Economist Quotes - Page 10

• Politicians of all stripes are always in danger at looking at every problem from an abstract point of view or being briefed by officials, academics, or economists who know every science but the science of human nature.

  Jean Chretien

  Views, Stripes, Problem

  Jean Chretien (2010). “My Years as Prime Minister”, p.238, Vintage Canada

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• Is there enough to go around? What is enough? Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues economic growth as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of enough.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Growth, Economic, Enough

  E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”

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• Please find me a one-armed economist so we will not always hear, "On the other hand..."

  Herbert Hoover

  Hands, Please, Find Me

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• I have concluded that most PhD economists under appraise the power of the common-stock-based "wealth effect," under current extreme conditions... "Wealth effects" involve mathematical puzzles that are not nearly so well worked out as physics theories and never can be... What has happened in Japan over roughly the last ten years has shaken up academic economics, as it obviously should, creating strong worries about recession from "wealth effects" in reverse.

  Charlie Munger

  Strong, Creating, Worry

  Charlie Munger's speech at the Breakfast Meeting of the Philanthropy Roundtable in Washington, D.C., November 10, 2000.

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• I want a one-armed economist, that way he cannot say, 'on the other hand'.

  Harry S. Truman

  Hands, Way, Want

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• An economist is someone who knows all the answers to last years' questions.

  Robert Orben

  Years, Answers, Lasts

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• It's my belief that one of the unconscious reasons which underlies the odd attitude of the establishment toward hallucinogens is the fact that they bring the mystery to the surface as an individual experience. In other words, you do not understand the psychedelic experience by getting a report from Time magazine or even the Economist. You only understand the psychedelic experience by having it.

  Terence McKenna

  Attitude, Facts, Hallucinogens

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• I am not and should not be considered an economist.

  Sylvia Porter

  Should

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• An economist is a scoundrel who tells you the way things are rather than the way you want them to be.

  William Nordhaus

  Want, Way, Scoundrels

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• I think that having good data, good statistics-and the United States generally has better macroeconomic statistics than most countries-and having good economists to interpret those data and present the policy alternatives, has a substantially beneficial effect on policymaking in the United States.

  Ben Bernanke

  Country, Thinking, Data

  Interview with Arthur J. Rolnick, www.minneapolisfed.org. June 1, 2004.

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• Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail. That is what we have done at one time or another to produce surpluses of wheat, of sugar, of butter, of many other commodities. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, May, Want

  Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.237, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It's easier to make a reporter into an economist than an economist into a reporter.

  Frederick Winslow Taylor

  Easier, Reporters

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• Economists are people who wonder if what works in reality can also work in theory.

  Ronald Reagan

  Reality, People, Wonder

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation. The Boskin Commission... was an act of cowardice. Rather than man up and say fix this, its broken, we can't afford it.

  Barry Ritholtz

  Men, Broken, May

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• THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression.

  Benjamin Graham

  Agreement, Abuse, Credit

  "Storage and Stability". Book by Benjamin Graham. Part III, Chapter XIII, The Reservoir Plan and Credit Control, p. 153, 1937.

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• Never trust an economist with your job. Learn about economics yourself. And make up your own mind about what might protect your job - and what might destroy it.

  Jim Stanford

  Jobs, Mind, Might

  Jim Stanford (2008). “Economics for everyone: a short guide to the economics of capitalism”, Pluto Pr

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• The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.

  Joan Robinson

  Nature, Money, Work

  Joan Robinson (1967). “Essay on Marxian Economics”, p.1, Springer

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• The obstacles facing academic economists are formidable, for tenure and professional advancement still depend to a large extent on a willingness to comply with and to work within the tenets of orthodox theory.

  Paul Ormerod

  Advancement, Obstacles, Academic

  "The Death of Economics". Book by Paul Ormerod, 1994.

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• The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings.

  Paul Ormerod

  Air, Temptation, Use

  "The Death of Economics". Book by Paul Ormerod, 1994.

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• Economists have the correct insight that economics is a theory of choice, the key to the story is the variety of options and centralised political control limits the options. The best recipe is adaptive efficiency coping with novel uncertainty in a non-ergodic world, the maintenance of institutions which enable trial & error experiment to occur, and an effective means of eliminating unsuccessful solutions

  Douglass North

  Mean, Errors, Keys

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• Despite the array of groups and organizations working on global warming, we are still missing a key element: the movement. Along with the hard work of not-for-profit lobbyists, environmental lawyers, green economists, sustainability-minded engineers, and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, it's going to take the inspired political involvement of millions of Americans to get our country on track to solving this problem.

  Bill McKibben

  Country, Hard Work, Thinking

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• I am not a conservative but I have spoken out for years against the staggering amount blind hatred directed at black conservatives by liberals. Liberals are shockingly quick to demean and dismiss brilliant black people like Rice, Carson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Professor Walter E. Williams and economist Thomas Sowell because they don't fit into the role they have carved out for a black person in America. Black Americans must be obedient liberals on all things or risk being called a race traitor or an Uncle Tom.

  Juan Williams

  Education, Uncles, America

  "Rutgers rage against Rice -- why do liberals have so much hate for black conservatives?" by Juan Williams, www.foxnews.com. March 9, 2014.

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• Economists tell us that the 'price' of an object and its 'value' have very little or nothing to do with one another. 'Value' is entirely subjective economic value, anyway while 'price' reflects whatever a buyer is willing to give up to get the object in question, and whatever the seller is willing to accept to give it up. Both are governed by the Law of Marginal Utility, which is actually a law of psychology, rather than economics. For government to attempt to dictate a 'fair price' betrays complete misunderstanding of the entire process.

  L. Neil Smith

  Giving Up, Government, Law

  "Ceres". Book by L. Neil Smith, 2009.

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• At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.

  John Rawls

  Choices, Decision, Principles

  John Rawls (2009). “A Theory of Justice”, p.489, Harvard University Press

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• Friedrich Hayek, who died on March 23, 1992 at age 92, was arguably the greatest social scientist of the twentieth century. By the time of his death, his fundamental way of thought had supplanted the system of John Maynard Keynes - his chief intellectual rival of the century - in the battle since the 1930s for the minds of economists and the policies of governments.

  Julian Simon

  Government, Mind, Intellectual

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