Quotes & Sayings About Goods And Services

Free access to the single market will be granted to a country which accepts the four fundamental freedoms of movement of people, goods, services, and capital. — Angela Merkel

Recipients of transfers set a bad example for others, including their children, other relatives, and friends, who see that one can receive goods, services, or money from the government without earning them. The onlookers easily adopt an attitude that they, too, are entitled to such transfers. They have fewer examples of hardworking, self-reliant people in their families or neighborhoods. — Robert Higgs

The gross domestic product (GDP) was created in the 1930s to measure the value of the sum total of economic goods and services generated over a single year. The problem with the index is that it counts negative as well as positive economic activity. If a country invests large sums of money in armaments, builds prisons, expands police security, and has to clean up polluted environments and the like, it's included in the GDP. Simon Kuznets, an American who invented the GDP measurement tool, pointed out early on that "[t]he welfare of a nation can . . . scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income."28 Later in life, Kuznets became even more emphatic about the drawbacks of relying on the GDP as a gauge of economic prosperity. He warned that "[d]istinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth . . . . Goals for 'more' growth should specify more growth of what and for what."29 — Jeremy Rifkin

Protectionism has to be avoided. Protectionism is not only on goods but also in the area of services. Financial protectionism is also bad and should be avoided. — Manmohan Singh

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 will benefit about 28 million workers across the country. And it will help businesses, too - raising the wage will put more money in people's pockets, which they will pump back into the economy by spending it on goods and services in their communities. — Thomas Perez

Innovating economies expand and develop. Economies that do not add new kinds of goods and services, but continue only to repeat old work, do not expand much nor do they, by definition, develop. — Jane Jacobs

Firms produce goods for households - that's us - and provide us with incomes, and that's even better, because we can spend those incomes on more goods and services. That's called the circular flow of the economy. — Tim Jackson

The same politicians who demand the abolition of all impediments to the mobility of goods and services have been busily erecting mighty barriers to rebuff an accompanying wave of human beings. In — Francis Wheen

Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organizations' true nature is that of a community of humans. — Arie De Geus

Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy): A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers. — Morgan Philpot

We cannot live without trade. A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the production of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation. — David Mamet

globalization, a grossly misnamed metaphor that disingenuously cloaked government deregulation and the privatization of public goods and services in the wrap of a new global "interconnectivity. — Jeremy Rifkin

All of us as consumers have gotten spoiled, ... We expect customized goods and services at commodity prices. The only way we can do that is to cut the fat out of our price structure. — Robert Rubin

Lawsuit abuse is a major contributor to the increased costs of healthcare, goods and services to consumers. — Charles W. Pickering

While other individuals or institutions obtain their income by production of goods and services and by the peaceful and voluntary sale of these goods and services to others, the State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet. — Murray Rothbard

But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release. — David Harvey

We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population. — Jeremy Rifkin

Short term, the most important thing is to put people back to work ... If they're working, that means they're paying taxes, that means that they're buying goods and services - and the economy, instead of being on a downward spiral, starts back up on an upward spiral. — Barack Obama

Churches are tax exempt because they are supposed to provide a public good. To prove that good to the IRS, churches arent supposed to hoard their money. They are supposed to spend it on goods and services for the faithful. Under this pretense, the church has made massive investments in tax free real estate all over the world. And when it comes to labor costs, they are almost free. — Lawrence Wright

Technology should improve the quality of life for all mankind. The few people running billion-dollar tech companies should not be allowed to control the movement or development of digital goods and services. It was like a medieval lord telling the serfs that they were not only renting their land, but had to pay for the use of sickles and scythes by the hour. — Rachel Sharp

At the moment, for example, maybe ten percent of money in the world is related to goods and services. Ninety percent of money is just moving around the world, chasing money. So, money has become the ruler. And we have become the servant. — Satish Kumar

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. — Noam Chomsky

[Fiscal prudence] means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient taxes to pay for the public goods and services we want, keeping budgets in relative balance over time, and keeping debt coming down, at least during reasonably good times. — Alex Himelfarb

The great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth; one, the above way of production and exchange, he called the "economic means." The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity; it is the way of seizure of another's goods or services by the use of force and violence. This is the method of one-sided confiscation, of theft of the property of others. This is the method which Oppenheimer termed "the political means" to wealth. — Murray N. Rothbard

