Things can get only so bad. People want to eat, so at some point they resist further cuts to their consumption - it's not a bottomless pit.

America's peak years of indigenous innovation ran from the 1820s to the 1960s. There were a few financial panics and two depressions, to be sure. But in this period, a frenzy of creative activity, economic competition and rapid growth in national income provided widening economic inclusion, rising wages for all, and engaging careers for most.

An economy open to new concepts and novel ventures is bound to generate unequal gains.

Edmund Phelps Quotes