Quote

Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers to the future well-being of their families.

James Surowiecki

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Well
Investment
Symbolic
Good
Commitment
Insurance
Life
Became
Sold
Instead
Fathers
Company
Stopped
Future
Families
Father
Popular
Wells
Companies
Emphasizing

More quotes by James Surowiecki

Image
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
Image
One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.
James Surowiecki
Image
Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.
James Surowiecki
Image
All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.
James Surowiecki
Image
Movies' mistrust of capitalism is almost as old as the medium itself.
James Surowiecki
Image
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
Image
The Internet has become a remarkable fount of economic and social innovation largely because it's been an archetypal level playing field, on which even sites with little or no money behind them - blogs, say, or Wikipedia - can become influential.
James Surowiecki
Image
You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money.
James Surowiecki
Image
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
Image
One of the problems that exacerbates procrastination is the feeling that you have lots of different things to do and no clear sense of which matter more, when they should be done, etc.
James Surowiecki
Image
Tough times have always lent themselves to nativist sentiments and closed-door policies. But in the case of highly skilled immigrants these policies are a recipe for stagnation.
James Surowiecki
Image
If you thought the advent of the Internet, the spread of cheap and efficient information technology, and the growing fragmentation of the consumer market were all going to help smaller companies thrive at the expense of the slow-moving giants of the Fortune 500, apparently you were wrong.
James Surowiecki
Image
Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.
James Surowiecki
Image
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.
James Surowiecki
Image
From a social point of view, it's beneficial that homeownership encourages commitment to a given town or city. But, from an economic point of view, it's good for people to be able to leave places where there's less work and move to places where there's more.
James Surowiecki
Image
If companies tell us more, insider trading will be worth less.
James Surowiecki
Image
In order to work well, markets need a basic level of trust.
James Surowiecki
Image
On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.
James Surowiecki
Image
If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.
James Surowiecki
Image
Of course, plenty of people don't think that guaranteeing affordable health insurance is a core responsibility of government.
James Surowiecki