Quotes About Economics

The essential nature of a democracy compels it to insist that individual power of all kinds, political, economic, or intellectual, shall not be perversely and irresponsibly exercised.

In the assumption that power belongs as a matter of course to capital, all economists are Marxians.

It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.

Monopoly power is an illusion in any system in which free competition is allowed.

The party in power almost always unapologetically engages in deficit spending, while the other party argues passionately against the evils of debt and deficits.

Europe is creating the flight of refugees that's tearing it apart politically, and leading rightwing nationalist parties to gain power to withdraw from the Eurozone.

According to the World Bank, the concentration of wealth and the structures of corporate economic power have no bearing on woman's rights.

A corporation is a state created institution, state supported institution, its concentration of private power, there is no reason why it should have the rights of persons.

Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics; by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press; but their power exists for good or evil.

There's a direct relationship between the ballot box and the bread box, and what the union fights for and wins at the bargaining table can be taken away in the legislative halls.

I continue to believe that the American people have a love-hate relationship with inflation. They hate inflation but love everything that causes it.

The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.

All the ingredients were there: mechanization, innovation, property rights, and capital.

The central argument of this book is that financial innovations emerged to solve economic problems of time and geography, but they inevitably engendered new

When people are given three prices (think of those for small, medium, and large coffee), and they have no strong preference, they tend to pick the "middle" price. Morgan

There are two ways of mentally representing money, one based on actual dollars and another based on buying power. Practically everyone knows that the first way is "wrong" whenever there's inflation. But both representations command attention and both affect decisions, sometimes unconsciously. This suggests that the money illusion may be a form of anchoring.

One lesson of the Luddite rebellion specifically, and the Industrial Revolution generally, is that maintaining the prosperity of those closed communities—their pride in workmanship as well as their economic well-being—can only be paid for by those outside the communities: by society at large.

In a society in which everyone is assumed and expected to be economically self-sufficient, as an example, doesn't economic dependency almost automatically mean poverty? No attention is given to such issues.)

The theory of Economics must begin with a correct theory of consumption.

the tax collectors found no more money to collect because there were no more people to pay the tax.

Economic relationships do not operate on value-neutral laws, but are rather carriers of specific convictions about the nature of the human person - the person's origins and destiny. There is an implicit anthropology and an implicit theology in every economics.

there is no point in being either for or against "the free market" as such. The key question is: When is a market free?

the road, rail, and port systems are so bad that poor countries cannot develop the scale of operations necessary to achieve high productivity.

It's not good for government to tell people that the world owes them a living and that things are free.