Economist Quotes - Page 17

• The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.

  Ben Bernanke

  Running, Long, Might

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• I am a woman, I am a housewife, I am a government official, I've been twice a government secretary, I've been leader of a parliamentary group, I am an economist.

  Josefina Vazquez Mota

  Government, Leader, Groups

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• I do not regard the Keynesian revolution as a great intellectual triumph. On the contrary, it was a tragedy because it came so late. Hitler had already found out how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occured.

  Joan Robinson

  Intellectual, Tragedy, Revolution

  American Economic Association, Joan Robinson (1972). “The Second Crisis of Economic Theory: And Other Selected Papers from the American Economic Meeting, December 27-29, 1971”

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• Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.

  Joan Robinson

  Views, Hats, Rabbits

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• In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Men, Individual Happiness, Iron

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes”

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• Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Knowledge, Science, Economy

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• Physicists only talk to physicists, economists to economists-worse still, nuclear physicists only talk to nuclear physicists and econometricians to econometricians. One wonders sometimes if science will not grind to a stop in an assemblage of walled-in hermits, each mumbling to himself words in a private language that only he can understand.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Science, Understanding, Nuclear

  Kenneth E. Boulding (2017). “Illustrating Economics: Beasts, Ballads and Aphorisms”, p.149, Routledge

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• In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.

  Alfred Adler

  Friendship, Book, Science

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• Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Fun, Believe, Population Problem

  "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth" by Kenneth E. Boulding, 1966.

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• I once met an economist who believed that everything was fungible for money, so I suggested he enclose himself in a large bell-jar with as much money as he wanted and see how long he lasted.

  Amory Lovins

  Life, Long, Bells

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• In the early 1990s, there was a debate among economists over shock therapy versus a gradualism strategy for Russia. The people in Russia who believed in shock therapy were Bolsheviks a few people at the top that rammed it down everybody's throat. They viewed the democratic process as a real impediment to reform.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Real, People, Debate

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• Among the social sciences, economists are the snobs. Economics, with its numbers and graphs and curves, at least has the coloration and paraphernalia of a hard science. It's not just putting on sandals and trekking out to take notes on some tribe.

  Michael Kinsley

  Curves, Numbers, Tribes

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• ...the institutional arrangement whereby most professional economists are heavily burdened with teaching and administrative duties may militate against a sufficient admixture of the more laborious forms of statistical and field work.

  Sir Henry Roy Forbes Harrod

  Teaching, May, Fields

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• As economists have long noted, the puzzle is not that so few people vote, it's that so many do. After all, no individual's vote has ever tipped the balance in a presidential election.

  Robert H. Frank

  Long, People, Presidential

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Experts kill me. Economic experts, that is. Corporations, foundations, publications and governments pay them by the bucketful, and they fill buckets with forecasts that change more frequently than white-collar, workers do shirts. What Lies Ahead is the usual title. What Lies would often be more appropriate. If women's hemlines changed as rapidly as an economist's forecasts, the fashion people and the textile industry would be more profitable than any other. In fact, if all the country's economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Country, Fashion, Lying

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• Rent control is one policy that economists universally would oppose. It is a grossly inefficient way of allocating housing space and, of course, it inhibits construction and creates the very thing it is supposed to alleviate. It is one of those things where people simply don't understand simple economics and, therefore, put in for political reasons what will damage the very people that it is designed to help. Minimum wage levels are another classic example.

  James M. Buchanan

  Simple, Space, People

  Source: www.aims.ca

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• He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Fall, Liberty, May

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.241, Lulu Press, Inc

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• During my three years as chief economist of the World Bank, labor market issues were looked at through the lens of neoclassical economics. A standard message was to increase labor market flexibility. The not-so-subtle subtext was to lower wages and lay off unneeded workers.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  World, Labor, Flexibility

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• Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition.

  Milton Friedman

  Unemployment, Wages, Investing

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• Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Beer, Epidemics, Ideas

  "How to start an epidemic" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.theguardian.com. April 22, 2000.

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• We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas.

  Milton Friedman

  Oil, Law, Two

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• There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

  Tim Harford

  More To Life, Accounts, Knows

  Tim Harford (2012). “The Undercover Economist”, p.113, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Gambling interests hire lots of economists to do impact studies, but what you need is cost-benefit analysis, and you'll never see the industry finance those

  John Warren Kindt

  Cost Benefit Analysis, Impact, Gambling

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• I'm delighted when people respond with passion and readily intensity to my work. Literature is not as the economist would put it a positional good; in other words, there is infinite space for good literature.

  Ian Mcewan

  Passion, People, Literature

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• While I haven't read economist Robin Hahnel's work, replacing capitalism would be at the very bottom of my list of priorities - to be considered only after everything else had been tried. Improving our capitalistic system however, is at the top of my list and is of course the major theme of "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism."

  John C. Bogle

  Priorities, Soul, Battle

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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