Capitalism is not merely a system for the efficient production and distribution of goods and services; it also incarnates and promotes a particular moral order, an institutionalized normative worldview comprising and fostering particular assumptions, narratives, commitments, beliefs, values, and goals. — Christian Smith

In this 21st century world, some of our country's most significant exports and imports extend beyond goods and services: They also include innovation, knowledge, discovery, and healing. — Kathleen Sebelius

That it is logical, fair and reasonable to maintain the purchasing power of an hour's work in terms of goods and services the employee must purchase in his daily living. — Charles E. Wilson

The commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of the manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of the Western exploiters. — Mahatma Gandhi

One of the really fascinating areas is marketplaces that take advantage of mobile devices. Ridesharing is the obvious example, but that's just the start of it, of selling goods and services with lightweight mobile apps. — John Collison

Growing up, I had a sense of the importance of commerce and trade to everyday life. Our family lived in several countries, and I was fascinated by the free exchange of goods and services between individuals and companies - the way both parties could benefit. — Muhtar Kent

Most companies want free enterprise in general because that produces better goods and services and makes people's lives better, but they don't want it in their business. They want protection from competition, they want subsidies, they want the government to pick winners and losers, and they want to be picked as winners, and that's what we're opposing, and that's what drives my whole efforts in policy, and in the political arena. — Charles Koch

From a high-tech point of view, an agriculture point of view, a goods-and-services point of view, a great deal of [committee Democrats] have no choice except to support allowing America access to these markets. — Charles Rangel

A healthier, less impoverished planet is good for all of us. From an economic standpoint, it allows people to contribute more to the marketplace and lead productive lives. U.S. foreign assistance opens new markets to U.S. goods and services and creates new trading partners and allies. — Mike Huckabee

You will always make the most profit from 20% of your goods and services. These goods and services will be purchased by the top 20% of your clients or customers. This principle doesn't fail, and you can extrapolate that throughout all areas of your business and profit-making, and you will find the same. — Ellis Howell

We must continue to liberalise the single market, cut red tape and basically create a digital single market. We have not completed the single market yet, there is not sufficient free movement of goods, labour, services and money. We have to keep on working at that against all the protectionist tendencies that we have right now. — Alexander Stubb

We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year — Barack Obama

Work is a means; it is not an end. And for any tasks that can be performed or eliminated by a capital instrument, human labor is not the best means ... Furthermore, we have science, engineering and management - the three disciplines - that really plan and control the production of goods and services, trying to eliminate labor. Who the hell is government to come along and try to create labor? The people who are producing wealth are trying to eliminate toil, while the politicians are trying to create it. — Louis O. Kelso

One way to measure the size of a company, industry, or economy is to determine its output. But a better way is to determine its added value - namely, the difference between the value of its outputs, that is, the goods and services it produces, and the costs of its inputs, such as the raw materials and energy it consumes. — Michael Spence

Societies in which most people depend for most of their goods and services on the personal whim, kindness, or skill of another are called underdeveloped, while those in which living has been transformed into a process of ordering from an all-encompassing store catalogue are called advanced. — Ivan Illich

Debt deflation is when there's less money that people have to spend out of their paychecks on goods and services, because they're paying the FIRE sector. Oil going down is a function of the supply and demand of oil in the market. It's a separate phenomenon. — Michael Hudson

To best serve the public happiness, government shouldn't do things it cannot do well - anymore than Wal-Mart should provide goods and services that people don't like. — Joel Miller

A global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital. — George Soros

It is the potential for economic growth that provides the basis for the development of countries, for bringing to people essential goods and services, such as water to drink and facilities for healthcare. — Lee R. Raymond

Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services. — Douglas Rushkoff

Poor black families were "immersed in a domestic web of a large number of kin and friends whom they [could] count on," wrote the anthropologist Carol Stack in All Our Kin. Those entwined in such a web swapped goods and services on a daily basis. This did little to lift families out of poverty, but it was enough to keep them afloat. But large-scale social transformations - the crack epidemic, the rise of the black middle class, and the prison boom among them - had frayed the family safety net in poor communities. So had state policies like Aid to Families with Dependent Children that sought to limit "kin dependence" by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives. — Matthew Desmond

Somebody's buying these treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent. I mean we consuming about $2 billion a day of goods and services beyond what we're producing.As long as we consume more than we produce, and we trade away little pieces of the country daily, they're going to own something. Now, they can't run from American assets. I mean every day the rest of the world is going to have about two billion more of American assets than we have, as long as they sell us these goods. — Howard Warren Buffett

