Quotes About Economics

There's not a single country that actually approaches economics in a pure, free market, capitalist way. I like the free market - but it very much exists only in textbooks. If I had a choice, and we could live in a very pure world, I would be a supporter of the free markets.

Textbooks describe economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. That definition may be the 'what,' but it certainly is not the 'why.'

In almost every case, whenever a tariff or quota is imposed on imports, that tax is strongly supported by the domestic industry getting the protective shield from lower-priced foreign competition. The sugar industry supports sugar tariffs; textile mills lobby for tariffs on foreign clothing.

It has been said that I am not a 'real' Libertarian. A certain faction of the Party has come to believe that the writings of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman are the holy texts of Libertarianism, and I disagree. I believe that the Libertarian movement is and should be more encompassing than the narrow-minded advocacy of economic anarchy.

Spending money is much more difficult than making money.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a form of money that's a stable field that the government can't destroy and can't distort. Because its creation is governed by the laws of mathematics. It can't happen any faster or slower than a certain rate, and it all sort of self-adjusts.

Jamie Dimon and J.P. Morgan are contributing millions to the Remain campaign because they do very nicely, thank you, out of the E.U.

The neoliberal policies implemented first by the Thatcher governments in the 1980s and continued by New Labour and the current coalition have resulted in a privatisation of stress.

In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.

A general charge of crony capitalism is easy to make. But dividing the 'bad' crony capitalists from the 'good' innovative entrepreneurs is much harder to do. And sorting them out without creating a new group of crony capitalists may be the hardest thing of all.

You might say that economic history is the history of people learning to manage risk.

Even as I pursued a doctorate in the history of ideas in my native Denmark, I realized I had neither the encyclopedic training nor the passion for cool logic - not to mention the nerve - to follow in the footsteps of classical liberal philosophers and economists such as Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman.

Once one of the most important steel manufacturing centers in the world, Braddock - what's left of it - solemnly affirms one of the great economic maxims of our society: socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor.

The most important thing that most countries around the world believe in is letting the markets determine the currency.

Economics is a strange science. Our subject deals with some of the most important as well as mundane issues that impinge on the human condition.

The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.

I'm just opposed to a pure inflation-only mandate in which the only thing a central bank cares about is inflation and not employment.

There's a joke in economics about the drunk who loses his keys in the street but only looks for them under the lightposts. When asked why, he says, 'because that's where the light is.' That's the problem with the deficit.

The problem with tariffs is they shift higher costs onto the backs of non-protected industries and consumers.

For economist the real world is often a special case.

Can we please agree that in the real world, corporations exist for one purpose and one purpose only - to make as much money as possible, which means cutting costs as much as possible?

My fellow economists and academics fail to understand the economics of trade in the real world. Traditional models of academia respect free trade without considering whether it is fair trade.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.

In every aspect of life, including the economic dimension, we are always challenged to do the right thing. In many cases in the market system, which allows a great deal of latitude for human choice, people can get carried away to excess.