Economist Quotes - Page 21

• Economists talk about profit motive, but nothing motivates modern man more than a chance to avoid taxes!

  Peter Drucker

  Men, Chance, Modern

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• Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Philosophy, Care, Add

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “Enquiry into the present state of polite learning. The citizen of the world”, p.234

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• If you go back to Adam Smith, you find the idea that markets and market forces operate as an invisible hand. This is the traditional laissez-faire market idea. But today, when economics is increasingly defined as the science of incentive, it becomes clear that the use of incentives involves quite active intervention, either by an economist or a policy maker, in using financial inducements to motivate behavior. In fact, so much though that we now almost take for granted that incentives are central to the subject of economics.

  Michael Sandel

  Today, Financial, Invisible

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We economists, in our classes, teach students that to some degree, price discrimination is actually a good thing; that it allows you to serve lower-income people. Take Africa, with AIDS. They could never finance what an AIDS cocktail costs here, over $10,000 a year. But if you sold it to them for $300 a year, which just barely covers cost, they could probably serve quite a few of their citizens, with World Bank help. We economists say that will be beneficial. But it's a two-tier system; yes, African people pay less than we would pay.

  Uwe Reinhardt

  People, World, Helping

  "Frontline", www.pbs.org. November 10, 2007.

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• The economist Juliet Schor talks about how our reference group has changed over the last twenty-five years. As we spend less time with our neighbors, we're spending more time with people we know from TV and social media, and this becomes our new reference group. The media is full of images of people with wealth, and we're comparing ourselves to them and aspiring to what they have. Instead of keeping up with the Joneses family, we're trying to keep up with the Kardashians, even though it's completely unrealistic.

  Lauren Greenfield

  People, Trying, Social Media

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I argue that in the long run, the US would be on a far more financially secure footing if we recalibrate how we spend about two-to-three percent of the country's GNP, using state and federal taxes to create pools of money for spending on America's poor - which would, as numerous economists have argued in recent years, create virtuous spending circles, since those on lower incomes spend more of each extra dollar in their possession than do those on higher incomes.

  Sasha Abramsky

  Running, Long, Arguing

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We need economic policies in the U.S. that produce jobs, first of all, but good jobs, second of all. Believe it or not, Germany, a country characterized by high wages, strong unions, a social safety net, and so forth is the second largest exporter (after China) in the world. The idea that the only way to succeed is by eliminating vacations, sick days, worker protections, and so forth is simply belied by the competitiveness rankings produced by the Economist magazine's intelligence unit and by the World Economic Forum.

  Jeffrey Pfeffer

  Country, Strong, Believe

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• For the last several decades, there was a prevailing belief among traditional economists that the markets were rational and self-correcting. Alan Greenspan advocated this view. But the 2008 financial crisis showed that this view is incorrect, and Greenspan eventually admitted as much.

  Kabir Sehgal

  Self, Views, Lasts

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• An economist's definition of hatred is the willingness to pay a price to inflict harm on others.

  Edward Glaeser

  Hatred, Definitions, Pay

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• One of the fairly interesting things about money is that it makes certain things possible that wouldn't be possible otherwise - it doesn't make them inevitable. Hence the strange blindness of economists to what would actually happen when one does exchange things if there isn't money in such contexts.

  David Graeber

  Interesting, Doe, Strange

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• [The notion of equilibrium] is a notion which can be employed usefully in varying degrees of looseness. It is an absolutely indispensable part of the toolbag of the economist and one which he can often contribute usefully to other sciences which are occasionally apt to get lost in the trackless exfoliations of purely dynamic systems.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Degrees, Lost, Equilibrium

  "The Skills of the Economist". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, p. 14, 1958.

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• I remember once reading that it is still not understood how the giraffe manages to pump an adequate blood supply all the way up to its head; but it is hard to imagine that anyone would conclude tht giraffes do not have long necks. At least not anyone who had ever been to a zoo

  Robert Solow

  Zoos, Reading, Blood

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• The key to good decision making is evaluating the available information - the data - and combining it with your own estimates of pluses and minuses. As an economist, I do this every day.

  Emily Oster

  Keys, Data, Decision

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• The road to climate stability is straight and the solutions simple, and yet scientists, economists, industrialists and politicians are busy making them complicated

  Satish Kumar

  Simple, Climate, Busy

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• They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Foundation, Information, Imperfect

  "Bleakonomics". www.nytimes.com. September 30, 2007.

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• If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.

  Alan Greenspan

  Thinking, Ifs

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• Computers show up everywhere except the growth statistics.

  Robert Solow

  Growth, Statistics, Computer

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• Financial security is a constant in my life. I allow my income to constantly expand, no matter what the newspapers and economists say. I move beyond my present income, and I go beyond the economic forecasts. I do not listen to people out there telling me how far I can go or what I can do.

  Louise Hay

  Moving, People, Income

  FaceBook post by Louise Hay from Jun 22, 2011

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• Friedman stumbled in, late to the seminar as usual and reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey. He hadn't read the paper being presented, and halfway through he just gets up, walks up to the podium, socks the mother****er right in the face and takes a piss all over his lecture notes.

  George Stigler

  Mother, Faces, Lectures

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• Many of us economists who believe in efficiency do so because we view markets as amazingly successful devices for reflecting new information rapidly and, for the most part, accurately.

  Burton Malkiel

  Believe, Successful, Views

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• Take care to be an economist in prosperity. There is no fear of your being one in adversity.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Adversity, Advice, Care

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• Colleges don't teach economics properly. Unfortunately we learn little from the experience of the past. An economist must know, besides his subject, ethics, logic, philosophy, the humanities and sociology, in fact everything that is part of how we live and react to one another.

  Bernard Baruch

  Philosophy, Past, College

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• The concept of need is often looked upon rather unfavorably by economists, in contrast with the concept of demand. Both, however, have their own strengths and weaknesses. The need concept is criticized as being too mechanical, as denying the autonomy and individuality of the human person, and as implying that the human being is a machine which "needs" fuel in the shape of food, engine dope in the shape of medicine, and spare parts provided by the surgeon.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Dope, Medicine, Individuality

  "The Concept of Need for Health Services". The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Volume 44, No. 4, Part 2, p. 202, 1967.

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• It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Income, Patterns, Might

  "Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics" by Kenneth Boulding, University of Michigan Press, (p. 142), 1970.

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• It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, "Economics is what economists do," and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Fall, Numbers, Definitions

  "Economics As a Science" by Kenneth E. Boulding, McGraw-Hill, (p. 97), 1988.

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