Quotes About Economics

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.

Regarding check-cashing places): It's hitting me how poor this really is: I'm standing in a long line to pay someone to give me my pay. So, technically, they get paid before I do, and it's my damn check.

As we already know from the poverty numbers, the bottom fifth of families gained very little. The growth in their average incomes was less than 0.2 percent a year over the past forty-four years and, even before the recession, their real incomes were no higher than they had been in the late 1970s. Average incomes of the top fifth, by contrast, grew more quickly, at 1.6 percent a year, though not as quickly as those of the top 5 percent, whose average incomes grew at 2.1 percent a year. Once

one careful study estimates that the average income of all the inhabitants of the world increased between seven and eight times from 1820 to 1992.

Rising wage inequality is a by-product of this mechanism and plays a key role in raising the supply of skills. So while the inequality is not particularly welcome in its own right, it is part of a system that is raising living standards for everyone.

the top 10 percent of tax units in 2011 commanded 47 percent of all income, with an average income of $255,000. (A tax unit is not identical to a family, nor is income for tax purposes the same as other measures of income, but the overlaps are big enough that these trends are not misleading.)

Years ago nobody was elected on the economic ticket. It was either the education platform, or it was health or it was other issues. It is only recently that economic values have superceded every other human value.

Western Europe GDP per capita - not taking into account the new accession counties - was lower in 2001 relative to that of the US than any time since the 1960's.

Lisa Nandy is absolutely right that we need to devolve economic power away from Westminster and learn from what Labour councils around the country are doing.

The only language that the Japanese whaling industry understands is economics.

What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible?

I think the whole issue of a debt ceiling makes no sense to me whatsoever. Anybody who is remotely adroit at arithmetic doesn't need a debt ceiling to tell you where you are.

There's no doubt whatsoever that there's no future in capitalism. It's probably no more than 500 years old, and it's demonstrating over and over again that it is destroying the world.

To be clear, no one is saying there weren't any legitimate economic grievances in Trumpland, nor is anyone claiming that the economy played no role whatsoever. The point, however, is that it wasn't the major motivating factor for most Trump voters - or, at least, that's what we learn when we bother to study those voters. Race trumped economics.

When the dollar goes down relative to other currencies, the price of wheat, corn, rice and oil all go up in dollar terms.

What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact.

I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.

We need to privatize whenever possible.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

The lens of contract focuses predominantly on gains from trade whereas orthodoxy is focused on resource allocation.

Whereas economic man maximises, selects the best alternative from among all those available to him, his cousin, administrative man, satisfices, looks for a course of action that is satisfactory or 'good enough'.