How would the US be different today if people coming off the boat were greeted with a welfare check instead of a shovel? James M. Buchanan More Quotes by James M. Buchanan More Quotes From James M. Buchanan I have long been in favor of a balanced budget restriction at the level of the federal government of the United States. Because the federal government has money-creating powers it can, in fact, be very damaging if it runs a series of budget deficits. With the state government in the United States, they don't have money-creating powers. The automatic discipline imposed by the fact that they are in a common monetary unit and don't have control over the money power means that the balanced budget restriction is less needed. James M. Buchanan creating running mean We try to prevent the creation of artificial rents. Rather than setting up quotas to stop imports we levy a tariff, that would be better. Or we pay wages in the public sector which are roughly equivalent to the productivity in the private sector and we don't therefore make it a special benefit to get a bureaucratic position. James M. Buchanan special would-be trying It is much more difficult to get implemented politically what might be desirable economically. Even if you came out with an economic argument in favor of equalization - and I think there are arguments on both sides - I would still come down in favour of some sort of a scheme on strict economic grounds. James M. Buchanan favors might thinking One of the most exciting intellectual moments of my career was my 1948 discovery of Knut Wicksell's unknown and untranslated dissertation, 'Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen,' buried in the dusty stacks of Chicago's old Harper Library. James M. Buchanan career library moments intellectual The eighteenth century discovery that, in an institutional framework that facilitates voluntary exchanges among individuals, this process generates results that might be evaluated positively, produced 'economics,' as an independent academic discipline or science. James M. Buchanan economics discipline process science In 1987, the United States celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of the constitutional convention that provided the basic rules for the American political order. This convention was one of the very few historical examples in which political rules were deliberately chosen. James M. Buchanan american rules anniversary political
