Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.
Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.
I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction.
The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century ... has taken place via globalization.
The great thing about fiscal policy is that it has a direct impact and doesn't require you to bind the hands of future policymakers.
I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.
Under the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933.
I really think that people have to think safety; taking risks for higher yield is a bad idea once you're in late or latish middle age.
The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.
It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.
Anyone who thinks that the last 80 years, ever since FDR took us off gold, have been a doomed venture, that strikes me as kind of cranky.
Sometimes economists in official positions give bad advice; sometimes they give very, very bad advice; and sometimes they work at the OECD.
People who are complaining about the Fed are people who've been predicting runaway inflation for five and six years, and it hasn't happened.
Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.
As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren't looking for.
If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.
Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine.
The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World.
When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.
Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it.
The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.
[D]ebt increases that didn't arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments.
If you can create even the illusion of high profitability for a few years, then when the thing collapses you can walk out of the wreckage a very rich man.
The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren't looking for.
If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.
We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis.
Surely I'm not the only person to ask the obvious question: How different, really, is Mr. Madoff's tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?
Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience.
In fact, I'd say that the sources of the economy's expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and - very much in third place - tax cuts.
By rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.
And when the chickens that didn't hatch come home to roost, we will rue the day when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg.
When the Fed decides that inflation is too high, they have the tools, and they've shown historically that they have the will, to bring it down. And, it might be painful.
A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble
In short, it's a great economy if you're a high-level corporate executive or someone who owns a lot of stock. For most other Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.
What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.
So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment.
What the Depression teaches us is that when the economy is so depressed that even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, you have to put conventional notions of prudence and sound policy aside.
However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.
[The US] budget is dominated by the retirement programs, Social Security and Medicare - loosely speaking, the post-cold-war federal government is a big pension fund that also happens to have an army.
The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will.
It’s not about the budget; it’s about the power...So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.
[I]f one asks what substantive contributions [F. A. Hayek] made to our understanding of how the world works, one is left at something of a loss. Were it not for his politics, he would be virtually forgotten.
Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.
The important thing to understand is that the case for pollution control isn't based on some kind of aesthetic distaste for industrial society. Pollution does real, measurable damage, especially to human health.
Close the weak banks and impose serious capital requirements on the strong ones...You see, it may sound hard-hearted, but you cannot keep unsound financial institutions operating simply because they provide jobs.
I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.
Generous unemployment benefits can increase both structural and frictional unemployment. So government policies intended to help workers can have the undesirable side effect of raising the natural rate of unemployment.
Asset bubbles have happened even without not-so-easy money. And, in a depressed economy, where alternative uses of money are not great, people are going to bid up the prices of profitable corporations and stuff like that.
Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they're with.