Foreign policy is about trying to deliver for them the best possible economic benefits, the chance to travel, to study, to work, the opportunity through trade to be able to sell their goods and services and as much peace and security so they can live and bring their kids up so they don't have to fear war. — Catherine Ashton

I am a regular, if not exactly enthusiastic, patron of my local bookshop. I try to buy at least some books there because I cling to the belief that it's important to maintain those businesses which put a human face on the exchange of money for goods and services. — Will Self

Keynes believed that "a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these [economic] needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes."8 He looked expectantly to a future in which machines would produce an abundance of nearly free goods and services, liberating the human race from toil and hardships and freeing the human mind from a preoccupation with strictly pecuniary interests to focus more on the "arts for life" and the quest for transcendence. — Jeremy Rifkin

The event concept was sparked from a shared observation amongst these leading lifestyle brands that the economic rebound has spurred greater liquidity into real estate, the stock market is setting new heights and consumers are generally stepping out more for luxury goods and services. After many years of pulling back, it was fun to see guests flirting with temptation, whether that was a new home, a new car, a new look or just to learn more about the trends. Others were happy to take in all the action. — Andrea Savage

Any business that is looking for new customers needs to understand the Internet and how to market their goods or services through it. — Eric Lefkofsky

The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Why do some people act as if making money offended their delicate minds? I am out for a legitimate profit, and not ashamed of it; the fact that people will pay money for my goods and services shows that my work is useful. — Robert A. Heinlein

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. — Thorstein Veblen

One of the dirty little secrets of the stock market rally is that the rising corporate profits that powered it are largely phantom profits. They are artifacts of currency devaluation, not an increase in efficiency or production of goods and services. — Charles Hugh Smith

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so. — Karl Hess

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different. — Noam Chomsky

Goods are traded, but services are consumed and produced in the same place. And you cannot export a haircut. But we are coming close to exporting a haircut, the appointment part. What kind of haircut do you want? Which barber do you want? All those things can and will be done by a call center far away. — Thomas L. Friedman

Central banking has become the new central planning. Under the old central planning, government attempted to manage production and the supply of goods and services. Under the new central planning, the Fed attempts to manage the financial system and the supply and allocation of credit. — Anonymous

Although everyone does benefit from lower-priced goods and services, people also care greatly about the chance to be productively employed and the quality of their work. Declining employment opportunities feel real and immediate; the rise in real incomes brought by lower prices does not. — Michael Spence

On reflection, I am always pleasantly surprised when ordinary members of the public stop me in the street to say, 'Thank you,' I guess for making travel and other goods and services affordable to them. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

I'd like to provide information, inspiration, and access to whatever goods and services are needed to make it super easy for everyone to change their lifestyle to a sustainable one. — Daryl Hannah

If you have a company that doesn't sell its goods or services abroad and focuses only on the domestic market, it will keep paying a price. — Brunello Cucinelli

Paying debt service to banks leaves less income to buy goods and services. — Michael Hudson

Conservatives insist that government should be " run more like a business." One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation. — Michael Parenti

The market is a brilliant system for the exchange of goods and services, but it doesn't protect the environment unless it's regulated, it doesn't train your workforce unless it's regulated, and it doesn't give you the long-term investment you want. — Ken Livingstone

Carpe Infans!
Beware Babies
There is no other human so seductive that an otherwise rational human will feed, clothe, sit up nights, work trigonometry with, bake cookies for, and generally tolerate for such long extents of time for such paltry returns of goods and services. They are a trap for the unwary ... all of us. — W. Clark Boutwell

It will be good for us in the long run, and I mean there are six and a half billion people in this world. And it's great for 300 million to keep enjoying more and more property, but I think it's terrific if the remainder do. And I think if they can learn something from us in terms of our system, and I think they have, they are learning more about how to unleash the potential of their citizenry to turn out more goods and services that their citizens want or that we want, I think that's terrific. — Howard Warren Buffett

You have to distinguish between two things - the Swedish economy and the Swedish stock market. The Swedish economy is the sum of all the goods and services that are produced in this country every day. There are telephones from Ericsson, cars from Volvo, chickens from Scan, and shipments from Kiruna to Skovde. That's the Swedish economy, and it's just as strong or weak today as it was a week ago ...
The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with the Swedish economy. — Stieg Larsson

