“The combined efforts of Government policy since 1979 have been not to improve but substantially to worsen our competitive position. We have gone from a huge manufacturing surplus of £5.5 billion in 1980 to a 1986 third quarter deficit of £8 billion a year…Even with oil production continuing for some time, the current account has gone from a £3 billion surplus to a deficit predicted by the Chancellor of £1.5 billion…Sadly, the Government's great contribution, having refused to stimulate the economy by more respectable means, is a roaring consumer boom, which there is not the slightest chance of their moderating before an election. A roaring consumer boom does not, to any significant extent, mean more employment. In our competitive position, worsening under the Government, it means overwhelmingly higher imports, a still worse balance of payments position and a classic path to perdition. To have produced, after seven and a half years, the combination of total monetary muddle, a worsened competitive position, a widespread doubt in other countries as to how we are to pay our way in the future, a desperately vulnerable currency and the prospect of an unending plateau of the highest unemployment in a major country in the industrialised world is a unique achievement over which the Chancellor is an appropriate deputy acting presiding officer.”

— Roy Jenkins

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/nov/06/economic-policy in the House of Commons (6 November 1986)
1980s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Roy Jenkins 51

British politician, historian and writer 1920–2003

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“EU countries lose approximately €1,000 billion with tax avoidance. If Finland would receive of this €1,000 billion 1 % in relation to its population in the EU, it would be €10 billion. The famous deficit would be fixed up. If tax avaidance is not restricted we continue to have deficits and budget cuts.”

Satu Hassi (1951) Finnish politician and MEP

Variant: EU countries lose approximately €1,000 billion with tax avoidance. If Finland would receive of this €1,000 billion 1 % in relation to its population in the EU, it would be €10 billion. The famous deficit would be fixed up. If tax avaidance is not restricted we continue to have deficits and budget cuts.
Source: Satu Hassi: Veronkierto vai hyvinvointivaltio, Voima 10/213 In Finnish: EU-maiden arvioidaan menettävän veronkierron vuoksi 1000 miljardia euroa. - Jos Suomi saisi tuosta 1000 mrd eurosta prosentin, eli väestöosuutemme EU:ssa, se olisi 10 mrd. euroa. Kuuluisa kestävyysvaje olisi hoidettu. Ellei veronkiertoa suitsija, vajeista ja budjettileikkauksista päästä eroon.

“Such budget deficits are unsustainable. We must put a stop to smuggling - estimated by foreign institutions to be as much as $10 billion (as P480 billion) a year. The uncollected VAT alone would be over P50 billion.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

“First, there is really no sign at all of any significant reduction in unemployment without a major change in policy…Unemployment has probably levelled out but at a totally unacceptable figure. Secondly, contrary to what the Secretary of State said, the post-oil surplus prospect—not merely the post-oil prospect, because the oil will take a long time to go, but the surplus, the big balance of payments surplus, which is beginning to decline quite quickly—still looks devastating…our balance of payments is now overwhelmingly dependent on this highly temporary and massive oil surplus. Our manufacturing industry is shrunken and what remains is uncompetitive…We have a manufacturing trade deficit of approximately £11 billion, all of which has built up in the past three to four years. This is containable by oil and by nothing else. Invisibles can take care of about £4 billion or £5 billion but they cannot do the whole job. As soon as oil goes into a neutral position we are in deep trouble. Should it go into a negative position, the situation would be catastrophic…To sell off a chunk of capital assets and to use the proceeds for capital investment in the rest of the public sector might just be acceptable. However, that is not what is proposed, and what is proposed cannot be justified on any reputable theory of public finance; and when it is accompanied by a Minister using the oil—which might itself be regarded as a capital asset; certainly it is not renewable—almost entirely for current purposes, it amounts to improvident finance on a scale that makes the Prime Minister's old friend General Galtieri almost Gladstonian.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/nov/12/industry-and-employment in the House of Commons (12 November 1985).
1980s

“Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981. All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats… big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc… the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste… I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Letter to chairman of the RNC http://www.textfiles.com/politics/ron_paul.txt Frank Fahrenkopf (March 1987).
1980s

“I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said 'billion' many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said 'billions and billions.' For one thing, it's imprecise. How many billions are 'billions and billions'? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? 'Billions and billions' is pretty vague… For a while, out of childish pique, I wouldn't utter the phrase, even when asked to. But I've gotten over that. So, for the record, here it goes: 'Billions and billions.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

List of misquotations
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium (1997)

“As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from the beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible for one-thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, of a percent (10^-84). And that's why, for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isn't a star or a planet or a galaxy. It isn't a thing at all. It's an instant in time. And that time is now. Humans have walked the earth for just the shortest fraction of that briefest of moments in deep time. But in our 200,000 years on this planet we've made remarkable progress. It was only 2,500 years ago that we believed that the sun was a god and measured its orbit with stone towers built on the top of a hill. Today the language of curiosity is not sun gods, but science. And we have observatories that are almost infinitely more sophisticated than those towers, that can gaze out deep into the universe. And perhaps even more remarkably through theoretical physics and mathematics we can calculate what the universe will look like in the distant future. And we can even make concrete predictions about its end. And I believe that it's only by continuing our exploration of the cosmos and the laws of nature that govern it that we can truly understand ourselves and our place in this universe of wonders.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

from a 1987 class, as quoted in David L. Goodstein, "Richard P. Feynman, Teacher," Physics Today, volume 42, number 2 (February 1989) p. 70-75, at p. 73
Republished in the "Special Preface" to Six Easy Pieces (1995), p. xx.

“We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

53 min 54 sec
Source: We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to selfawareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.
Context: And we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos we've begun, at last, to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating the stars organized collections of 10 billion-billion-billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps, throughout the cosmos.

“Remember the $5 billion Web site? $5 billion we spent on a Web site, and to this day it doesn't work. A $5 billion Web site. I have so many Web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a Web site. It costs me $3.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

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