Quotes About Economics

I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on free-market economics.

I'm a big fan of economist Milton Freidman.

When I was the finance minister, I got on well with the RBI Governor.

There are 58 million people with some kind of disability in America, so it's the largest minority, really, in America, and it lags behind in education and economics and jobs, so outside of 'CSI' and outside of my music, I serve on a couple of boards, and I'm trying to be a part of the movement that changes this.

Against defenseless people there is not much that nuclear weapons can do that cannot be done with an ice pick. And it would not have strained our Gross National Product to do it with ice picks.

Socialism is socialism. Government run enterprises are just as inept under democratic governments as they are under autocratic governments.

It's a myth that "predatory pricing" exploited American consumers and created business monopolies. ? Thanks to government subsidies, many of America's railroads were often laid on inefficient, circuitous routes. ? Rockefeller, Carnegie, Dow, and other great American businessmen did more for America than all the big-government programs combined.

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. Ludwig von Mises

Big business learned that if you stopped fighting big government, you could profit from it by killing your smaller competitors.

Most arguments about income inequality are based on static analysis.

Marx set forth a classic statement of inherent class antagonism on the market

The Value, or Worth of a man, is as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power . . .

Except for spending to protect property rights, enforce the law, and protect citizens from foreign aggressors, all government spending crowds out private spending and weakens the vitality of capitalism.

We who live in capitalist countries tend to take all of this—property rights, free-market pricing, entrepreneurship—for granted, but every socialist country that has ever existed in the world has taken away these key ingredients of capitalism and has consequently created an economic catastrophe.

It is easier to purchase products that denote superiority than to actually be superior in economic achievement.

Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high.

being well educated has certain economic drawbacks. Victor's

The median price paid by millionaires for their most recent acquisition was only $31,367.

TABLE 3-3 INCOME AND WEALTH CONTRASTS 2:

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. Letter to James Madison, October 28, 1785

a woman who brings a child every two years [is] more profitable than the best man of the farm.

Don't forget the real business of the war is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals.

Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.