It is the institutions of society, not parental genes, that bestow the blessings of ownership of productive capital.

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.

Our present predicament comes from the fact that running the economy on blood is no longer fashionable. We can't end this depression with another war.

When capital owners are few, the private-property conduits of necessity create vast savings reservoirs for those few. If there were many owners, the same conduits would broadly irrigate the economy with purchasing power.

Political power without economic power is sterile.

The idea that full employment without property ownership will solve the world's problems is utter nonsense. The Keynesian concept that the function of capital is merely to amplify labor, not independently produce wealth is simply blindness.

It is the institutions of society, not parental genes, that bestow the blessings of ownership of productive capital.