Quotes About Economics

coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.

The experience of the past leaves little doubt that every economic system must sooner or later rely upon some form of the profit motive to stir individuals and groups to productivity. Substitutes like slavery, police supervision, or ideological enthusiasm prove too unproductive, too expensive, or too transient. Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce—except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy.

The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and the laws. Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most liberty

In such cases the motives of the (usually hidden) leaders may be economic, but the result is largely determined by the passions of the mass.

No es la raza la que crea la civilización, es la civilización la que crea el pueblo: las circunstancias geográficas, económicas y políticas crean una cultura, y la cultura crea un tipo humano.

It's very odd...that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. You never hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate--all those values shrink abominably.

Though Marx's proletariat may be somewhat better fed than it was a century ago, its individual members have made little if any progress toward that personal liberty and independence on which the dignity of man is founded.

I say money has no value; it's just the way you spend it.

it's somehow gone sideways in a puff of what we today would call globalization, to be replaced by some less dangerous combine of large corporations and city-states.

What interested Hitler was political power; economics could somehow take care of itself.

The Hereditary Farm Law of September 29, 1933, was a remarkable mixture of pushing back the peasants to medieval days and of protecting them against the abuses of the modern monetary age.

In 1964 a coalition of activists, technologists, and academics delivered "The Triple Revolution", an open memorandum to President Lyndon B. Johnson. The signatories pointed out that "wealth produced by machines… is still wealth", and used this to argue for more a equitable distribution of global profits.

Smart enough to get into Yale. Economists studied students who had been admitted to two schools of higher and lower prestige but decided to attend the school with lower prestige. Estimated sacrifice in lifetime earnings from attending the less prestigious school: none.

In Bangladesh, millions survive on pennies a day. With little access to banks, they're forced to pay outrageous interest rates (100% a year or more) whenever they need to access money.

A Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity.

Chris Anderson

The first stage in a technology's advance is that it'll fall below a critical price. After it falls below a critical price, it will tend, if it's successful, to rise above a critical mass, a penetration.

For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching—a market response to inefficient distribution.

What entrepreneurs quickly learn is that they need to price their product at least 2.3 times its cost to allow for at least one 50 percent margin for them and another 50 percent margin for their retailers (1.5 × 1.5 = 2.25). That first 50 percent margin for the entrepreneur is really mostly covering the hidden costs of doing business at a scale that they hadn't thought of when they first started

The three main observactions - (1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; (2) it's now within reach economically; (3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially baked up with heretofore unseen data.

Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.

There is absolutely no single aspect of one's personality that is more important to develop than empathy, which is not a skill at which men typically are asked to excel. I believe empathy is not only the core of art, literature and music, but should also be at the core of society, from ethics to economics.

Interstate Commerce Commission

Alors que le salarié dépend du marché (d'un nombre théoriquement illimité d'employeurs), la femme mariée dépend d'un individu. Alors que le salarié vend sa force de travail, la femme mariée la donne : exclusivité et gratuité sont intimement liées.