The
economy of the United States
is a highly developed mixed economy. It is the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and the second-largest by purchasing power parity (PPP). It also has the world's eighth-highest per capita GDP (nominal) and the tenth-highest per capita GDP (PPP) in 2018. GDP measures recessions by two negative quarters of growth. The
United States
has the most technologically powerful economy in the world and its firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances. The
U.S. dollar
is the
currency
most used in international transactions and is the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by its economy,
its military
, debt reimbursement, and the
petrodollar system
. Several countries use it as their official currency, and in many others, it is the
de facto
currency. The largest U.S. trading partners are
China
,
Canada
,
Mexico
,
Japan
,
Germany
,
South Korea
,
United Kingdom
,
France
,
India
, and
Taiwan
. The U.S. is the world's largest importer and the second-largest exporter. It has free trade agreements with several nations, including NAFTA, Australia, South Korea, Israel, and few others which are in effect or under negotiating stage.
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- As
institutions
influence
behavior
and incentives in real life, they forge the success or failure of
nations
.
Individual
talent
matters at every level of society, but even that needs an institutional framework to transform it into a positive force.
Bill Gates
, like other legendary figures in the
information technology
industry (such as
Paul Allen
,
Steve Ballmer
,
Steve Jobs
,
Larry Page
,
Sergey Brin
, and Jeff Bezos), had immense talent and ambition. But he ultimately responded to incentives. The
schooling system in the United States
enabled Gates and others like him to acquire a unique set of skills to complement their talents. The economic institutions in the United States enabled these men to start
companies
with ease, without facing insurmountable barriers. Those institutions also made the financing of their projects feasible. The U.S. labor markets enabled them to hire qualified personnel, and the relatively
competitive
market
environment enabled them to expand their companies and market their
products
. These
entrepreneurs
were confident from the beginning that their dream projects could be implemented: they trusted the institutions and the
rule of law
that these generated and they did not worry about the security of their
property rights
. Finally, the political institutions ensured stability and continuity. For one thing, they made sure that there was no risk of a dictator taking power and changing the rules of the game, expropriating their wealth, imprisoning them, or threatening their lives and livelihoods. They also made sure that no particular interest in society could warp the government in an economically disastrous direction, because political power was both limited and distributed sufficiently broadly that a set of economic institutions that created the incentives for prosperity could emerge.
- Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012)
- Banks
are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our
religion
.
[1]
- When the economy falls over, we won’t be jellyfish. We’ll still have backbones and teeth, white teeth, and double standards to equalize the equilibrium that is never the same.
- Only "America," of all national designations, took on the combined force of
eschatology
and chauvinism. Many forms of
nationalism
have laid claims to a world-redeeming promise; many
Christian
sects have sought, in open or secret
heresy
, to find the sacred in the profane; many
European
Protestants
have linked the soul’s journey and the way to wealth. But only the "
American Way
," of all modern symbologies, has managed to circumvent the contradictions inherent in these approaches. Of all symbols of identity, only "American" has succeeded in uniting
nationality
with
universality
, civic and spiritual
selfhood
, sacred and secular
history
, the country’s past and the paradise to be, in a single transcendent ideal.
- [T]he stakes for America are never small. If our country does not lead the cause of
freedom
, it will not be led. If we do not turn the hearts of
children
toward
knowledge
and
character
, we will lose their gifts and undermine their
idealism
. If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most.
- [T]he chief business of the American people is
business
. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.
- The object of this new American industrial empire, so far as that object was conscious and normative, was not national well-being, but the individual gain of the associated and
corporate
monarchs
through the power of vast profit on enormous
capital
investment
; through the efficiency of an
industrial machine
that bought the highest
managerial
and
engineering
talent
and used the latest and most effective methods and machines in a field of unequaled raw material and endless market
demand
. That this machine might use the profit for the general weal was possible and in cases true. But the uplift and well-being of the mass of men, of the cohorts of common labor, was not its ideal or excuse. Profit, income, uncontrolled power in My Business for My Property and for Me?this was the aim and method of the new
monarchial
dictatorship
that displaced
democracy
in the United States in 1876.
