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Economics Quotes

“All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another.”

PeopleMadeLastsProcessProgressCenturyProduceCoupleAreasEconomicsLaborWorkersPermanentProductiveGoodsTemporaryFewerUnemploymentShifting
Author:Milton Friedman
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“By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus.”

RolesEssentialsEconomicsLaborDenyDistinctionProductiveSoleConsumptionEfficiencyRationalityCriteriaSurplusRespectabilityElevatingUnproductive
Book:Political Econ of Growth
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“I find it remarkable that virtually all of the large difference in labor supply between France and the United States is due to differences in tax systems. I expected institutional constraints on the operation of labor markets and the nature of the unemployment benefit system to be more important. I was surprised that the welfare gain from reducing the intratemporal tax wedge is so large.”

ImportantStatesDifferencesUnitedUnited StatesTaxesBenefitsGainsEconomicsLaborDuesExpectedFranceOperationsWelfareRemarkableUnemploymentReducingConstraintsWedgesTax SystemUnemployment Benefits
Author:Edward C. Prescott
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“Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.”

KnowsEndsHandsIndividualInterestLibertyCasesKnow HowEconomicGainsEconomicsLaborIntentionLibertarianInvisibleLibertarianismRevenueFree MarketPromotingAnnualsIndividual LibertyPublic InterestGreat LibertarianInvisible HandWealth Of Nations
Author:Adam Smith
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“Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.”

MastersEconomicsLaborRaisesConstantCombinationUniformsWagesTacitWealth Of Nations
Book:An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations With a Life of the Author: Also a View of the Doctrine of Smith, Compared with that of the French Economists, with a Method of Facilitating the Study of His Works, from the French of M. Jariner
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“The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.”

HandsNaturalWealthPoorConditionsEffectsEconomicsLaborRewardsBackwardsSymptomsStarvingMaintenance
Book:The Wealth of Nations: Representative Selections
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“We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations [that is, unions or colluding organizations] of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual price.”

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Author:Adam Smith
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“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

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Book:Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way
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“Over the years, the U.S. economy has shown a remarkable ability to absorb shocks of all kinds, to recover, and to continue to grow. Flexible and efficient markets for labor and capital, an entrepreneurial tradition, and a general willingness to tolerate and even embrace technological and economic change all contribute to this resiliency.”

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Author:Ben Bernanke
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“Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

GovernmentFreedomLibertyCitizensMouthsCapitalismEconomicsLaborLibertarianSocialismBreadFoundersFoundingGoverningFreedom And LibertyFreedom LibertyPrivate PropertyOur Founding FathersProperty RightsLimited GovernmentDemocracies HaveBill Of RightsUs Founding FathersForefathersAmerican GovernmentLimiting GovernmentFounding AmericaLibertarian PartyEconomic FreedomInauguralConstitutional RightsFrugalLimited FreedomInaugural AddressGovernment RegulationFounding Fathers DemocracyRestrainingLimiting FreedomDistribution Of WealthConstitutional GovernmentFree Market CapitalismTyranny Founding FathersRedistribution Of WealthDemocracy In AmericaGovernment And PoliticsNot VotingGovernment PoliticsFuture Of AmericaVoting Founding FathersRobber Baron
Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“Home economics should find its way into the curriculum of every school because the scientific study of a problem pertaining to food, shelter or clothing... raises manual labor that might be drudgery to the plane of intelligent effort that is always self-respecting...Home economics is not one department, in the sense in which dairying or entomology or soils is a department. It is not a single speciality... Many technical and educational departments will grow out of it as time goes on.”

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Author:Martha Van Rensselaer
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“Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles.”

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Author:Ralph Raico
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“Government should be good for the liberty of the governed, and that is when it governs to the least possible degree. It should be good for the wealth of the nation, and that is when it acts as little as possible upon the labor that produces it and when it consumes as little as possible. It should be good for the public security, and that is when it protects as much as possible, provided that the protection does not cost more than it brings in.... It is in losing their powers of action that governments improve. Each time that the governed gain space there is progress.”

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Author:Augustin Thierry
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“Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues. . . . A cultured college president has become as much a rarity as a literate newspaper publisher. A financier interested in economics is as exceptional as a labor leader interested in the labor movement. For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they [only] marshal us in the way that we are going.”

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Book:The Spoor of Spooks: And Other Nonsense
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