12 Peter F. Drucker Quotes on Economics

Peter F. Drucker quotes on economics

7. Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book. Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care-without it the kids have no future. Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis.' Seeing things as they really are, Forbes (March 10, 1997)

11. This society in which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new 'class conflict' between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of workers who will make their livings through traditional ways, either by manual work...or by service work. The productivity of knowledge work--still abysmally low--will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge society. On it will depend the ability of the knowledge society to give decent incomes, and with them dignity and status, to non knowledge people. -- Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995)

16. That knowledge has become the resource, rather than a resource, is what makes our society 'post-capitalist.' -- Post-Capitalist Society p. 45 (1993)

27. If 'socialism' is defined as 'ownership of the means of production'--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country. -- The Pension Fund Revolution (1976)

32. The world economy is not yet a community--not even an economic community...Yet the existence of the 'global shopping center' is a fact that cannot be undone. The vision of an economy for all will not be forgotten again. -- The Age of Discontinuity (1969)

42. No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil. -- Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959)

52. Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society. The Practice of Management (1954)

67. There is an unbroken chain of opposition to the introduction of economic freedom and to the capitalist autonomy of the economic sphere. ...In every case the opposition could only be overcome--peacefully or by force--because of the promise of capitalism to establish equality. ...That this promise was an illusion we all know. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)

70. [the masses] ...must turn their hopes toward a miracle. In the depths of their despair reason cannot be believed, truth must be false, and lies must be truth. 'Higher bread prices,' 'lower bread prices,' 'unchanged bread prices' have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)

80. There is only one point on which the economists and I are in agreement: I am NOT an economist.

82. [after attending a John Maynard Keynes seminar, he] suddenly realized that Keynes and all the brilliant economics students in the room were interested in the behavior of commodities while I was interested in the behavior of people.

83. [about Keynesian government spending to relieve economic depressions] It was like a doctor telling you that you have an inoperable liver cancer, but it will be cured if you go to bed with a beautiful seventeen-year-old.