Requiring the payment of higher wages will lead to a loss of some jobs and a raising of prices which drives companies to search for automation to reduce costs. On the other hand, those receiving higher wages will spend more (the marginal propensity to consume is close to 1 for low income earners) and this will increase demand for additional goods and services. Henry Ford had the clearest vision of why companies can actually benefit by paying higher wages.

I found marketing to be highly descriptive and prescriptive, without much of a foundation in deep research. I brought in economics, organization theory, mathematics, and social psychology in my first edition of Marketing Management in 1967. Today Marketing Management is in its 15th edition and remains the world's leading textbook on marketing in MBA programs. Subsequently, I wrote two more textbooks, Principles of Marketing and Marketing: an Introduction.

Good companies will meet needs; great companies will create markets.

Whenever someone wonders how I could have written 57 books, I remind them that Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books. I like Asimov's view that great insight comes from seeing something as odd and finding out why. Curiosity is the starting point for great science.

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do.

Thomas Edison had great visions (for lights, music players, movies, etc.) but he knew they didn't count until he could make them work. His statement that creativity is 99% perspiration makes that point. Consider how much time he spent trying to make a synthetic rubber material for tires and never stopped trying but he never succeeded.

A person without an Apple watch is perfectly content with his present watch but when he sees his friends buying the watch, he will hanker for an Apple watch. The endless cycle of wanting, getting, and wanting again is part of the plot of Capitalism. It is the way Capitalism creates jobs. The only antidote is Buddhism that holds that people might be happier by renouncing desire rather than by striving to satisfy desire. But then how can the economy create enough jobs in a Buddhist society of "less is more."