Debt
QUOTES
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"AARP
strongly opposes these proposals [to divert Social Security
payroll taxes to private accounts]. Private accounts
in place of Social Security are risky, expensive to
administer, and require huge increases in the federal
debt. AARP believes there are better and more responsible
ways to strengthen the system. To compensate for the
loss of Social Security revenue sent into private accounts,
the federal government would have to borrow significant
sums for the next several decades in order to continue
to pay promised benefits to currently retiring beneficiaries.
One prominent proposal would require $1 billion in the
first 10 years the private accounts were in place. Then,
$3.5 trillion would be needed in the following decade.
Younger workers would have to bear much of the burden
for paying this debt. That's not right, and it's not
fair to them. Social Security is an insurance program,
not an investment program. The essence of Social Security
is that it has always been risk-free for all of us.
It's also inflation-proof - something neither investments,
nor even many pensions, can guarantee. Private accounts
within Social Security would add a large measure of
personal risk. AARP has publicly stated many times that
there are places in retirement planning that are appropriate
for taking risks, such as 401(k) plans, Individual Retirement
Accounts, and mutual funds, but they should be in addition
to the guarantee of Social Security."
-- AARP
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millions
of our fellow human beings continue to live as
contemporary slaves, victims of abominable practices
like human trafficking, forced labour and sexual
exploitation. Countless children are forced to
become soldiers, work in sweat shops or are sold
by desperate families. Women are brutalized and
traded like commodities. Entire households and
villages labour under debt bondage.
-- Ban Ki-moon
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You
can't build hospitals or schools, you can't spend
money educating or immunizing your people, whilst
there is this burden of debt sitting on your head.
It effects the lives of about a billion people
who are living on less than a dollar a day. We're
trying to get them a fresh start... It is a moral
as well as economic imperative that we come to
their aid right now... That's what we're asking
for these poorest nations of the world - Give
them a fresh start. Cancel those old debts. Let
them get up off their knees and take care of themselves...
-- Bono
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A
huge part of our power came from our moral authority
... the moral issue of debts as being killers
of millions of poor people around the world...I
think our power is also rooted in our intellectual
power. I think there are a lot of strong leaders
around the world who have made very convincing
arguments about the weakness of corporate-led
globalization and the compelling nature of alternatives.
-- John Cavanagh
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“Simply
put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too
many poor countries and poor people in poverty.”
~ Bill Clinton
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The
debt that each generation owes to the past it must
pay to the future.
-- Abigail Duniway |
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To
the generous mind the heaviest debt is that of gratitude,
when it is not in our power to repay it.
-- Benjamin Franklin |
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"If
you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow,
perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped.
Nature must pay off the debt...It is a mathematical
law and all life is mathematics."
-- Gurdjieff
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“When
you get in debt you become a slave.” -- Andrew Jackson
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If
you look internationally over the last 50 years
there have been improvements in the third world,
but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened,
with debt crises and increased poverty.
-- David Korten
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"We
must work to repeal trade agreements that impede
access to affordable generic drugs. We must work
to cause the IMF and the World Bank to reduce
and eventually eliminate the debt that takes poor
nations' resources away from crises like AIDS.
We must focus America's leadership on addressing
and ending this epidemic."
-- Dennis Kucinich
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Multinational
companies now run water systems for 7 per cent of the
world's population, and analysts say that figure could
grow to 17 per cent by 2015. Private water management
is estimated to be a $200 billion business, and the
World Bank, which has encouraged governments to sell
off their utilities to reduce public debt, projects
it could be worth $1 trillion by 2021. The potential
for profits is staggering: in May 2000 Fortune magazine
predicted that water is about to become 'one of the
world's great business opportunities', and that 'it
promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the
20th'.
-- John Louma
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"Of
course I am frustrated with regard to extreme poverty,
to violence that never seems to cease. Greed is
the key. It’s easy to sit in relative luxury and
peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third
World debts. Not many of us are willing to give
up everything we have. We can however give some,
and millions of people do, governments do, but there
is so much more to be done."
-- Sir Roger Moore |
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Debt
is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing
and the mightiest to undermine governments and
corrupt the people.
-- Wendell Phillips
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Worrying
is like paying on a debt that may never come due. --
Will Rogers
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"This law represents a cornerstone in a structure
which is being built but is by no means completed--a
structure intended to lessen the force of possible
future depressions, to act as a protection to future
administrations of the Government against the necessity
of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the
needy--a law to flatten out the peaks and valleys
of deflation and of inflation--in other words, a
law that will take care of human needs and at the
same time provide for the United States an economic
structure of vastly greater soundness."
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt (August 14, 1935) |
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In
order more deeply to affect the minds of the citizens
of the United States with the blessings of peace,
by contrasting them with the evils of war, let the
following inscriptions be painted upon the sign
which is placed over the door of the War Office:
1. An office for butchering the human species. 2.
A Widow and Orphan making office. 3. A broken bone
making office. 4. A Wooden leg making office. 5.
An office for the creating of public and private
vices. 6. An office for creating a public debt.
7. An office for creating speculators, stock Jobbers,
and Bankrupts. 8. An office for creating famine.
9. An office for creating pestilential diseases.
10. An office for creating poverty, and the destruction
of liberty, and national happiness. -- Benjamin
Rush |
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The
time has come to end this charade. The debts are
unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I
would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves.
Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we
need this money to meet the needs of children
who are dying right now so we will put the debt
servicing payments into urgent social investment
in health, education, drinking water, control
of AIDS and other needs.'
-- Jeffrey Sachs
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People
should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction,
don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your
life, and don't start a family before you're ready to
settle down.
-- James Taylor
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