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Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.

Amity Shlaes

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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
Biographer
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Journalist
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Close
Hand
Forever
Anyone
War
Hands
Grossed
World
Experienced
Awful

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The donning of the ear buds marks the beginning of teen life, when children set off on their own for the passage through adolescence.
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To investors, job creation is a second-order effect. Market participants care first about interest rates, exchange rates, bond prices and the one great factor that affects all three: the long-term solvency of a bond company called the U.S. government.
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Coolidge cut the budget, and even better, cut it during peace and prosperity. He left a federal budget lower than the one that greeted him when he arrived in office. He managed to freeze or cut the budget over more than five years in office. If you look at charts of presidents - Nixon, Ike, and Reagan - you see them failing on this score.
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Coolidge's stat was so low he's ranked in the bottom half of presidents. What I found when I encountered this man was the leader I might like to see today.
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We're in a kind of vicious cycle where the media tell the politicians, and the politicians tell the people, that perception is reality, and the perception of saving dooms a politician. I don't believe perception is reality, or that all Americans think that.
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Coolidge believed that government officials who tell themselves that spending benefits the economy delude themselves and the citizens. Government budgets promote human freedom.
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Today many politicians suggest that where the federal government does not act, there must be anarchy. That view is odd, blinkering out the work of state and towns, which until recently did much of our charitable and cultural work. That view also blinkers out the role of mutual societies and churches.
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Coolidge and his treasury secretary Mellon loved new technology. Like JFK, C.C. divined that a new technology could lift the nation out of its doldrums the only difference was that JFK's new technology was space travel, and Coolidge's travel by airplane.
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Coolidge really hated government being in the power business. He thought it was wrong. He saw the potential for growth in the power business. He didn't want the federal government in it.
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Although unions may be good for a worker, singular, they are not always good for workers, plural. Especially when it comes to finding a job.
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Coolidge was a pragmatist. He didn't start out with a tax theory. But he observed over time that lower tax rates sometimes brought in extra revenue. The success of his and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's experiment with rate cuts has been obscured by our modern history books.
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Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.
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Fame is worth less than service.
Amity Shlaes
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The 1920s are the decade that signaled the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.
Amity Shlaes
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The difference between recession and depression is simple. Recession, goes the saying, is when you lose your job depression is when I lose mine.
Amity Shlaes
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In a way, Calvin Coolidge is better than Reagan. His tax rates were lower, and he cut budgets.
Amity Shlaes
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In the end, all new schools, public or private, snobby or not, add value to the education market, making it bigger and more efficient, in the same way that Zuckerberg added wealth to the economy even for non-Facebook fans.
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Coolidge thought budgets were virtuous. He had his econ straight. He didn't just cut taxes, he also cut the budget.
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People value Halloween, like Valentine's Day, because they can tell themselves that it's not merely secularized but actually secular, which is to say, not Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim.
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Coolidge was a federalist. You go back and read him and it's almost intimidating to write about him because he writes better himself than anyone. He's one of the best writers as presidents go.
Amity Shlaes