Economist Quotes - Page 16

• Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.

  Edgar Fiedler

  Funny, Humor, Growth

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• There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else. ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool.

  Bryan Caplan

  Winning, Thinking, Views

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• Ultimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as was the scorpion in Aesop to the dog on whose back he crossed the river. They will destroy commerce and establish socialism, even if it kills them, because that is their nature.

  John Derbyshire

  Dog, Powerful, Class

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• You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

  Thomas Sowell

  Political, Teeth, Analysis

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.396, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• One Blue Dog Democratic House Member reminded me earlier this month of the saying that 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' He wondered if his fellow Members weren't more in need of advice from psychiatrists than from economists at this point.

  John Fund

  Dog, Blue, House

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• When we have an experience -- hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room -- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage

  Daniel Gilbert

  Yield, Making Love, Hearing

  Daniel Gilbert (2006). “Stumbling on Happiness”, Vintage

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• I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Fall, Men, Gym Rats

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.245, Random House

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• The experience of being disastrously wrong is salutary, no economist should be denied it, and not many are.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Political, Politics, Should

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1981). “A life in our times: memoirs”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.

  Winston Churchill

  Two, Three, Investing

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• What's the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That's the consensus among economists. That's the Hayek legacy.

  Lawrence Summers

  Powerful, Views, Hands

  "The Commanding Heights". Book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, 1998.

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• Engineers do engineering, i.e. they build bridges. So engineering needs engineers. The economy does NOT need economists. Economists do not make economy, but they try it and that is why we have so much problems with some financial models.

  Steve Keen

  Bridges, Engineering, Trying

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• These days, however, the main problem comes from the right - from conservatives who, unlike most economists, really do think that the free market is always right - to such an extent that they refuse to believe even the most overwhelming scientific evidence if it seems to suggest a justification for government action.

  Paul Krugman

  Believe, Thinking, Government

  "Earth in the Balance Sheet". www.slate.com. April 18, 1997.

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• There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.

  Thomas Piketty

  Discipline, Political, Intellectual

  Thomas Piketty (2017). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, p.41, Harvard University Press

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• Contraceptives unlock one of the most dormant, but potentially powerful assets in development: women as decision-makers. When women have the power to make choices about their families, they tend to decide precisely what demographers, economists, and development experts recommend. They invest in the long-term human capital of their families.

  Melinda Gates

  Powerful, Long, Choices

  "Why Birth Control Is Still a Big Idea". foreignpolicy.com. November 26, 2012.

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• An economist says that essentially more for you is less for me, but the lover knows that more for you is more for me, too.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Love, Lovers, Knows

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• Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species

  Garrett Hardin

  Hubris, Potency, Dangerous

  Garrett Hardin (1995). “Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos”, p.73, Oxford University Press

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• When politicians & economists understand we live in a finite world & act accordingly then a better future has a chance

  Phil Harding

  World, Chance, Politician

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• The more consistently Austrian School an economist is, the better a writer he will be.

  Murray Rothbard

  School, Consistently

  "I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians". Book edited by Walter Block, p. 75, "An intellectual Autobiography" by Bryan Kaplan, 2010.

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• Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.13, Crown Business

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• The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economists sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups

  Henry Hazlitt

  Eye, Groups, Looks

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.12, Crown Business

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• I set out to become the greatest lover in Vienna, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the greatest economist in the world. Alas, for the illusions of youth: as a horseman, I was never really first-rate.

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Vienna, Austria, World

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• Economists who adhere to rational-expectations models of the world will never admit it, but a lot of what happens in markets is driven by pure stupidity - or, rather, inattention, misinformation about fundamentals, and an exaggerated focus on currently circulating stories.

  Robert J. Shiller

  Expectations, Focus, Stupidity

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• I cannot disagree with you that having something like 500 economists is extremely unhealthy. As you say, it is not conducive to independent, objective research. You and I know there has been censorship of the material published. Equally important, the location of the economists in the Federal Reserve has had a significant influence on the kind of research they do, biasing that research toward noncontroversial technical papers on method as opposed to substantive papers on policy and results

  Milton Friedman

  Independent, Political, Important

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• Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.

  Carl Safina

  Economy, Ecology, Seems

  Carl Safina (2011). “The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World”, p.126, Macmillan

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• Economics is too important to leave to the economists.

  Steve Keen

  Important, Economics

  Steve Keen (2001). “Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences”, p.9, Zed Books

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