Quotes About Economic theory

The evil of the present system is therefore not that the "surplus-value" of production goes to the capitalist, as Rodbertus and Marx said, thus narrowing the Socialist conception and the general view of the capitalist system; the surplus-value itself is but a consequence of deeper causes. The evil lies in the possibility of a surplus-value existing, instead of a simple surplus not consumed by each generation

No one has characterized market mechanisms better than Friedrich von Hayek.

As a matter of practical necessity, socialist democracy may eventually turn out to be more of a sham than capitalist democracy ever was. In any case, that democracy will not mean increased personal freedom.

The BBC is locked to the reading of the economy that is run out of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls' office. They think if only you spend and borrow more money you can create growth everywhere.

The agent of economic theory is rational, selfish, and his tastes do not change.

Pogosto je tako. Teorija, filozofija, moderna umetnost, ekonomika in druga gibanja, ki uporabljajo obskurne abstrakcije, se lahko zlahka izrodijo v domišljave nebuloze in postajajo kruti peskovniki akademskih div in elit, ki so vajene tako navduševati kakor tudi ustrahovati.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.

Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.

The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool.

In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value;

Volume 2 of Capital has indeed been not only a 'sealed book', but also a forgotten one. To a large extent, it remains so to this very day.

The less you eat, drink and buy books the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.

A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman's famous 'helicopter drop' of money.

The idea behind stamped money is sound.

Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.

If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialist.

Libertarianism is a theory of politics that is so compelling that once you have absorbed it, it becomes the lens through which you end up understanding all economic and political events.

Free market capitalism is far more than economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility-the highway to the American Dream.

Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work.

I always wonder how banks manage to go bankrupt at all considering they can just make up the money, and especially, what is stopping them from lending money to themselves.

The facts of the Great Depression made a dominant economic theory that denied the possibility of generalized crisis untenable.

Saying that you are moral because you believe in a god is like saying you are an economist because you play monopoly.

To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.

The modern history of economic theory is a tale of evasions of reality.