5 Ellen Willis Quotes on Economics

Ellen Willis quotes on economics

10. Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people 'must' behave.

15. Today the changes that are generating enormous inequality, progressively destroying 'real jobs' with security and benefits, demanding longer and longer hours and at least two incomes per household as prerequisites for a minimally middle-class existence, and depriving people of control over their work even in the professional classes are taking place in the absence of any credible opposition to the free-market dogma that rules the day. On the contrary, the capitalist triumphalists are riding high on a wave of 'prosperity' that has enriched a minority of the population while obscuring the long-term slippage of our standard of living and our quality of life.

22. A triumphalist corporate capitalism, free at last of the specter of Communism, has mobilized its economic power to relentlessly marginalize all nonmarket values; to subordinate every aspect of American life to corporate 'efficiency' and the bottom line; to demonize not only government but the very idea of public service and public goods.

37. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.

38. Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it.