condition of its coming, and staying, is that it is free to flow out again. It is also important for Hong Kong's status as a financial centre that there should be a maximum freedom of capital movement both in and out.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 29, 1963, page 134.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I must confess my distaste for any proposal to use public funds for the support of selected, and thereby, privileged, industrialists, the more particularly if this is to be based on bureaucratic views of what is good and what is bad by way of industrial development, but I have been studying the report referred to with some interest.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

October 9, 1970, page 116.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I still believe that, in the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster. As I said earlier in this debate, our economic medicine may be painful but it is fast and powerful because it can act freely.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 24, 1966, page 216.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I will not be proposing a course which has been under some public discussion recently — deficit financing. It is wholly inappropriate to our economic situation. In its least extreme form it is based on the theory that additional money generated by a Government deficit (and given currency, as necessary, by use of the printing press) will stimulate consumption and thereby production, in time to match the excess money with goods before real inflationary harm is done. Unfortunately we don't, and can't, produce more than a small fraction of what we consume, and increased consumption would merely mean increased imports without matching exports; and a severe balance of payment crisis, which would destroy Hong Kong's credit and confidence in the Hong Kong dollar; and which we could not cure without coming close to ruining ourselves. Keynes was not writing with our situation in mind. In this hard world we have to earn before we spend.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 27, 1963, page 50.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“A glimmer of light is better than no illumination at all.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 26, 1964, page 52.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“Revenue has increased in this way is in no small measure, I am convinced, due to our low tax policy which has helped to generate an economic expansion in the face of unfavourable circumstances”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 26, 1964, page 53.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I hold that two principles are important; first that there should be a steady expansion of public services, not an irregular one related to revenue accruing in any particular year; the second that taxes should be constant over long periods (provided, that is, that they are neither burdensome nor inequitable).”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 24, 1971, page 531.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“One of these is an increasing awareness of the benefits to our economy, particularly in terms of investment and enterprise, both local and from overseas, of not having the inquisitorial type of tax system inevitably associated with a full income tax. Another is that even I, who have always believed in the vigour of our economy under our present tax regime, have been surprised by the growth of revenue generated at our present tax rates.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 29, 1967, page 248.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“Many of our services cost more than do similar services in Europe, because, although we have a substantial quantitative deficiency of public services, the decision-takers and policy-makers, both inside and outside Government as I have said before today, being themselves from the better-off (to use a popular euphemism) sectors of our society, not only demand the highest standards of provision of public services to meet what they consider their own essential needs (for example, in public car parks); but also find it difficult to think of provision for the rest of the population in terms of standards relative to our real total resources.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 24, 1966, page 72.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“An infant industry, if coddled, tends to remain an infant industry and never grows up or expands.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 30, 1962, page 131.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“Official opposition to overall economic planning and planning controls has been characterized in a recent editorial as "Papa knows best". But it is precisely because Papa does not know best that I believe that Government should not presume to tell any businessman or industrialist what he should or should not do, far less what he may or not do; and no matter how it may be dressed up that is what planning is.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 30, 1962, page 133.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I am confident, however old-fashioned this may sound, that funds left in the hands of the public will come into the Exchequer with interest at the time in the future when we need them.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 28, 1962, page 51.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I find odd the view that a Government institution is better placed to evaluate "the technical and financial viability" of a project than a commercial bank. It may well be that our banks are deficient in the kind of expertize required for assessing projects but then what we should be doing is encouraging banks to acquire such expertize or to make use of outside, commercial, expertize. I do not believe in any case that a Government machine can provide a reliable judgement on such matters, an opinion the banking members of the committee appear to have shared, for they have prudently refused to commit themselves to accepting its advice. I myself tend to mistrust the judgement of anyone not involved in the actual process of risktaking.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

October 9, 1970, page 117.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“If one accepts that in general social services should be made available to all on the basis of ability to pay, one has the choice of two opposite principles of action, although they need not be mutually exclusive—either progressive taxation and free services or fees covering costs with remission for those who cannot afford them. The former method is appropriate, in my view, in rich developed countries where the principle of progressive taxation can be applied without unduly adverse economic or social results, and the wastes inherent in full and free services can be afforded. In less advanced or poorer countries, where neither economy nor society is geared to progressive taxation and waste cannot be tolerated, fees remittable in case of need seem to me clearly more appropriate.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 26, 1964, page 54.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“It seems to me that we have three choices; first, public services of high standard and cost but of limited scope, leaving unfilled a substantial part of the present gap, not necessarily benefiting those in real need and benefiting many who are not in need at all (this has been our historical approach); second, public services to meet the requirements of all, with the beneficiaries making a contribution by way of fee according to their means, and with adequate provision for complete remission in suitable cases; or third, universal public services provided for rich and poor alike on terms the poorest can afford; that is, the welfare state where all benefit and the whole cost is met by the taxpayer in general. I think it is well-known that I am an advocate of the second approach.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 24, 1966, page 72.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I was particularly struck in this context by my honourable Friend, Mr K. S. Lo's concern at the decline in the enamelware industry as an example of the effect of lost advantages, as if this decline were a loss rather than a gain to the community. It has declined, I believe, because we have learned to use our resources of enterprise, capital and labour in other more profitable directions. That is progress. We would be in a sorry way if enamelware was still our fourth biggest industry.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

October 9, 1970, page 114.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I myself have no doubt in the past tended to appear to many to be more concerned with the creation of wealth than with its distribution. I must confess that there is a degree of truth in this, but to the extent that it is true, it has been because of my conviction that the rapid growth of the economy, and the pressure that comes with it on demand for labour, both produces a rapid and substantial redistribution of income directly of itself and also makes it possible to assist more generously those who are not, from misfortune temporary or permanent, sharing in the general advance. The history of our last fifteen years or so demonstrates this conclusively.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

February 26, 1969, page 104.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish “development priorities” — which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad.”

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John James Cowperthwaite

March 27, 1968, page 212.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

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