The point is to make the pie grow faster and distribute the new growth more equitably. Louis O. Kelso More Quotes by Louis O. Kelso More Quotes From Louis O. Kelso People are hungering for property — for a secure, permanent and independent link with spaceship earth that ownership represents and which only ownership can protect or defend. It is humiliating to possess nothing, to own nothing, and hence to produce nothing and to count for nothing. Louis O. Kelso independentlinkspeople Property in everyday life, is the right of control. Louis O. Kelso politicseverydaylife-is Full employment is a socially hazardous goal. In effect, it aspires to restore through political expedients the pre-industrial state of toil that science, engineering, technology and modern management are pledged to overcome. Louis O. Kelso engineeringtechnologywisdom Had Marx understood the implications of the principles of capitalistic distribution which presented themselves to him as "appearances" only, he might have become a revolutionary capitalist instead of a revolutionary socialist. Louis O. Kelso politicswisdommight Hard-core structural poverty has a counterpart at the apex: hard-core structural affluence. Louis O. Kelso affluencepovertywisdom I'm a secret nonmember of the establishment. This isn't a grubby kind of revolution I'm talking about. This isn't Che Guevara stuff. I don't want to live on berries in the woods - I don't think anybody does. Louis O. Kelso wisdomtalkingthinking It is the institutions of society, not parental genes, that bestow the blessings of ownership of productive capital. Louis O. Kelso politicswisdomblessing Most of us owe instead of own. And the less the economy needs our labor, the less able we are to "save" our way to capital ownership. Louis O. Kelso wisdomwayneeds If we functionally define a capitalist household as one that receives at least half of the annual income it spends on consumption in the form of return on invested capital, less than 1 percent of United States households are capitalists. Louis O. Kelso politicshalfwisdom If capital produces most of the economy's wealth and income is distributed on the basis of productive input, the individual can hardly reach his goal - an affluent level of income - solely by means of his labor. Louis O. Kelso goalwisdommean No Keynesian has ever proposed a measure designed to make the individual more productive; for that would require institutional means for enabling him to acquire ownership of the nonhuman factor of production: capital. Louis O. Kelso enablingwisdommean We have an economic policy that is just about 10,000 years out of date. Louis O. Kelso politicswisdomyears Two-factor economics makes it clear that our economic problem is not what one-factor (labor-centric) thinkers assert: an inequitable distribution of income. It is an inequitable distribution of productive power, from which an unworkable distribution of income results. Louis O. Kelso incomewisdomtwo There's only one honest way to measure affluence; that's by comparing the capability of producing goods and services with the desire of people to enjoy them. It's a lousy, crooked trick to compare this society with China or some such place and then say we're affluent. It's a piece of intellectual crookery even to compare this economy with itself ten or twenty years ago. We should compare what we have with what we could have. Louis O. Kelso wisdompeopleyears What have the masses been clamoring for? Jobs and welfare, and they got 'em. They've also got unions and managements like two armies converting the whole economy into a battleground with the customers as victims, except that the victims are also in the army. They think in battle terms by day and like customers at night. Louis O. Kelso armywisdomjobs But would the young do any better under the same circumstances? Will they do any better when their turns come? The answer is that youth would not and cannot, given the financial and economic framework within which the elders are operating. While the moral convictions of individuals are important in the long run, it is institutions that determine the immediate course of events - particularly the institutions of finance. Louis O. Kelso wisdomrunninglong When capital owners are few, the private-property conduits of necessity create vast savings reservoirs for those few. If there were many owners, the same conduits would broadly irrigate the economy with purchasing power. Louis O. Kelso savingpoliticswisdom There is more to life than material well-being. Who would claim that the wholly wage-dependent family enjoys the dignity, the security, the range of choice and the autonomy (not to mention the leisure and freedom) of the family even partially supported by capital ownership? Louis O. Kelso politicschoiceswisdom While no inference is intended here, it is worth noting, in connection with Milton Friedman's comment that "Kelso just turned Marx upside down," that it is not necessarily amiss to turn a fellow upside down if that in fact straightens out his thinking. Louis O. Kelso connectionswisdomthinking Money is not a part of the visible sector of the economy; people do not consume money. Money is not a physical factor of production, but rather a yardstick for measuring economic input, economic outtake and the relative values of the real goods and services of the economic world. Money provides a method of measuring obligations, rights, powers and privileges. It provides a means whereby certain individuals can accumulate claims against others, or against the economy as a whole, or against many economies. Louis O. Kelso relative-valuerealmean
