Chrystia Freeland Quotes

Plutocrats worldwide have readily understood the advantages of evading the burdens of the nation-state.

I have always liked hanging out with people and talking to people.

I know Russia well.

The main point of democracy is to deliver positive results for the majority.

This is the 21st-century paradox: Even as political democracy has become the intellectual default mode for much of the world, the private sector usually trumps the public one when it comes to accommodating consumer choice.

If the Tea Party gets its way, there will be less government – which is great for the elites. They don’t need the government.

Our culture is a very diverse one, and I think now it is incredibly dangerous and very wrong to persecute Muslims and say there is something wrong with being a Muslim.

The irony of the political rise of the plutocrats is that, like Venice’s oligarchs, they threaten the system that created them.

We are very proud, wherever we are in the world, to tell you about Canadian values and what we think is the right thing for Canada to do. And when it comes to refugees, we very much believe in welcoming refugees to our country, and that includes Syrian refugees, and that includes Muslim refugees.

Motherhood may be a ‘killer’ when it comes to becoming a Master of the Universe, but among middle-class mothers, even after that touch of baby’s lips to bosom, a big and growing number find themselves able – and often required – to bring home the family bacon.

Western investment is usually assumed to walk hand-in-hand with the democratic values of its home countries, and indeed, opening an economy to outside money is one of the textbook steps in a shift from authoritarianism to an open society.

People don’t just want to be rich and successful, they want to be good.

I am a very strong supporter of our government’s view that it is important to engage with all countries around the world – very much including Russia.

The chief job of foreign policy today is helping to figure out the rules for the global economy and defending each nation’s interests within it.

The hollowing out of the middle class. That’s not just about capitalism or the structure of taxation. That is also about the fundamental truth that machines can do a lot of things better than humans used to do. A lot of those people are being pushed down to do less value-adding jobs, so they get paid less money.

We recognize that NAFTA is a three-country agreement, and we need a three-country negotiation.

The challenge of weaning ourselves off fossil fuel even as it becomes more abundant will make the old fights about energy conservation seem like child’s play.

One consequence of Russia’s klepto-capitalist model is the growing appeal of government jobs, with their lucrative opportunities for payoffs.

If you believe in democracy, than you can’t trash it by being cynical about the people who do democracy: the politicians.

I see social mobility and equality of opportunity as really successful Canadian values.

Corporations are not employment agencies, and judging them by that metric is a mistake.

I really believe in hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

I do think that there is both a very powerful sense of entitlement and a kind of bubble of wealth which makes it hard for the people at the very top to understand the travails of the middle class.

The progressives like to talk a lot about poverty – and you should. However, it’s the guys in the middle who have really been hurt by the global economy . The people at the bottom have been holding on to their jobs quite well, actually.

As companies become bigger, the global environment more competitive, and the rate of disruptive technological innovation ever faster, the value to shareholders of attracting the best possible CEO increases correspondingly.

I see real opportunities for us to have stronger, closer collaboration between the three North American partners and seize on opportunities to achieve objectives of more jobs and growth.

Thanks to globalization and the technology revolution, the nature of work, the distribution of the rewards from that work, and maybe even the economic cycle itself are being transformed.

Environmentally friendly business practices have long been mainstream, particularly when they create a brand advantage, as with organic foods.

It’s important to remember that, in the 1930s, a lot of people in the West looked at communism as a pretty good idea. That was partly because they didn’t know how bad things were on the communist side of the world, but it was also partly because things were bad in the West.

If you doubt that we live in a winner-take-all economy and that education is the trump card, consider the vast amounts the affluent spend to teach their offspring.

Creating jobs for your country’s workers is about much more than ensuring that the balance sheets of your country’s companies are strong, or stimulating domestic demand. It is about figuring out how your country’s workers fit into the global economy.

In practice, getting rid of crony capitalism is incredibly difficult.

In Western capitalism circa 2013, fear that the market economy has become dysfunctional is not limited to a few entrepreneurs in Boulder. It is being publicly expressed, with increasing frequency, by some of the people who occupy the commanding heights of the global economy.

We in Canada are not going to say Muslims are worse than Christians or are worse than Jews or are worse than atheists.

The one source of criticism even the most repressive authoritarian leader cannot silence is the outside world. Autocrats are usually thin-skinned and like to be admired, so at least, at first, they often seek to be praised abroad.

TED is certainly a gathering of an incredibly eclectic, incredibly interesting community, but it’s also an elite community – at least an important portion comes from that global 1%.

Changes which are slow and gradual can be hard to notice even if their ultimate impact is quite dramatic.

Companies and capital operate internationally, often beyond the economic reach of any particular nation-state. People are pretty global, too, living lives that freely cross national borders.

We are all living in a world shaped by Reagan and his ideology of small ‘l’ liberalism.

I think of myself as a Russophile. I speak the language and studied the nation’s literature and history in college.

If you’ve developed an ideology that what’s good for you personally also happens to be good for everyone else, that’s quite wonderful because there’s no moral tension.

My mother was born in a refugee camp in Germany before the family immigrated to western Canada. They were able to get visas thanks to my grandfather’s older sister, who had immigrated between the wars.

Oil could complicate domestic politics in countries with too much of it – there is a reason economists talk about ‘the curse of oil,’ and dictatorships have thrived in countries with abundant natural resources.

One of the most important political and economic facts of this young century is that capital has been slipping the traces of the nation-state. Business is global; government is national.