Quotes About Economics

For the amount of real capital at any moment (as distinguished from monetary tokens run off on a printing press) is limited. What is put into the hands of B cannot be put into the hands of A.

Up to a certain point it is necessary to produce shoes. But it is also necessary to produce coats, shirts, trousers, homes, plows, shovels, factories, bridges, milk and bread. It would be idiotic to go on piling up mountains of surplus shoes, simply because we could do it, while hundreds of more urgent needs went unfilled.

If we look at it now from the consumer's point of view, we find that he can buy less with his money. Because he has to pay more for sweaters and other protected goods, he can buy less of everything else. The general purchasing power of his income has therefore been reduced.

It is exports that pay for imports, and vice versa. The greater exports we have, the greater imports we must have, if we ever expect to get paid.

The interest rate is merely the special name for the price of loaned capital. It is a price like any other.

For it is the very commodities selected for maximum price-fixing that the regulators most want to keep in abundant supply. But when they limit the wages and the profits of those who make these commodities, without also limiting the wages and profits of those who make luxuries or semiluxuries, they discourage the production of the price-controlled necessities while they relatively stimulate the production of less essential goods.

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths.

But men in their role of taxpayers will be subsidizing themselves in their role of consumers. It becomes a little difficult to trace in this maze precisely who is subsidizing whom. What is forgotten is that subsidies are paid for by someone, and that no method has been discovered by which the community gets something for nothing.

Philip Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. 2

la economía es la ciencia que calcula los resultados de determinada política económica, simplemente planeada o puesta en práctica, no sólo a corto plazo y en relación con algún grupo de intereses especiales, sino a la larga y en relación con el interés general de toda la colectividad».

demand and supply are merely two sides of the same coin. They are the same thing looked at from different directions. Supply creates demand because at bottom it is demand. The supply of the thing they make is all that people have, in fact, to offer in exchange for the things they want.

Examinar los problemas en su integridad y no fragmentariamente: tal es la meta de la ciencia económica.

When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration.

Naturalmente, cabe incidir en el error contrario. Al ponderar un cierto programa económico no debemos atenernos exclusivamente a sus resultados remotos sobre toda la comunidad. Es éste un error que a menudo cometieron los economistas clásicos, lo cual engendró una cierta insensibilidad frente a la desgracia de aquellos sectores que resultaban inmediatamente perjudicados por unas directrices o sistemas que a largo plazo beneficiarían a la colectividad.

When they make it a main objective to increase exports, most of them do not realize that they necessarily make it a main objective ultimately to increase imports.

En todos los países, el interés de la inmensa mayoría de la población es y debe ser siempre comprar lo que necesita a quien vende más barato.»

Laméntase a menudo que los demagogos logren mayor asenso al exponer públicamente sus despropósitos económicos que los hombres de bien al denunciar sus fallos.

We can clarify our thinking if we put our chief emphasis where it belongs—on policies that will maximize production.

Únicamente el vilipendiado mecanismo de los precios es capaz de resolver el problema enormemente complicado de decidir con precisión, entre los miles de mercancías y servicios diferentes, qué cantidad y en qué proporción deben producirse.

la inflación es un impuesto oculto que redistribuye la renta desde una parte de la sociedad hacia el Gobierno

More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves.

La Economía se halla asediada por mayor número de sofismas que cualquier otra disciplina cultivada por el hombre.