Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Remember that the minimum wage law provides no jobs; it only outlaws them; and outlawed jobs are the inevitable result.
A futures contract is a derivative, but the futures exchange doesn't call them 'derivatives,' they call them 'futures.'
You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation.
When it comes to assessing the chances of some complicated combination of events, gut feelings are pretty much useless.
When employees are first eligible for a retirement savings plan, they should be enrolled unless they choose to opt out.
In the short run and for decisions unlikely to have broad impact, it may be more cost effective to use just one expert.
Over a long period of time, the main force in favor of greater equality has been the diffusion of knowledge and skills.
Without precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite.
The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'
You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.
The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough.
Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them.
Politics is largely the process of taking credit and putting the blame on others - regardless of what the facts may be.
It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost, and at any risk to the rest of the community.
Abstention from labor is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing.
The most staggering linguistic turnabout for me is the one that equates green economy with 'sustained economic growth.'
The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.
We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.
I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
Human life depends not only on income but also on social opportunities, [for example] what the state does for educating.
It is a truism that one person who wants something is a hundred times stronger than a hundred who want to be left alone.
Both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.
The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.
For small businesses, you need less taxes, less federal spending, and you need less regulation that blocks their growth.
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.
Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes-naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.
You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.
Africa's salvation doesn't lie in begging and begging for more aid, and as an African, I find it very, very humiliating.
...the number of saintly men has not yet risen to the level where the census makes them a separate statistical category.
It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy.
Early investment in the lives of disadvantaged children will help reduce inequality, in both the short and the long run.
How would the US be different today if people coming off the boat were greeted with a welfare check instead of a shovel?
This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.
It's a rule worth having in mind. Income almost always flows along the same axis as power but in the opposite direction.
The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.
Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
A government that cannot survive truth and must resort to stamping out truth is not a government that any country wants.
Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.
...instead it seems that business - like weight loss - is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility.
You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life.
I have not been able in one lecture even to scratch the surface of the role of maximum principles in analytic economics.
In just the past century we have almost doubled the percentage of fat in our diets--from 20% in 1910 to about 35% today.
For many people, being asked to solve their own retirement savings problems is like being asked to build their own cars.
It's not that we can predict bubbles - if we could, we would be rich. But we can certainly have a bubble warning system.
The main thing that you learn in grad school, or should learn, is how to think like an economist. The rest is just math.
If I had to use a single word to describe what is fundamentally wrong with government today, I would use the word fraud.
The key thing about wealth in a capitalist economy is that it reproduces itself and usually earns a positive net return.
I've learned ruthless concentration. I can write under any circumstances...street noises, loud talk, music, you name it.