Public Goods Quotes

#1. If you think of global public goods like polio eradication, the kind of risk-taking new approach, philanthropy really does have a role to play there, because government doesn't do R&D about new things naturally as much as it probably should, and so philanthropy's there.

Bill Gates

#2. Privatization of assets that most of us consider public goods - like airports and highways - has a long, often-uncontroversial history.

Bethany McLean

#3. Africa's success stories are delivering the whole range of the public goods and services that citizens have a right to expect and are forging a path that we hope more will follow.

Mo Ibrahim

#4. One of the gaps in our international development efforts is the provision of global public goods - that is, goods or conditions we need that no individual or country can secure on their own, such as halting global warming, financial stability and peace and security.

Anna Lindh

#5. Modern 'public health' initiatives have moved well beyond what could reasonably be classified as public goods. Today, government undertakes all sorts of policies in the name of public health that are aimed at regulating personal behavior.

Radley Balko

#6. How do we ensure in the case of public goods that they are provided at all, and that they are provided at the right level, taking into account citizens' preferences?

Eric Maskin

#7. Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they'd otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.

Robert Reich

#8. China should significantly augment the foreign aid and public goods it provides, so it can use these as a bargaining chip in its efforts to get more say in global decision-making

Wang Yizhou

#9. The market doesn't work very well when it comes to public goods.

Eric Maskin

#10. If I buy a car, I use the car, you don't, and the market for cars works pretty well. But there are many other sorts of goods, often very important goods, which are not provided well through the market. Often, these go under the heading of public goods.

Eric Maskin

#11. Theory of public goods. Theory that if I take you euro (as an elected state government) and give fifty cents back... you will be happier and I will be satisfied.

Radovan Kavicky

#12. globalization, a grossly misnamed metaphor that disingenuously cloaked government deregulation and the privatization of public goods and services in the wrap of a new global "interconnectivity.

Jeremy Rifkin

#13. I think that markets classically fail in cases where there are public goods that provide benefits that people cannot capture. The big debate is how big these public goods are, where they exist, things of that sort.

Peter Thiel

#14. [Fiscal prudence] means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient taxes to pay for the public goods and services we want, keeping budgets in relative balance over time, and keeping debt coming down, at least during reasonably good times.

Alex Himelfarb

#15. I'm a liberal - I believe in subsidies for public goods and in regulations to curb harmful externalities, but neither of those things exist when it comes to parking.

Matthew Yglesias

#16. The United States will continue to be number one, and I do not see any country or group of countries taking the United States' place in providing global public goods that underpin security and prosperity. The United States functions as the world's de facto government.

Michael Mandelbaum

#17. On reflection, I am always pleasantly surprised when ordinary members of the public stop me in the street to say, 'Thank you,' I guess for making travel and other goods and services affordable to them.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou

#18. The American public is being sold a very nasty bill of goods about cancer.

James D. Watson

#19. Those who (in charity) spend of their goods by night and by day, in secret and in public, have their reward with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve. QURAN The Cow 2 : 274.

Qur'an

#20. To best serve the public happiness, government shouldn't do things it cannot do well - anymore than Wal-Mart should provide goods and services that people don't like.

Joel Miller

#21. The fundamental fact in the lives of the poor in most parts of America is that the wages of common labor are far below the benefits of AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, public defenders, leisure time and all the other goods and services of the welfare state.

George Gilder

#22. Trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of any goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principal, comes within the jurisdiction of society.

John Stuart Mill

#23. Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants.

John Katzman

#24. The best measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it allocates the goods of the land, the public trust assets.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#25. Advertising ... is a parasitic activity; it forces goods for which there is no real need or demand on a foolish or even a reluctant public, always by appealing to their lower instincts.

Ann Bridge

#26. In a community where public services have failed to keep abreast of private consumption things are very different. Here, in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.

John Kenneth Galbraith

#27. What's insane is a ten percent levy on baked goods. You do realize the Revolutionary war began on less than two percent. How is the public not flocking to the streets in outrage? We must do something.

Ichabod

#28. The plain, unvarnished truth is that public education is a shoddy, fraudulent piece of goods sold t to the public at an astronomical price. It's time the American consumer knew the extent of the fraud which is victimizing millions of children each year.

Samuel Blumenfeld

#29. Without new money, salaries wo n't be paid, the health system will stop functioning, the power network and public transport will break down, and they wo n't be able to import vital goods because nobody can pay.

Martin Schulz

#30. Growth can also involve producing services instead of goods. In particular, a major expansion of public and caring services (like child care, education, elder care, and other life-affirming programs) would generate huge increases in GDP and incomes, with virtually no impact on the environment.

Jim Stanford

#31. They seem to have forgotten that, and are back saying the only purpose of P2P networks is for illegal trading of owned goods. We claim part of the reason for P2P is for legal trading of what ought to be in public domain. And what is in public domain in many cases.

John Perry Barlow

#32. The public has been sold a bill of goods about the free market being a panacea for mankind.

Tom Scholz

#33. In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.

George Grosz

#34. To be interested in the public good we must be disinterested, that is, not interested in goods in which our personal selves are wrapped up.

George Herbert Mead

#35. Investing scarce resources in large-scale public projects and capital goods does increase output, but it does not contribute to economic progress if these investments do not produce things people value.

Christopher J. Coyne

#36. One of the appeals of markets, as a public philosophy, is they seem to spare us the need to engage in public arguments about the meaning of goods. So markets seem to enable us to be non-judgmental about values. But I think that's a mistake.

Michael Sandel

#37. I had sometimes met guys who looked like they worked out a lot; however, overly conservative social boundaries had restrained me from tearing their shirts open in public to check the goods.

Camilla Monk

#38. The men who administer public affairs must first of all see that everyone holds onto what is his, and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public men.

Marcus Tullius Cicero