Dadifesto

Nov 27, 2021

7/6/95 — The following quotations were in the files of James Wade, Jr., my dad, typewritten (the final few were hand-entered) and collected in a “Connecticut Mutual” binder. 

They are from 1981 and I am 99% certain were blackboard quotes used when Dad was teaching an economics course at University of Evansville.

For me they serve as a representative slice of the man, a “Dad Manifesto” of sorts. Although he didn’t originate many of these, they reveal an insurance-sellin’, bad joke-lovin’, night-school-economics-teachin’ guy, roughly my age now at the time of their use.

In several cases, they show the independent vibe inherited by all three Wade kids:

Dad’s Little Book of Quotations — Economics, University of Evansville, Spring 1981

Bad money drives out good.  — Graham

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. — Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program — Friedman

You can have a welfare state, or open borders, but you can’t have both. — Friedman

Nothing is as easy as it looks.  Everything takes longer than you think.

There are plenty of monuments to individuals but none to a committee.

In a free market, capital tends to seek the highest rate of return.

Reward is tied more to behavior than circumstance.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

The main function of business: Sell at profit. Without profit, there is no business.

Markets, especially free markets, don’t wait for governments.

When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.

In any federal social program, among the biggest beneficiaries of the program will be its administrators.

Money isn’t everything, but it’s way ahead of whatever is in second place.

The road to success is always under construction.

Transferring most local problems to the federal level merely insures that local inefficiencies will be financed through Federal debt.

If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.

Somewhere, separately there is a “Just The Punchlines” list of JCW Jr’s favorite (awful) examples, such as :

• “That’s a hickory daiquiri, doc.”

• There’s no plates like chrome for the hollandaise

• Only Hugh can prevent florist friars

• Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer

• It’s a knick-knack Patty Mac, give the frog a loan

• He became known as a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued by halitosis

• Absinthe makes the heart grow, Fonda