Economic Theory Quotes - Page 2

• Now, because he knows that his economic theories don't work, he's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  Barack Obama

  Funny, Sarcastic, Book

  "Obama Mocks Socialist Attacks: 'I Shared My Toys'" by Sam Stein, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 29, 2008.

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• Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises”. Here is an article he wrote in 1951, some two years after his magnum opus Human Action appeared, where is lays out his case in a more popular form. The money sentences are “Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Past, Years, Two

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• Washington's insatiable desire to spend our children's inheritance on failed stimulus plans and other misguided economic theories have given record debt and left us with far too many unemployed.

  Rick Perry

  Children, Desire, Inheritance

  Presidential Candidacy Announcement, delivered 13 August 2011, Charleston, South Carolina

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• Economic theory has nothing to say as to what commodity will acquire the status of money. Historically, it happened to be gold. But if the physical makeup of our world would have been different or is to become different from what it is now, some other commodity would have become or might become money. The market will decide.

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Makeup, Our World, Gold

  "Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the Impracticality of One-World Government and the Failure of Western-style Democracy". Interview with Anthony Wile, www.thedailybell.com. March 27, 2011.

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• I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize - not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years - the way the world thinks about economic problems.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Believe, Book, Writing

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• The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behaviour it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.

  Herman E. Daly

  Real, Self, Behaviour

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• In short, both experience and economic theory imply that the US could now t to a more competitive dollar without experiencing either increased inflation or decreased economic growth.

  Martin Feldstein

  Growth, Dollars, Economic

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• Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful results.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Example, Littles, Way

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

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• Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party or in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Party, Thinking, Political

  Human Action: A Treatise on Economics ch. 38 (1949)

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• The metal of economic theory is in Marx's pages immersed in such a wealth of steaming phrases as to acquire a temperature not naturally its own.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Temperature, Phrases, Pages

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.21, Routledge

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• The purpose of economic theory is to make those who are comfortable FEEL comfortable.

  Thomas Balogh, Baron Balogh

  Purpose, Economic, Theory

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• The IMF economists were doubtless shaken by the extreme failures of their prescriptions over many years, and by the collapse of the intellectual edifice of economic theory on which they were relying.

  Noam Chomsky

  Years, Intellectual, Imf

  "Chomsky: "The Business Elites... Are Instinctive Marxists"". Interview with Keane Bhatt, truth-out.org. November 19, 2010.

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• The United State has a net worth against which our debt is a joke ... we wrote in 2008 the United States is going to come out of this recession fast. The Europeans are going to fragment. The Chinese are going to be cremated. Why could we come out of it? Why has all economic theory been proven wrong? Because we're rich and we could afford it.

  George Friedman

  Chinese, Debt, United States

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• The Western world, in spite of its advantages of mechanization and industrial efficiency is today in a worse mess than ever before in history. The adoption Western economic theory and practice will not help us in achieving our goal of creating a happy and contented people. We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice.

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah

  Islamic, Destiny, Practice

  Address on occasion of opening of State bank of Pakistan, July 1, 1948.

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• There are questions as to whether it should even exist. Who should corporations be responsive to, the management of a corporation? Theoretically they are responsive to the shareholders, but I why not to the so - called stakeholders, the work force and the community? Nothing in economic theory opposes that. Those are social and political decisions.

  Noam Chomsky

  Community, Decision, Political

  Interview with Jegan Vincent de Paul, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.

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• What Smith and Marx have in common is that they were both philosophers of great vision and perceptiveness, deep humanity, and a sense of social reality that has been lost in the abstractly formalistic economic theories that have dominated the field since the last third of the nineteenth century.

  Allen W. Wood

  Reality, Humanity, Vision

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There are all sorts of institutions in the economic world which depart from the simple price/market model which I worked on in an earlier incarnation and which has been sort of the mainstream of economic theories since Adam Smith and David Ricardo. There are all sorts of contractual relations between firms and individuals which do not conform to the simple price theory - profit-sharing schemes and so forth - and the explanation for these suddenly became clear. We now understand why these emerged and that they are based on differences in information in the economy.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Simple, Differences, World

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• Mainstream economic theories popular in the last several decades have tended to downplay the government's role in markets and to increase skepticism about even that more limited role. Austerity, particularly in Europe, has added to the problem. It has not worked, even on its own terms.

  Mariana Mazzucato

  Government, Europe, Roles

  Source: www.salon.com

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• I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Imagine, Economic, Theory

  Martin Luther King, Jr.'s letter to his future wife, Coretta Scott (July 18, 1952), as quoted in "The greatest MLK speeches you never heard" by John Blake, edition.cnn.com. January 20, 2014.

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• Classic economic theories recognize public goods aspects of one kind or another - the need for economic intervention in, obviously, the supply of infrastructure and of education. We're not supplying that infrastructure at an appropriate rate today. I don't doubt it isn't just money; it's organization and goals and so forth.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Organization, Goal, Doubt

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

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• For the individual, as I can testify, a brief grounding in semantics, besides making philosophy unreadable, makes unreadable most political speeches, classical economic theory, after-dinner oratory, diplomatic notes, newspaper editorials, treatises on pedagogics and education, expert financial comment, dissertations on money and credit, accounts of debates, and Great Thoughts from Great Thinkers in general. You would be surprised at the amount of time this saves.

  Stuart Chase

  Philosophy, Political, Speech

  Stuart Chase (2015). “Tyranny of Words”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Even philosophies who have denounced pseudosciences like psychoanalysis, have condoned pseudoscientific economic theories like neoclassical microeconomics. It is far safer and easier to criticize Freud and Jung than to criticize Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, because the latter are backed by political movements whereas the former are not.

  Mario Bunge

  Philosophy, Political, Pseudoscience

  Source: deutsche-denker.de

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• In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Selfish, Men, Thinking

  "Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy". "Philanthropy and Public Policy", edited by Frank G. Dickinson, 1962.

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• If I really believed in Friedman's economic theory, then I'd be quite satisfied to spend the rest of my life with a garden hose shoved down my throat, being filled with custard by representatives of the people of China.

  Nigel Lawson

  Garden, People, Economic

  Speech to the Conservative Party Conference, October 13, 1988.

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• Free market capitalism is far more than economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility-the highway to the American Dream.

  George W. Bush

  Dream, Mobility, Politics

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