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If people want consultative government, the price is increased complexity and delay in arriving at decisions. If they want speed of government, then they must accept a greater degree of authoritarianism. I suspect that the real answer is that most people prefer the latter so long, that is, as government's decisions conform with their own views.

John James Cowperthwaite

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John James Cowperthwaite
Age: 90 †
Born: 1915
Born: April 25
Died: 2006
Died: January 21
Civil Servant
Politician
Edinburgh
Scotland
Must
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Complexity
Real
Answer
Latter
Authoritarianism
Long
Accepting
Prefer
Arriving
People
Views
Degree
Delay
Answers
Price
Suspect
Decision
Speed
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Decisions
Conform
Government
Degrees
Suspects

More quotes by John James Cowperthwaite

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I would suggest to my honourable Friend that the foreign investor is at least as discouraged by high national debt for that, as all example shows, is the surest precursor of high taxation.
John James Cowperthwaite
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Over a wide field of our economy it is still the better course to rely on the nineteenth century's hidden hand than to thrust clumsy bureaucratic fingers into its sensitive mechanism. In particular, we cannot afford to damage its mainspring, freedom of competitive enterprise.
John James Cowperthwaite
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I am also, I must confess, a little sceptical of the theory that we have a right, if we could, to pass on our capital burden to future generations. I remarked last year in this context that our predecessors had not passed any significant part of their burden on to us.
John James Cowperthwaite
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One trouble is that when Government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else.
John James Cowperthwaite
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Revenue has increased in this way is in no small measure, I am convinced, due to our low tax policy which has helped to generate an economic expansion in the face of unfavourable circumstances.
John James Cowperthwaite
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I largely agree with those that hold that Government should not in general interfere with the course of the economy merely on the strength of its own commercial judgment. If we cannot rely on the judgment of individual businessmen, taking their own risks, we have no future anyway.
John James Cowperthwaite
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I am confident, however old-fashioned this may sound, that funds left in the hands of the public will come into the Exchequer with interest at the time in the future when we need them.
John James Cowperthwaite
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I am afraid that I do not believe that any body of men can have enough knowledge of the past, the present and the future to establish development priorities - which presumably means procuring some developments as being good and prohibiting others as being bad.
John James Cowperthwaite
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A glimmer of light is better than no illumination at all.
John James Cowperthwaite
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My own views on all matters of public revenue and public expenditure are conditioned by an acute appreciation of whose is the sacrifice that produces public revenue and to whom accrues the benefit of public spending.
John James Cowperthwaite
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Deficit financing proper is rather the process whereby a Government spends more money that it withdraws from the economy by taxation, borrowing, running down reserves, etc. thereby causing in most circumstances, and very acutely in ours, monetary inflation and severe pressure on the balance of payments.
John James Cowperthwaite
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I hold that two principles are important first that there should be a steady expansion of public services, not an irregular one related to revenue accruing in any particular year the second that taxes should be constant over long periods (provided, that is, that they are neither burdensome nor inequitable).
John James Cowperthwaite