Quotes About Economics

Economists have a term for these costs—a less reassuring one than Friedman's "neighborhood effects." They are "negative externalities": negative because they aren't beneficial and external because they fall outside the market system. Those who find this hard to accept attack the messenger, which is science.

Like its bête noire, Marxism, laissez-faire economics claimed to be scientific, based upon immutable laws of nature, and also like Marxism, it has not stood the test of experience. If it were a scientific theory, it would have long ago been rejected.37 Free-market fundamentalism is an article of faith.

The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest,"36 Soros wrote. Like its bête noire, Marxism, laissez-faire economics claimed to be scientific, based upon immutable laws of nature, and also like Marxism, it has not stood the test of experience. If it were a scientific theory, it would have long ago been rejected.

when the consequences of our scientific conclusions are non-epistemic—i.e., when they are moral, ethical, political, or economic—it is almost inevitable that our values will creep into our judgments of evidence.

A handful of economists in the late 1960s had realized that free market economics, focused as it was on consumption growth, was inherently destructive to the natural environment and to the ecosystems on which we all depend.

Fred Singer gave his game away when he denied the reality of the ozone hole, suggesting that people involved in the issue "probably [have] … hidden agendas of their own—not just to 'save the environment' but to change our economic system … Some of these 'coercive utopians' are socialists, some are technology-hating Luddites; most have a great desire to regulate—on as large a scale as possible."33

The billionaire investor George Soros has coined a term to describe this perspective: "free market fundamentalism." It is the belief not simply that free markets are the best way to run an economic system, but that free markets are the only way that will not ultimately destroy our other freedoms. "The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest,"36 Soros wrote.

Nicholas Stern, formerly chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, and principal author of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change (commissioned by U.K. prime minister Gordon Brown), has called climate change "the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."55 No wonder the defenders of free market capitalism are worried.

The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.

With respect to the first of these obstacles, it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists, that they confine their attention to Wealth, and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue.

For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of the national interest are ... businessmen. This may be a ridiculous statement, but--ominously--fewer and fewer people laugh at it.

A] Harvard University study [showed] that, on average, about 22 percent of what you pay for any consumer item or service represents the embedded costs in that item—that is, the embedded costs of our current tax system. Taxes, like some other similarly offensive substances, roll downhill, and you the consumer are standing at the bottom.

The joint committee invited economists of many economic stripes to model what would happen if America switched from the current code to a unified income tax or a consumption tax. Every economist who modeled reported that the consumption tax would increase long-term economic growth.

A Tax Foundation study for 2002 has found that taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes under $20,000 incur a compliance cost of 4.53 percent of income compared to only 0.29 percent for taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes over $200,000.

As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman wrote in 1962, "Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself…. Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom."2

I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.

Following the precedent set by the Europeans, who referred to the coastal regions of Africa by their exports—the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast—some writers have referred to the Chesapeake region as the Tobacco Coast. But it would also be appropriate to call it the American Slave Coast.

But to the modern mind, resonating with different media-metaphors, the truth in economics is believed to be best discovered and expressed in numbers. Perhaps it is.

Thomas Jefferson. . . knew what schools were for--to ensure that citizens would know when and how to protect their liberty. . . It would not have come easily to the mind of such a man, as it does to political leaders today, that the young should be taught to read exclusively for the purpose of increasing their economic productivity.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

The result is one of the greatest paradoxes of modern history: that an economic system designed to offer infinite choice to the individual has ended up homogenizing humanity.

Classical economists assume that people have rational and stable preferences and that their well-being is greatest when they have the maximum opportunities to satisfy them. So more choice is always better, and more income increases choices, so the way to make life better is to increase people's incomes. This theory is all well and good, but is it in fact true?

even if masks reduced the transmission rate of the virus by only 10 percent, our models indicate that hundreds of thousands of deaths would be prevented around the world, creating trillions of dollars in economic value. This is a big effect of a small thing.

There is no economic law that says that everyone, or even most people, automatically benefit from technological progress.