“there is little reason to believe that this socialism [that he saw coming in Britain and the U.S.] will mean the advent of the civilization of which orthodox socialists dream. It is much more likely to present fascist features. That would be a strange answer to Marx’s prayer. But history sometimes indulges in jokes of questionable taste.”
Joseph Schumpeter Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy
“Job explosion stuns analysts/ The economy’s job-generating power – more than 100,000 new jobs last month – has stunned analysts, and even though they agree it can’t last, they cheered the unexpected surge in employment.”
Headline and first sentence in news story in Ottawa Citizen Dec. 5, 1998
“It was from Hitchens, for example, that I learned the great definition of ‘the upper crust’ as ‘a load of crumbs held together by dough’ – Bolshevist, to be sure, but lovely.”
Michael Potemra reviewing Christopher Hitchens’ new anthology, mostly favourably, in National Review February 24, 2005
In my latest Loonie Politics column I praise Mikhail Gorbachev for the fundamental decency that led him to permit the peaceful dissolution of Soviet Communism. But I insist that he was no statesman, and no thinker, and that credit for ending the Cold War properly belongs with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and their supporters.
“Economics, for instance, is a collection of occasionally useful truisms. As prophets of the future, economists are about equal to witch doctors.”
Val Sears in Ottawa Sun November 3, 1999 [I do not agree, at least about sound economists, but sometimes I quote something because I consider it an instructive error, including for being widely but wrongly believed]
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the only thing our Prime Minister knows about a “business case” for exporting LNG to Europe is that he’s going to make sure it stays closed.
“Economists’ work is often criticized as being ‘useful as a chocolate teapot,’ The Economist magazine wrote.”
Ottawa Citizen October 25, 1997 (though it has occurred to me since that (a) you could eat a chocolate teapot and (b) what’s really wrong with economists’ work isn’t that it’s not useful, it’s that people don’t want to hear about it... but it’s still a lovely metaphor).
In my latest Epoch Times column I say Ontario’s supposed plan to save our “crumbling” health care system is a bunch of vague arm-waving wishes that the world worked differently than it does that couldn’t be less creative, bold or useful if the people in authority were being dull, timid and pointless on purpose.