Economist Quotes - Page 13

• You know economists; they're the sort of people who see something works in practice and wonder if it would work in theory.

  Ronald Reagan

  Practice, Wonder, Theory

  "Ronald Reagan".

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• Not a single one of the doctrines of Marx has ever been accepted by any economist or any philosopher. But what of it? It was necessary that Gaiseric should convince economists or philosophers that there were sound reasons why he should capture Rome. He and his followers wanted it, and they had the power to take it.

  Thomas Nixon Carver

  Rome, Reason Why, Sound

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• Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper.

  Robert Solow

  Sex, Trying, Paper

  Robert Solow on Milton Friedman's ideas and his own, in a series of papers at a 1966 conference, also published in ‪"Price Controls" by Hugh Rockoff, 1992.

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• Economists who speak the English tongue are strangely intimidated by mathematical symbols.

  Al Nichol

  Tongue, Speak, Economics

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• Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

  Thomas Piketty

  Issues, Important, Distribution Of Wealth

  Thomas Piketty (2014). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, p.2, Harvard University Press

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• What matters most in a child’s development, they say, is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.

  Paul Tough

  Children, Character, Self Confidence

  Paul Tough (2012). “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Joel Waldfogel is one of the smartest and funniest economists on the planet. I think of him every time I start to unwrap a present. Buy Scroogenomics for your friends and family. It makes the perfect Christmas gift.

  Ian Ayres

  Thinking, Perfect, Family And Friends

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• One the one hand, our economists treat human beings as rational actors making choices to maximize their own economic benefit. On the other hand, the same companies that hire those economists also pay for advertising campaigns that use the raw materials of myth and magic to encourage people to act against their own best interests, whether it's a matter of buying overpriced fizzy sugar water or the much more serious matter of continuing to support the unthinking pursuit of business as usual in the teeth of approaching disaster.

  John Michael Greer

  Hands, People, Water

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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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• I see the God complex around me all the time in my fellow economists. I see it in our business leaders. I see it in the politicians we vote for - people who, in the face of an incredibly complicated world, are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they understand the way that the world works.

  Tim Harford

  Motivation, Inspiration, Complicated World

  "Trial, error and the God complex". TED conference, www.ted.com. July 2011.

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• Why do economists fall in love with authoritarian governments?

  Yasheng Huang

  Falling In Love, Motivation, Inspiration

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• Economists' unanimity that bad business is ahead is the most reassuring news possible. It's very unlikely that this will be the one time they're right.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Business, News, Reassuring

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• Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in a community. It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist.

  Peter Block

  Believe, Mean, Self

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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