People are looking for someone to blame. Our heritage comes from two groups who always denied that they were part of the problem. The early ecologists blamed industrialization for environmental degradation even while they continued to purchase all the goods and services produced by industry. And the forerunners of the parashintos always looked down on and isolated strangers. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Models used to describe and predict inflation commonly distinguish between changes in food and energy prices - which enter into total inflation - and movements in the prices of other goods and services - that is, core inflation. — Janet Yellen

This kind of inequality - a level we haven't seen since the Great Depression - hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity - that's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run. — Barack Obama

The great irony of executive compensation is, if you pay your employees more, you're gonna create more demand for your goods and services! Which is gonna lead to more executive compensation than if you pay your employees less and try to take all the cream off of the top. — Anthony Scaramucci

You want my dark side? Have I ever stolen anything? Not so much intentionally. But I don't think it's so much stealing as ... being a part of the flow of the universe. You know, where there's an exchange. It's positive. It's negative. There's an exchange of goods and services — Bill Murray

The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics. — Thomas Sowell

A strong currency means that American consumers and businesses can buy imported goods and services more cheaply and that inflation and interest rates will be lower, ... It also puts pressure on American industry to increase productivity and competitiveness. These benefits can feed on themselves as foreign capital flows in more readily because of greater confidence in our currency. A weak dollar would have the contrary effects. — Robert Rubin

A creative mindset is in increasingly high demand: employers are vying for workers who are able to dream big and deliver big with the next must-have product. Creative thinking fuels innovation, it leads to new goods and services, creates jobs and delivers substantial economic rewards. — Jim Hunt

Land ownership is an entry monopoly: Land is naturally scarce for each location since its supply can't be increased... When people buy a piece of land, their ownership gives them the right to exclude the rest of society from the benefits afforded to them by their land, even though those benefits only arise from nature and from the presence of goods and services that have been provided by that same society in the first place. Buyers pay for exclusive access rights to land and pay only to the previous landowner instead of to all the people who are now excluded from the location privileges that this one particular piece of land provides. — Martin Adams

Deflation is a leakage from this circular flow, to pay banks and the real estate, called the FIRE sector - finance, insurance and real estate. These transfer payments leave less and less of the paycheck to be spent on goods and services, so markets shrink. — Michael Hudson

The Stock Exchange is something very different. There is no economy and no production of goods and services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. It doesn't have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy. — Steig Larsson

How you make it in this world, for the most part, depends more on what you do as opposed to whether people like or dislike you. In order to produce a successful life, one must find ways to please his fellow man. That is, find out what goods and services his fellow man values, and is willing to pay for, and then acquire the necessary skills and education to provide it. — Walter E. Williams

Today, people are having to spend so much of their money, to acquire a house and to get an education that they don't have enough to spend on goods and services, except by running into yet more debt on their credit cards and other borrowings. — Michael Hudson

Wal-Mart has become the whipping boy for political demagogues, unions and anti-traders. I suggest that they have the wrong target ... Wal-Mart exists and prospers because tens of millions of Americans find Wal-Mart to be a suitable source of goods and services ... unions and anti-traders should direct their outrage and condemnation at the tens of millions of Americans who shop at Wal-Mart and keep it in business. — Walter E. Williams

GDP is simply the sum of all goods and services a nation produces over a given time. The sale of an assault rifle and the sale of an antibiotic both contribute equally to the national tally (assuming the sales price is the same). It's as if we tracked our caloric intake but cared not one whit what kind of calories we consumed. Whole grains or lard - or rat poison, for that matter. Calories are calories. GDP — Eric Weiner

Lawsuits - and frivolous lawsuits - are just sapping the life out of the people who perform the services and deliver the goods for the rest of the citizenry in the State of Montana. — Conrad Burns

As you have to pay more interest and amortization on what you owe, you're left with less and less money to buy goods and services - unless you borrow even more and go further into debt. — Michael Hudson

We think of GDP as a measure of the wealth that a country generates each year. But from a thermodynamic point of view, it is more a measure of the temporary energy value embedded in the goods or services produced at the expense of the diminution of the available energy reserves and an accumulation of entropic waste. Since — Jeremy Rifkin

When a small business grows like eBay did, it has a multiplier effect. It creates other small businesses that supply it with intellectual capital, goods and services. — Meg Whitman

