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Fame is worth less than service.

Amity Shlaes

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Amity Shlaes
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 10
Author
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Journalist
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Worth
Less
Service
Fame

More quotes by Amity Shlaes

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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.
Amity Shlaes
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Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
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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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.
Amity Shlaes
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Everybody should pay some tax, just as everybody should vote.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
Amity Shlaes
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Economics are part of our life. We try to treat them separately, like over there is the economy and here is history. Econ affects history and history often doesn't get it right if it doesn't respect econ.
Amity Shlaes
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Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness.
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.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
Amity Shlaes
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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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Anything can be done if you find friends to do it with.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
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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Today we care about budgets more than anything. Our American future hangs on the ability of government to cut budget.
Amity Shlaes
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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.
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