Economist Quotes - Page 11

• Easterly, a celebrated economist, presents one side in what has become an ongoing debate with fellow star-economist Jeffrey Sachs about the role of international aid in global poverty. Easterly argues that existing aid strategies have not and will not reduce poverty, because they don't seriously take into account feedback from those who need the aid and because they perpetuate western colonial tendencies.

  Amy Lockwood

  Stars, Poverty, Sides

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• The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.

  Paul Krugman

  Groups, Economics, Mathematics

  "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?". www.nytimes.com. September 2, 2009.

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• Economists don't usually make good speculators, because they think too much.

  Paul Krugman

  Thinking, Too Much, Speculators

  Paul Krugman (2004). “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century”, p.40, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Congress has always had a soft spot for "experts" who tell members what they want to hear, whether it's supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.

  Paul Krugman

  Cutting, Climate, Experts

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• Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets.

  Paul Krugman

  Memories, Perfect, Vision

  "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?". www.nytimes.com. September 2, 2009.

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• It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.

  Benjamin Graham

  Needs, Including, Misfortunes

  "World Commodities and World Currencies". Book by Benjamin Graham, Chapter X, Commodity Unit Stabilization, p. 109, 1944.

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• Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish.

  Benjamin Graham

  White, Gold, Use

  "World Commodities and World Currencies". Book by Benjamin Graham. Chapter IX, Commodities, Gold, Credit as Money, p. 100, 1944.

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• In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed.

  Robert Gilpin

  Running, Believe, Historical

  Robert Gilpin (2016). “The Political Economy of International Relations”, p.336, Princeton University Press

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• Priests, kings, statesmen, soldiers, bankers and public functionaries of all sorts; policemen, jailers and hangmen; capitalists, usurers, businessmen and property-owners; lawyers, economists and politicians - all of them, down to the meanest grocer, repeat in chorus the words of Voltaire, that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent Him.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Kings, Soldier, Atheism

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• Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Wisdom, Ideas, Politics

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• Liberal economists conceive of societies as black boxes connected by exchange rates; as long as exchange rates are correct, what goes on inside the black box is regarded as not very important.

  Robert Gilpin

  Long, Black, Important

  "The Political Economy of International Relations". Book by Robert Gilpin, 1987.

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• Ludwig von Mises referred to Ayn Rand as 'the most courageous man in America.' If that doesn't say it all about the economist's man-centric frame of reference, I don't know what does.

  Ilana Mercer

  Men, America, Doe

  "Libertarian Feminists Make A Move On Von Mises". www.economicpolicyjournal.com. March 28, 2014.

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• Anyone with special abilities earns a differential return on that flair, which we economists call a rent. Those few with extraordinary P.Q. (Performance Quotient) will not give away such rent to the Ford Foundation or the local bank trust department. They have too high an I.Q. for that.

  Paul Samuelson

  Giving, Special, Investing

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• Economists and financial analysts are not like steelworkers or people in other occupations. They don't get evaluated based on their performance. They can mess up every day of the week through their whole careers, and this would be just fine, as long as they messed up in the same way as their peers.

  Dean Baker

  Long, People, Financial

  "Q&A with Housing Bubble Forecaster Dean Baker". Interview with Leo W. Gerard, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 2, 2009.

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• Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Thinking, Addiction, Greed

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.88, Penguin UK

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• Greed is good to most economists. It's greed that makes people work harder, be more productive and helps the economy grow.

  Rebecca M. Blank

  Hard Work, People, Greed

  "Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly" with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. September 19, 2008.

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• Commercial concerns have expanded from family business to corporate wealth which is self-perpetuating and which enlightened statesmen and economists now dread as the most potent oligarchy yet produced.

  Helen Keller

  Business, Self, Oligarchy

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• Anyone who thinks consumption can expand forever on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Thinking, Forever, Insane

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• [Economists' advice] is something like patent medicine - people know it is largely manufactured by quacks and that a good percentage of the time it won't work, but they continue to buy the brand whose flavor they like.

  Barbara Bergmann

  Medicine, People, Advice

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• The first essential for economists ... is to ... combat, not foster, the ideology which pretends that values which can be measured in terms of money are the only ones that ought to count.

  Joan Robinson

  Essentials, Firsts, Economics

  Joan Robinson (2017). “Economic Philosophy”, p.95, Routledge

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• Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.

  Robert Orben

  Lasts, Economy, Quarters

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• The fear among economists across the political spectrum that was - was that we were rapidly plummeting towards a second Great Depression. So, in the weeks and months that followed, we undertook a series of difficult steps to prevent that outcome. And we were forced to take those steps largely without the help of an opposition party, which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that had led to the crisis, decided to hand it over to others to solve.

  Barack Obama

  Party, Hands, Decision

  Barack Obama's Speech on Job Creation and Economic Growth, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. December 8, 2009.

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• Contrary to economists' beliefs, the informal sectors of the world's economies, in total, are predominant, and the institutionalized, monetized sectors grow out of them and rest upon them, rather than the reverse.

  Hazel Henderson

  World, Belief, Economics

  Hazel Henderson (1988). “The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics”, Knowledge Systems

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• I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Writing, Intelligent, Two

  Interview with Brian Lamb, Booknotes C-SPAN, November 13, 1994.

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• Proving that profit is economically and morally justifiable, rather than the result of exploitation, has been a central preoccupation of neoclassical economists.

  Jim Stanford

  Preoccupation, Results, Profit

  "Economics For Everyone". Book by Jim Stanford, 2008.

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