There are two ways to think about the one percent - the Bernie Sanders way, where we're all competing for a zero-sum pie where it's just a question of negotiations. The second way, which is the one I put forward, is no, it's really innovation in a knowledge-based economy.

Edward Conard

Innovation is like looking for pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. You have to find a lot of pieces that don't match to find the one or two pieces that match.

Edward Conard

When all is said and done, you're either for investment and risk taking as a solution for what ails the economy, or you're against it. The real world offers no middle ground.

Edward Conard

I try not to delve too deep into policy.

Edward Conard

Let's not kid ourselves about just how cheap offshore labor really is. We not only pay substantially less per hour: we also avoid the costs we would incur if these workers immigrated here. We don't pay for their medical expenses when they show up in the emergency room without insurance.

Edward Conard

You have to motivate people to take almost certain failure to get a small amount of success, which has driven our economy forward.

Edward Conard

In today's information-driven economy, business and scientific talent constrains growth.

Edward Conard

Economics is counterintuitive. It just is.

Edward Conard

When rewards go up, people are more inclined to take risks.

Edward Conard

While it's a shame that more businessmen like Andy Puzder aren't helping to form America's economic policy, at least he's still on the field fighting the good fight.

Edward Conard

As the news media eagerly report on polls showing that millennials increasingly reject capitalism, progressives energetically push the Democratic Party to the left.

Edward Conard

What is the upside of inequality? I would say that it's a deep pool of properly trained, highly motivated talent that is endeavoring to create innovation that grows our knowledge-based economy.

Edward Conard

Lowering the middle-class tax rate... will likely lower work efforts and increase government dependence.

Edward Conard

Most citizens are consumers, not investors. They don't recognize the benefits to consumers that come from investment.

Edward Conard

Lesser-skilled workers suffer the entire burden of lower wages but capture only a portion of the benefits from lower-priced offshore goods.

Edward Conard

Talented people have a responsibility to get the training they need to be successful risk takers and go out there to take risks. What I see is surplus of talented people and a shortage of people willing to take the risks.

Edward Conard

Art history and Elizabethan poetry don't employ workers; the arduous and tedious application of business sciences such as computer programming and accounting does.

Edward Conard

When I look around, I see a world of unrealized opportunities for improvements, an abundance of talented people able to take the risks necessary to make improvements, but a shortage of people and investors willing to take those risks.

Edward Conard

God didn't create the universe so that talented people would be happy.

Edward Conard

Because my business partner, Mitt Romney, was running for president when 'Unintended Consequences' was published, the media held up my book as a defense of the 1 percent.

Edward Conard

To advocate both for more immigration and for faster wage growth for the working and middle class is to work at cross-purposes.

Edward Conard