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-Economics in three easy lessons-

Wealth is created in only two ways.
1- By mining the earth.
2- By manufacturing products.
Services do not create wealth, they only transfer it from one location to another.

When production exceeds consumption, the standard of living goes up.
When consumption exceeds production, the standard of living goes down.
A nation with a productivity shortfall can, for a limited time, maintain its standard of living
 by borrowing the surplus productivity of other nations. 

Recessions and depressions don't just happen.
Ten times out of ten, they are caused by government.

Margaret Thatcher
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

Thomas Jefferson
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government
 from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away
from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

My reading of history convinces me that most
bad government results from too much government.

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation
of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is,
as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

From , A History of the American People
 by Paul Johnson.

"Right at the end of his life, Benjamin Franklin wrote a pamphlet giving advice to Europeans planning to come to America. He said it was a good place for those who wanted to become rich.
But, he said, it was above all a haven for the industrious poor, for nowhere else are the laboring poor so well fed, well lodged, well clothed and well paid as in the United States of America. It was a country, he concluded, where ‘a general happy mediocrity prevails’.
It is important for those who wish to understand American history to remember the point about ‘happy mediocrity.’
The historian is bound to bring out the high points and crises of the national story...
But the everyday lives of simple citizens must not be ignored simply because they were uneventful. This is particularly true of America, a country specifically created by and for ordinary men and women, where the system of government was deliberately designed to interfere in their lives as little as possible."

Franklin did not mention the fact that the working poor could save, invest and work their way into the upper economic classes as he and countless others who came here penniless, managed to do. Likewise, the rich can, and do, just as easily move in the opposite direction.
 

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