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Coolidge showed that the best government was the one that got out of the way. When he refrained, the economy grew, the Ku Klux Klan faded, and Americans got Model A's and automobiles.

Amity Shlaes

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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
Biographer
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
Government
Faded
Best
Automobile
Way
Showed
Model
Refrained
Models
Klux
Americans
Coolidge
Grew
Klan
Economy
Automobiles

More quotes by Amity Shlaes

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Anyone who experienced World War I close-hand was grossed out by it forever. It just was so awful.
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Our conscience, our faith, our local community, even our online hobby clubs - all civilize us.
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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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I think the Bushes would have liked President Coolidge, though I often wonder what nickname 43 would pick for 30. President Bush has great respect for his father, and so did President Coolidge, whose father was also in government, albeit in a smaller way.
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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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Fame is worth less than service.
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Right now we're concerned about budget. Right now we're concerned about the prospect of interest rate rise. We're concerned about government corruption, government handing out deals to specific groups. Coolidge fixed a problem like that. He came into a rough time and he, and Harding before him, fixed that by budgeting.
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Disillusionment can come as fast as a gust, but building faith that the government won't inflate again is like building a new sailboat, a project of years.
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If Coolidge were a stock, he'd be a buy. The experts have historically ranked Coolidge in the bottom quartile or bottom half of all presidents. But his economic performance and his statesmanship suggest Coolidge belongs in the top quarter of presidents. The disparity between the Coolidge price and Coolidge value is huge. So revision is warranted.
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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.
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Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.
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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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Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
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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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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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Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with.
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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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I'm not sure Roosevelt was quite a monster, he just did a poor job on the economics.
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The lucky biographers find themselves drawn into a sort of friendship with their subject.
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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.
Amity Shlaes