Quotessence
Home / Authors / Tyler Cowen Books
Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen Books

Economist

Related Quotes

“It is often a puzzle for foreigners why the United States has such a dismal performance when it comes to murder, guns, and mental illness, all features of American life that, when compared to most of the other wealthy countries, are so awful they do not require further documentation. You might wonder how those bad results square with America’s relatively strong performances on most social capital indices, such as trust, cooperation, and charitable philanthropy; on philanthropy, we even rate as the global number one. The truth is that those positive and negative facets are two sides of the same coin: Cooperation is very often furthered by segregating those who do not fit in. That creates some superclusters of cooperation among the quality cooperators and a fair amount of chaos and dysfunctionality elsewhere.”

TrustCooperationSegregationMatching
Book:The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
Create image

“Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self-image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them.”

ShouldLooksArtSelfDemandArt IsAccountsMoodDependentTemporaryImperfectionOur LoveSubservientPositive SelfPositive Self Image
Book:Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Den tist
Create image

“To get a person's real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes... If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsBelievePersonsRealAsksBeliefTalkingOpinionParticularAgreeAssuming
Author:Tyler Cowen
Create image

“Our time and attention is scarce. Art is not that important to us, no matter what we might like to believe... Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them. Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. Maybe we think we are supposed to like tough books, but are we? Who says? Many writers (and art museums) produce for quite a small subsample of the... public.”

ThinkingShouldMindBelieveLooksArtImportantBookSelfMatterMightDesireAttentionProduceReaderDemandArt IsToughAccountsNo Matter WhatMoodOur TimeDependentTemporaryMuseumsImperfectionOur LoveScarceSubservientPositive SelfPositive Self Image
Author:Tyler Cowen
Create image

“If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.”

IfsTogetherThreeSimpleGrowingEventsMajorsInnovationCrisisFinancialCurrentsSentencesDrivingIncomeObservationInequalityTiesOur TimeGoodsMechanismStagnationStagnantFinancial CrisisIncome InequalityOne SentenceMacroeconomicsMedian
Author:Tyler Cowen
Create image

“Here's the positive scenario: that something has been going wrong in American society. You see it in wage growth, opioid abuse, many other social indicators, as you know. Sometimes it's better to get the bad reaction to that over with quickly while your civil society still is strong and you can react and respond and protest, and you know, four or eight years from now, make another decision, and maybe it's better to have that happen in 2017 than 20 years later when some of our problems are worse and our national mood is worse.”

SometimesProblemStrongGrowthDecisionAbuseMoodProtestCivil Society
Author:Tyler Cowen
Create image