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Corporate welfare isn't necessarily a bad thing.

James Surowiecki

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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Thing
Corporate
Welfare
Necessarily

More quotes by James Surowiecki

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No decision-making system is going to guarantee corporate success. The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.
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Now, modern economies have a very effective mechanism for deciding if salaries are really too high: it's called the free market. That's how most people's salaries are set, after all, including those of major-league baseball players and European soccer players.
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In confusing stock options with ownership, corporations confuse trappings with substance.
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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
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Of course, looking tough on inflation is part of any central banker's job description: if investors believe that inflation is going to get out of control, you end up with higher interest rates and capital flight, and a vicious circle quickly ensues.
James Surowiecki
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All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.
James Surowiecki
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In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.
James Surowiecki
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Wall Street has come a long way from the insider-dominated world that was blown apart by the Great Depression.
James Surowiecki
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I think people don't understand compound interest because typically no one ever explains it to them and the level of financial literacy in the US is very low.
James Surowiecki
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You'll sometimes hear from people that they actually do a better job of getting their work done when they have a lot of other obligations - in effect, it removes the possibility of procrastinating.
James Surowiecki
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Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they're likely to increase prices, since they've learned that if they don't, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked.
James Surowiecki
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Campaigns fail if they waste resources courting voters who are unpersuadable or already persuaded. Their most urgent task is to find and persuade the few voters who are genuinely undecided and the larger number who are favorably disposed but need a push to actually vote.
James Surowiecki
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One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.
James Surowiecki
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Developing countries often have hypertrophied bureaucracies, requiring businesses to deal with enormous amounts of red tape.
James Surowiecki
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There does seem to be some evidence that as people get older, they procrastinate less, perhaps because they feel the pressure of time more.
James Surowiecki
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The truth is that the United States doesn't need, and shouldn't have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one.
James Surowiecki
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Being out of a job can erode people's confidence and their sense of possibility and employers, often unfairly, tend to take long-term unemployment as a signal that something is wrong.
James Surowiecki
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Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
James Surowiecki
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As technology improves, on-screen avatars look more and more like real people. When they start looking too real, though, we pull away. These almost-humans aren't quite right they look creepy, like zombies.
James Surowiecki
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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