The Great Reversal Quotes

“We have shown two important and related sets of facts. In most US industries, market shares have become more concentrated and more persistent. Industry leaders are less likely to be challenged and replaced than they were twenty years ago. At the same time, their profit margins have increased.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“For things to remain the same, everything must change,”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“As Zucman explains, almost two-thirds of “all the profits made outside of the United States by American multinationals are now reported in six low- or zero-tax countries: the Netherlands, Bermuda, Luxembourg, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“The contract literally prevents the patients from seeing the prices they will be charged.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“a Costa Rican newborn’s life expectancy in 2016 was 1.2 years longer than that of a child born in the US,”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat. While the latter can be a cause of the former, it is but one of many possible causes. Whether and how starvation relates to food supply is a matter for factual investigation”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“Campaign contributions in the US are fifty times larger than those in most European countries.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“The price of a vote is about €10 for the legislative elections.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“This suggests that lobbying may be one potential driver of the decline in competitive pressures in US markets compared to EU markets.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“In other words, lobbying expenditures are three times more concentrated than revenues, which are themselves already fairly concentrated. This means that large firms play an even more outsized role in the political system than they do in the economy itself.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“The estimated death toll for World War I is 10 million military and 8 million civilian deaths. For World War II, 22 million military and 50 million civilian deaths.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“We find that regulations drive down the entry and growth of small firms relative to large ones, particularly in industries with high lobbying expenditures.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“The payout rate has increased substantially, primarily driven by share buybacks. The increase is so large that firms are now repurchasing as much as 3 percent of the book value of their assets each year.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“Throughout this tumultuous history, oligopolistic concentration and markups have increased slowly but steadily.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets

“Mancur Olson put it eloquently in The Rise and Decline of Nations: “The reader should accordingly not accept the argument in this book simply because he or she finds it plausible and consistent with known facts. Many plausible stories have been told before and often also widely believed, yet they failed to stand up.”
― Thomas Philippon, The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets