“The things you hear now about European unemployment -- that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears -- are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war.”

— Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence Summers in: David Warsh (April 27, 1986) "It Did Happen Here, Too", Boston Globe, p. A1.
1980s

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The things you hear now about European unemployment -- that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed …" by Lawrence H. Summers?

Lawrence H. Summers 12

Former US Secretary of the Treasury 1954

Related quotes

“You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.”

Lynda Barry (1956) Cartoonist

Source: Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book

“Basically, men are afraid of women and can't handle the fact that they came out of the same thing they spend the rest of their lives trying to get back into.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist (1998)

“If I'm poor and you're rich, and I can get you to defend me that's good. But when the tables get turned, I would do my share. Right now we spend about 300$ Billion dollars a year on defense, Japanese spend around 30$ Billion in Asia, the Germans spend about 30$ Billion in Europe. For example, Germany will spend about a trillion dollars building infrastructure over the next 10 years. That's kinda easy to do if you don't have to pick up 30$ billion dollar tab to defend your country. The European community is in a position to pay a lot more then they have in the past…. Now that they can [pay], they should.”

Ross Perot (1930–2019) American businessman

1992 Presidential Debate

“Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

“Willie, you might as well take out your money and spend it. Spend it on a cruise. A cruise around Andy Lee.”

Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot

citation needed
Others

“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment. That is the history of the last twenty years.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1976), quoted in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, p. 188 and James Callaghan, Time and Chance (Collins, 1987), p. 426. This part of his speech was written by his son-in-law, future BBC Economics correspondent Peter Jay
Prime Minister

“I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

“If you could only tell them that living and spending isn't the same thing! But it's no good. If only they were educated toinstead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily…”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, page 188.
Speech at the Labour Party Conference, 28 September 1976. This part of his speech was written by his son-in-law, future BBC Economics correspondent Peter Jay.
Prime Minister

“The trend of employment is towards a high level, and a recurrence of chronic mass unemployment is most unlikely. The Keynesian techniques are now well understood, and there is no reason to fear a repetition of the New Deal experience of a government with the will to spend its way out of a recession, but frustrated in doing so by faulty knowledge. The political pressure for full employment is stronger than ever before; the experience of the inter-war years bit so deeply into the political psychology of the nation that full employment, if threatened, would always constitute the dominant issue at any election, and no right-wing party could now survive a year in office if it permitted the figures of unemployment which were previously quite normal.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

'The Transition from Capitalism' in Richard Crossman (ed.), New Fabian Essays (Turnstile Press, 1952), pp. 39–40

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Lawrence H. Summers 12

Related quotes

Related topics