Wal-Mart uses technology to increase sales volume, but the more it does so, the more it drives down profit margins – its own and everybody else’s. The same logic does not appear to hold for Goldman Sachs. – Timothy Noah
Spoken language’s elaborate rhythms and inflections convey more meaning per word than the printed word. – Timothy Noah
The liberation of Iraq, which is already hard to justify from the perspective of American interests, at least had the virtue of freeing Iraqis from a brutal dictator. Despite all the anarchy and violence, life has gotten better for most Iraqis. – Timothy Noah
The pathological degree to which former Vice President Dick Cheney operated in secrecy led to government abuses that we’ll probably spend years learning about. – Timothy Noah
Obama is an intelligent man whose life and work experience sensitize him to class distinctions. – Timothy Noah
Nothing energizes me more than to burrow myself under a pile of received wisdom and emerge triumphant with the truth. – Timothy Noah
Markets can do many wonderful things, which is why I’m glad to live in a capitalist country. – Timothy Noah
In Washington, the accepted method for passing along information about how the government fails to meet real-world needs is to leak it. – Timothy Noah
If Romney were a chair, he’d be a squishy, expensively upholstered easy chair that bore the imprint of whoever last sat on it. – Timothy Noah
For any politician who didn’t enter office a wealthy man, nothing says ‘I take bribes’ like a Rolex watch. – Timothy Noah
Romney has become reluctant to say that human activity causes global warming, and even in his greener days he was always somewhat cagey about which remedies he’d support. – Timothy Noah
The intriguing aspect of food charges on airlines is that they create the perfect laboratory for any economist who wishes to study the question of how to price a good that possesses, by universal consensus, absolutely no objective value. – Timothy Noah
What I’ve learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country’s credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war. – Timothy Noah
To argue that universal health care would wreck the U.S. lead in cancer survival, you’d have to argue that universal health care would wreck the entire U.S. economy. – Timothy Noah
I won’t dispute that bankers’ privileged treatment in the 2008 crash merits populist scorn. But unfortunately, without a bank bailout, there probably would have been a worldwide depression. – Timothy Noah
I’m all for lifting the payroll-tax cap, if only to make payroll taxes a little less regressive. – Timothy Noah
On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details. – Timothy Noah
Whenever the very rich hold views at odds with those of the entire population, the federal government tends to do the rich’s bidding. – Timothy Noah
In shuttering Yucca Mountain, Obama makes it extremely likely that nuclear power in the United States will continue its long, slow, and extremely welcome death. – Timothy Noah
The problem with wanting the tax code to be ‘simpler, fairer,’ and ‘pro-growth’ is that it’s impossible to achieve all three at the same time. – Timothy Noah
A thriving middle class is a necessary precondition for a free representative government. – Timothy Noah
One can imagine nonviolent or minimally violent ways to reduce or eliminate hatred, but there’s no mollifying evil. – Timothy Noah
To cut the federal budget without cutting entitlements is like giving up chocolate-chip cookies and then deciding it’s OK to eat the ones that don’t have any nuts. – Timothy Noah
The Clinton administration cared a lot about the middle class and the poor. But it also cared a lot – too much, in retrospect – about the rich. – Timothy Noah
The federal government does not trample in jackboots those with whom it does business. It wraps them in cotton batting and, when they express ingratitude, apologizes profusely. – Timothy Noah
If we were to compile a list of the ways in which the United States has made both itself and the wider world a better place, then at or very near the top would be its commitment to universal education. – Timothy Noah
With its Medicaid expansion, Obamacare may turn out to be the most equality-promoting policy enacted in a generation. – Timothy Noah
The Pentagon got fed up with its recruits getting ripped off by payday lenders and in 2007 got Congress to make it illegal to extend such loans to members of the military. But civilians remain fair game. – Timothy Noah