Economist Quotes - Page 14

• Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question, and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good, or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation.

  Jane Smiley

  Thinking, Evil, Deregulation

  "Other Economists in the Room" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 19, 2009.

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• English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

  Jane Smiley

  Human Nature, Humans, Majors

  "Other Economists in the Room" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 19, 2009.

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• If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek.

  Karl Rove

  Party, Hands, August

  "'Obama Has Turned Out to Be an Utter Disaster'". Interview with Hans Hoyng, Marc Hujer, www.spiegel.de. October 19, 2010.

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• Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.

  Edward Abbey

  Littles, Facts, Academic

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.51, RosettaBooks

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• What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.

  Paul Tough

  Children, Character, Self Confidence

  Paul Tough (2012). “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

  Thomas Piketty

  Issues, Important, Distribution Of Wealth

  Thomas Piketty (2014). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, p.2, Harvard University Press

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• I like to read the 'Financial Times' when I'm traveling. 'Economist.' 'Ad Busters.'

  Mos Def

  Financial, Busters, Ads

  "FEATURE: Mos Def, Quiet As Kept 2.0". XXL Magazine Interview, www.xxlmag.com. June 15, 2009.

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• The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

  George Stigler

  Return, Study, Insight

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• But there is no equality of opportunity under existing laws and customs. In the race for wealth, which the economist seems as unable to define as to guide, the toiler is most heavily handicapped in the very start.

  Joshua K. Ingalls

  Opportunity, Race, Law

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• I was an economist now turning into a human being - as if these are two different things. I don't know but I did that and then I had no vision.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Two, Vision, Different

  "Stephen Covey Interviews Grameen Bank Founder Muhammad Yunus". Interview with Stephen Covey, socialbusinesspedia.com. November 1, 2016.

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• Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise.... It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.

  Mo Udall

  Country, Strong, Believe

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• It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

  Robert Kennedy

  Powerful, Passion, Self Confidence

  Robert F. Kennedy's Day of Affirmation Address at the University of Capetown, South Africa, www.mtholyoke.edu. June 6, 1966.

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• Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.

  Duncan Green

  Senior, Views, Growth

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• The problem is that people really just don't care and they have been "educated" not to care about the monetary system: that it's boring, it's difficult to understand, we need to have high minded people like "Greenscum" and Bernanke to do things like this (and don't forget Volker, there's the whole cast of them). The thing is that people have been educated or miseducated or brainwashed into believing that this is wayyyy too complicated for regular people to understand and that we need to let PhD economists guide us along in terms of what's right... and that's all bull.

  Bernard von NotHaus

  Believe, People, Needs

  Source: www.wherestherage.com

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• Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control.

  Richard Thaler

  Retirement, Self, Saving

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• In an age in which economists take for granted that people equate well-being with consumption, increasing numbers of people seem willing to trade certain freedoms and material comforts for a sense of immutable order and the rapture of faith.

  Eugene Linden

  Order, Numbers, People

  Eugene Linden (1998). “The Future in Plain Sight: Nine Clues to the Coming Instability”

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• Economist and Africa expert Collier analyzes why a group of 50 nations, home to the poorest one billion people, are failing. Considering issues such as civil war, dependence on extractive industries, and bad governance, he argues that the strongest industrialized countries must enact a plan to help with international policies and standards.

  Amy Lockwood

  Country, War, Home

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• Economists sometimes do try to reduce behavior to law-like predictability. But people respond differently to different primes, to different contexts even from one moment to the next. We possess multiple selves that are aroused by different circumstances.

  David Brooks

  Self, Law, People

  "Ask the Author Live: David Brooks on the Composure Class". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. January 7, 2011.

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• Economists have much to be humble about.

  Paul Samuelson

  Humble, Be Humble

  "Paul A. Samuelson, Economist, Dies at 94" by Michael M. Weinstein, www.nytimes.com. December 13, 2009.

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• Economists are said to disagree too much but in ways that are too much alike: If eight sleep in the same bed, you can be sure that, like Eskimos, when they turn over, they'll all turn over together.

  Paul Samuelson

  Sleep, Eight, Together

  "Paul A. Samuelson, Economist, Dies at 94" by Michael M. Weinstein, www.nytimes.com. December 13, 2009.

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• Economists did something even better than predict the crisis. We correctly predicted that we would not be able to predict it.

  William Easterly

  Able, Crisis

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• I have been....moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero, citing Cato, ascribed to the augurs of Rome-that they should cover their faces or burst into laugher when they met on the street.

  Frank Knight

  Jobs, Rome, May

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• Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, May, Economy

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• One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions.

  Robert Menzies

  Opinion, Speak, Variety

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• Economists are always recommending the elimination of this or that market imperfection ... no astrophysicist recommends the elimination of planets that he does not like.

  Lester Thurow

  Imperfection, Doe, Elimination

  Lester C. Thurow (1984). “Dangerous currents: the state of economics”, Vintage

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