She met a lot of people, and some people who weren't people. The more rural houses occasionally played host to minor demons and lesser fairies and local geo-specific nature spirits and elementals who lent street cred to the establishment in return for God knows what in the way of goods and services, she didn't ask. There was a certain romance to these beings; they seemed to embody the very promise of magic, which was to deliver unto her a world greater than the one into which she had been born. The moment when you walk into a room, and the guy playing pool has a pair of red leather wings sticking out of his back, and the chick smoking on the balcony has eyes of liquid golden fire - at that moment you think you'll never be sad or bored or lonely again. — Lev Grossman

Microeconomics is the study of how specific choices made by businesses, consumers and governments affect the markets for different goods and services. For example, a microeconomist might examine how price changes affect sales of apples relative to oranges. — Alex Berenson

This is not really currency that circulates. It's like the old joke about expensive vintage wine. Wine prices will go up and once in a while somebody will buy a 50-year-old bottle of wine and say, "Wait a minute. This has gone bad." The answer is, "Well, that wine isn't for drinking; that's for trading." These $100 bills aren't meant to circulate. They're not to spend on goods and services. They're a store of value. They're a form of saving. — Michael Hudson

For industrial goods, productivity growth has been more rapid than for the economy as a whole, so that prices in this sector have fallen relative to the average of all prices. Foodstuffs is a sector in which productivity has increased continuously and crucially over the very long run (thereby allowing a greatly increased population to be fed by ever fewer hands, liberating a growing portion of the workforce for other tasks), even though the increase in productivity has been less rapid in the agricultural sector than in the industrial sector, so that food prices have evolved at roughly the same rate as the average of all prices. Finally, productivity growth in the service sector has generally been low (or even zero in some cases, which explains why this sector has tended to employ a steadily increasing share of the workforce), so that the price of services has increased more rapidly than the average of all prices. — Thomas Piketty

When banks place credits into your account, they are merely pretending to lend you money. In reality, they have nothing to lend. Even the money that non-indebted depositors have placed with them was originally created out of nothing in response to someone else's loan. So what entitles the banks to collect rent on nothing? It is immaterial that men everywhere are forced by law to accept these nothing certificates in exchange for real goods and services. We are talking here not about what is legal, but what is moral. — G. Edward Griffin

The explosion in access to mobile phones and digital services means that people everywhere are contributing vast amounts of information to the global knowledge warehouse. Moreover, they are doing so for free, just by communicating, buying and selling goods and going about their daily lives. — Ban Ki-moon

How are we going to make our livings in a society becoming increasingly jobless because of hi-tech and outsourcing? Where will we get the imagination to recognize that for most of human history the concept of Jobs didn't even exist? Work, as distinguished from Labor, was done to produce needed goods and services, develop skills and artistry, and nurture cooperation. — Grace Lee Boggs

There's only one honest way to measure affluence; that's by comparing the capability of producing goods and services with the desire of people to enjoy them. It's a lousy, crooked trick to compare this society with China or some such place and then say we're affluent. It's a piece of intellectual crookery even to compare this economy with itself ten or twenty years ago. We should compare what we have with what we could have. — Louis O. Kelso

Nuclear warfare is not necessary to cause a breakdown of our society. You take a large city like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago-their water supply comes from hundreds of miles away and any interruption of that, or food, or power for any period of time, you're going to have riots in the streets. Our society is so fragile, so dependent on the interworking of things to provide us with goods and services, that you don't need nuclear warfare to fragment us anymore than the Romans needed it to cause their eventual downfall. — Gene Roddenberry

ECONOMIC IMPACT - The United States buys almost three quarters of a trillion dollars ($738,000,000,000.00) more from overseas suppliers than it sells in exports (balance of trade deficit). Overall, the US buys about $ 2.5 trillion dollars in goods and services produced by the other nations of the world every year. With the United States gone as the world's economic engine, the remaining nations of the world will, in varying degrees, immediately suffer from staggering financial depression. The financial credit crisis that started in mid-September, 2008 in the United States, soon reverberated in stock markets across the world. — John Price

Life is also, as George Carlin taught us, a zero-sum game. We all lose in the end. We all die screaming. If that's the case, we might as well make for ourselves a paradise in this world. Make yourself happy and comfortable as often as you can, because sooner or later, the infinite hands you a bill for all these goods and services. What — Kevin Smith

We live in a world where our social system is old, our language is old, the way we acquire goods and services is outdated, our cities are detrimental to our health, chaotic and a tremendous waste of resource, and most of all our politics and values no longer serve us. — Jacque Fresco