Economics Quotes - Page 32

• Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

  Robert Peel

  Fishing, Pool, Empty

  Robert Peel, W.T. Haly (1850). “The Opinions of Sir Robert Peel, Expressed in Parliament and in Public”, p.145

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• Stop-Go seemed more sensiblr than using the brake and accelerator at the same time - a practice that later became fashionable.

  Harold MacMillan

  Practice, Brake, Fashionable

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• The surtax payers, having been soaked, have found a way to get out of the rain.

  James Callaghan

  Rain, Way, Found

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• Unemployment is bigger than a political party. It is a national danger and a national scandal.

  Ellen Wilkinson

  Party, Political, Unemployment

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• I am not against a little inflation.

  Manny Shinwell, Baron Shinwell

  Littles, Inflation

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• There has always been, and there always will be, an economic cycle.

  Nigel Lawson

  Economic, Cycles

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• You can have a wages policy imposed by mass unemployment.

  Michael Foot

  Unemployment, Wages, Mass

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• One of the most important of all the causes of great inequality of income is the inheritance of a great fortune by a small minority.

  Hugh Dalton

  Important, Income, Minorities

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• Some people say 'what would happen if we had a Communist Chancellor of the Exchequer?' I would ask in reply, 'what would happen if he had a lot of Fascist or Mosleyite bank chairmen?' In that event it might be thought disadvantageous to have publicity.

  Hugh Dalton

  People, Events, Might

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• How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Art, Lying, Political

  In Place of Fear ch. 1 (1952)

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• 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.

  Paul Krugman

  People, Problem, Good Things

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• What is economics? A science invented by the upper class in order to acquire the fruits of the labor of the underclass

  August Strindberg

  Order, Class, Economic Inequality

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• Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Motivational, Success, Men

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• Anyway that's a large part of what economics is - people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Powerful, Numbers, Astrology

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2003). “Red Mars”, p.314, Spectra

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• The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes.

  Noah Webster

  Rome, Republic, Causes

  Noah Webster (1790). “A collection of Essays and fugitive writings on moral, historical, polictical and literary subjects”, p.331

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• In the model that we grew up with, governments rule physical territory in which national economies function, and strong economies support hegemonic military power. In the new model, already emerging under our noses, economic decisions don't pay much attention to national sovereignty in a world where more than half of the one hundred or two hundred largest economic entities are not countries but companies.

  Amory Lovins

  Country, Strong, Military

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• We are talking about an awesome power. It is the power to weave illusions that appear real as long as they last. That is the very core of the Fed's power. Of course not everyone is instinctively against this illusion-weaving power, and many even welcome it. Tragically, the innocent who understand little about the complexity of the monetary system suffer the most, while those who are in the know reap great profit whether the market is going up or down.

  Ron Paul

  Money, Real, Power

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• Populists believe in conspiracies, and one of the most enduring is that a secret group of international bankers and capitalists, and their minions, control the world's economy. Because of my name and prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of the "conspirator in chief" from these people.

  David Rockefeller

  Believe, Power, Years

  David Rockefeller (2011). “Memoirs”, p.368, Random House

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• Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Frustration, Law, Liberty

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• The interventionists do not approach the study of economic matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people.

  Ludwig von Mises

  People, Entrepreneur, Liberty

  Ludwig Von Mises (1947). “Planned Chaos”, p.6, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• As a cultural-intellectual power and a moral ideal, collectivism died in World War II. If we are still rolling in its direction, it is only by the inertia of a void and the momentum of disintegration. A social movement that began with the ponderous, brain-cracking, dialectical constructs of Hegel and Marx, and ends up with a horde of morally unwashed children stamping their foot and shrieking: "I want it now is through."

  Ayn Rand

  Children, War, Feet

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.95, Penguin

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• After getting the first hundred pounds, it is more easy to get the second.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Firsts, Pounds, Easy

  Benjamin Franklin (2008). “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, p.165, Applewood Books

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• A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.

  Albert Einstein

  Interesting, Hundred, Labor

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.8, Broadway Books

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• Probably the only people left who think that economics deserves a Nobel Prize are economists. It confirms their conceit that they're doing 'science' rather than the less tidy task of observing the world and trying to make sense of it. This, after all, is done by mere historians, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and (heaven forbid) even journalists. Economists are loath to admit that they belong in such raffish company.

  Robert J. Samuelson

  Thinking, People, Heaven

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• Now it is worth noticing two things about the private substitutes that I have described. The first is that in the aggregate they are probably much more expensive than would be the implementation of the appropriate public policy. The second is that they are extremely poor replacements for the missing outcomes of good public policy. Nevertheless, it is plain that the members of a society can become so alienated from one another, so mistrustful of any form of collective action, that they prefer to go it alone.

  Brian Barry

  Two, Missing, Would Be

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