Thomas Edison: Occupy Wall Street activist? [View all]

[salvorhardin]

Last edited Fri May 4, 2012, 11:40 AM - Edit history (1)

Yesterday, while trying to track down a bogus quote attributed to Thomas Edison, I came across this quite real quote in the Dec. 21, 1921 NY Times which just stunned me. Why, Old Father G.E. sounded like a post-Keynesian MMT theorist!

Although it might be hard to tell Edison apart from your average Occupy Wall Street protester based on just those two sentences, Edison was actually arguing that the US government should just create out of thin air the money it needed to finish the Muscle Shoals hydroelectric power plant on the Tennessee River, then lease it to Edison’s good buddy Henry Ford, so he and Ford could make money operating it. All for the good of the people, of course.

On the other hand, Edison and Ford were promising to only seek a modest profit, “say 8 percent, but we do not ask the 20 or 30 percent profit others would demand.” Also on the plus side of the equation, the people would maintain ownership so if they didn’t like Edison and Ford’s management they could kick them out.

The original NY Times article can be downloaded as a PDF here: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E11F63B5A1B7A93C4A91789D95F458285F9

If you like the graphic, there's a larger copy here: http://goo.gl/PqxOU