Curious task of economics

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Friedrich Hayek

Hitchens’ razor

“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011)
Hitchens’ razor

Lenin quotes

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
Vladimir Lenin

The goal of socialism is communism.
Vladimir Lenin

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.
Vladimir Lenin

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
Vladimir Lenin

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Vladimir Lenin

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.
Vladimir Lenin

When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward – or go back. He who now talks about the ‘freedom of the press’ goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.
Vladimir Lenin

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
Vladimir Lenin

Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.
Vladimir Lenin

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
Vladimir Lenin

The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.
Vladimir Lenin

Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.
Vladimir Lenin

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.
Vladimir Lenin

Fascism is capitalism in decay.
Vladimir Lenin

When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.
Vladimir Lenin

Any cook should be able to run the country.
Vladimir Lenin

Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.
Vladimir Lenin

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.
Vladimir Lenin

To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.
Vladimir Lenin

Crime is a product of social excess.
Vladimir Lenin

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
Vladimir Lenin

If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
Vladimir Lenin

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.
Vladimir Lenin

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
Vladimir Lenin

Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.
Vladimir Lenin

Obama on debt

The full text of his remarks in the Senate on 16 March 2006 are:

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is “trillion” with a “T.” That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.

Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of
America.

And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on. Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans — a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.

But we are not doing that. Despite repeated efforts by Senators Conrad and Feingold, the Senate continues to reject a return to the commonsense Pay-go rules that used to apply. Previously, Pay-go rules applied both to increases in mandatory spending and to tax cuts. The Senate had to abide by the commonsense budgeting principle of balancing expenses and revenues. Unfortunately, the principle was abandoned, and now the demands of budget discipline apply only to spending. As a result, tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money. Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them. Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this
administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next 5 years. That is why I will once again cosponsor the Pay-go amendment and continue to hope that my colleagues will return to a smart rule that
has worked in the past and can work again.

Our debt also matters internationally. My friend, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This administration did more than that in just 5 years. Now, there is nothing wrong with borrowing from foreign countries. But we must remember that the more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

Obama’s civilian security forces

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Barack Obama
July 2, 2008 speech at Colorado Springs