2,003 Quotes About Democracy

According to Oxfam, for example, the fifty largest American companies have, by perfectly legal means, shifted over $1 trillion to offshore tax havens, costing the US government about $111 billion in lost tax revenue.

This gives nation states an obvious point of leverage over their citizens: if they seek to retain access to its territory, they should have to pay taxes in the country.

Especially in the world’s biggest cities, the explosion of housing prices has been staggering. In New York, for example, the average rent on an apartment in the 1960s was $200 per month, and a square foot of residential real estate cost $25 to buy. By the 2010s, average rent had grown to $3,500 and a square foot sold at $1,070.

In short, the exorbitant cost of housing is now one of the most important reasons for the stagnation of livingstandards across North America and Western Europe. If defeating populism hinges in part on making citizens more optimistic about the future, a radical reorientation of housing policy is urgently needed.

In the American context, this is especially striking in individual states: infamously, for example, California now spends a lot more on its prisons than it does on its world-class universities.

At the core of this nostalgia stands a double desire for control: Citizens want their nation to be able to make its own decisions, unencumbered by the constraints of the global economy.

Over the past decades, countries across North America and Western Europe have become less democratic. Our political system promises to let the people rule. But in practice, it ignores the popular will with disheartening frequency. Unnoticed by most political scientists, a system of rights without democracy has taken hold.

Não há como ser progressista sendo socialmente conservador, porque uma comunidade conformista não gera inovação. E a sociedade não pode ser gerida como uma empresa privada. Você não pode se livrar de um cidadão porque ele está insatisfeito ou rende pouco.

Netoužím po tom, aby někdo žil podle mě, ale stejně tak nehodlám žít podle někoho jiného. Nebudu své názory měnit jenom proto, že si někdo myslí, že když se světem žene revoluce, která je mu názorově blízká, musí se všichni přizpůsobit.