In the auto industry, there’s one thing you can always count on: if a new environmental or safety rule is proposed, executives will prophesy disaster. James Surowiecki Read Quote
In American politics, ‘Europe’ is usually a code word for ‘big government.’ James Surowiecki Read Quote
On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough. James Surowiecki Read Quote
Corporations hope that the right concept will turn things around overnight. This is what you might call the crash-diet approach: starve yourself for a few days and you’ll be thin for life. James Surowiecki Read Quote
Popular as Keynesian fiscal policy may be, many economists are skeptical that it works. They argue that fine-tuning the economy is a virtually impossible task, and that fiscal-stimulus programs are usually too small, and arrive too late, to make a difference. James Surowiecki Read Quote
Intellectual-property rules are clearly necessary to spur innovation: if every invention could be stolen, or every new drug immediately copied, few people would invest in innovation. But too much protection can strangle competition and can limit what economists call ‘incremental innovation’ – innovations that build, in some way, on others. James Surowiecki Read Quote
In terms of productivity – that is, how much a worker produces in an hour – there’s little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth. James Surowiecki Read Quote
Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial. James Surowiecki Read Quote
Unlike fuel-economy standards, the most common method of reducing demand for oil over the past thirty years, a gas tax doesn’t tell people what kind of car to drive. It simply raises the price of gasoline and lets people adjust their behavior accordingly. James Surowiecki Read Quote
When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren’t factored in to the pump price – among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents. James Surowiecki Read Quote
