Quote:
Originally Posted by Soriak  Some more quotes from Jefferson:
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor. (which he said while owning slaves)
hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. (In favor of government regulation)
So I don't think he was a big fan of the free market either 
Not that it even makes sense to compare the America of 1800 to the America of today - for one, it wasn't dependent on foreign investment and not as much on global trade.
It was a pretty crappy time - I don't get why anyone would feel nostalgic towards it. |
Funny thing was, most, if not all of what he said is a real concern among economists now.
The rich/poor gap, the regrowth of a
robber baron aristocracy and interest creating debts which can't be feasibly repaid. Jefferson's quotes, the ones you sited in fact, all point to massive flaws in
bank-driven economics, they weren't implicitly for government control (Though he was a fan).
Granted a lot of our current economic flaws have to do with this weird bastardized mixture of Keynesian economics+Adam smith laissez fair. Regardless however, the people who lived then were as insightful toward politics and economics as Newton was towards Mathematics. Just because newer trends change the landscape which they predicted does not make them any less genius.
Yeah, it would be unwise to only sup from the knowledge of the past, but it's also pretty unwise to throw it away. A lot of "fixes" for our current economic mess can be found in the teachings of dead economists.