- From the moment they took a
republic
rather than a
monarchy
as the shape of their
government
, Americans prided themselves on being a nation of peace, dedicated to the arts of commerce rather than the rapacity of
empire
and "the spirit of war."
- The United States is the most extreme case of the subjection of society to the brute force of the market.
- We do not believe that the American economy is a zero-sum game―in other words, if I have more, that means someone else will have less. What we said in that forum is that we believe in a growing pie. Just because I have a certain slice of the pie does not exclude anyone else from it by design. Unfortunately, the opposite view is held by many people in the
West
today. They do think it is a zero-sum game, that there's only so much to go around and that it has to be shared more fairly. They do not comprehend expanding
wealth
or creating wealth; they view it as limited and finite and want to
redistribute
it. It pains us greatly that we are not able to get our message across that the great
prosperity
so many people in this country enjoy is available to everybody―if you are just taught to avail yourself of it, how to believe in yourself, how to be
self-sufficient
, and how to escape government
dependency
.
- The U.S. economy was organized differently from the
New Deal
until 1973. As incomplete, uneven, and
racist
as it was,
social welfare
and
public housing
worked to ameliorate the grossest injustices of the capitalist system.
Capitalism
was organized in a way that was less mean than it is now. The world can be organized such that it doesn’t simultaneously produce the people we call
homeless
and the thinking that we have to get rid of them.
- The blood, sweat, tears, and suffering of
Black people
are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down. The immediate result of this destruction will be suffering and bloodshed. But the end result will be perpetual peace for all mankind.
- Huey Newton
, "In Defense of Self-Defense",
The Huey P. Newton Reader
, p. 137
- Only during two periods since 1776 has the government mostly left the economy alone: during the
early years of the federal republic
; and in the two decades previous to the
Civil War
. The political economist Condy Raguet called the first period of economic freedom, from 1783 to 1807, "the golden age" of the republic:
Trade
was free,
taxes
were low,
money
was sound, and Americans enjoyed more economic freedom than any other people in the world.
Sumner
thought the years from 1846 to 1860?the era of the independent treasury, falling tariffs, and
gold money
?was the true "golden age."
- Part of the US success was how its massive economic power intersected with the daily lives of American citizens. Other rising powers in history had seen their rise mainly benefit their elites, while ordinary people had to be satisfied with the scraps left at the table of
empire
. The United States changed all that. Its economic rise created a domestic
consumer society
that everyone could aspire to take part in, including recent
immigrants
and
African-Americans
, who were otherwise discriminated against and had little political influence. New products offered status and convenience, and the experience of
modernity
through
goods
produced by new
technology
defined what it meant to be American: it was about transformation, a new beginning in a country where resources and ideas fertilized each other through their abundance.
- Odd Arne Westad,
The Cold War: A World History
(2018),
- We’ve had an economy that never really escaped the
crash of 2008
. In a way, the last 10 years have been an economy on life support: vast amounts of
money
pumped
into the economy; record drops in
interest rates
, inviting everybody?
business
,
individuals
,
governments
?to
borrow money
?a debt-sustained situation. And after a while, you can’t mount up the debt on the basis of an economy that hasn’t really gotten going. And we’re seeing the eventual break. You know, the
capitalist system
has a downturn every four to seven years. It’s had that for centuries. And the last big downturn was 2008 and '09. So, if you do four and seven, and you add it to nine, we're due for one. And every major
stock market
observer, bank and so on predicts that we’re having a downturn. So it’s really only a question of exactly when. And the stock market anticipates this. And so we’re having, in a way, economic chickens coming home to roost. And the notion that it’s just the
Fed’s policy
that explains this is really the kind of remark that would get a student a very low grade in any economics course.
- In the United States (and to a lesser degree, in most of the
advanced world
)
money
is an economic good. Something that has value in and of itself, and so it should be applied with a degree of forethought for how efficiently it can be mobilized. This is why banks require collateral and/or business plans before they’ll fund loans.
External links
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- ↑
"Book of Business Quotations". Ridgers, Bill, ed. The Economist. July 31, 2012.