Home / Topics / Economics Quotes

Economics Quotes

Browse 2895 quotes about Economics.

Economics Quotes

“A socialist is somebody who doesn't have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.”

Humor Ready Economics Debt Socialism Welfare Divides Socialist

Author:George Bernard Shaw

“Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.”

States Modern Economics Welfare Borrowed Welfare State

Book:Timescape

Source: Timescape

“It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going?”

Littles Persons Lines Poor Poverty Four Amount Economics Raises Population Corruption Spending Billions Welfare Officials Percentages Annuals

Author:Robert Higgs

“One of the main effects (I will not say purposes) of orthodox traditional economics was ... a plan for explaining to the privileged class that their position was morally right and was necessary for the welfare of society.”

Purpose Class Plans Effects Position Economics Traditional Welfare Orthodox Privileged Explaining

Author:Joan Robinson

“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.”

“Thus we seem to be on the verge of an expansion of welfare economics into something like a social science of ethics and politics: what was intended to be a mere porch to ethics is either the whole house or nothing at all. In so laying down its life welfare economics may be able to contribute some of its insights and analytical methods to a much broader evaluative analysis of the whole social process.”

May Whole Seems Able House Social Process Ethics Economics Method Mere Insight Welfare Analysis Expansion Verge Social Science Porch Laying Down

Author:Kenneth E. Boulding

“If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.”

People Ifs Men World Individual Nations Wish Cities Liberty Trouble Economic Lessons Economics Customers Welfare Provinces General Welfare

Author:Frederic Bastiat

“Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“Having what I call crony capitalism, where you take money from successful small businesses, spend it in Washington on favored industries, on favored individuals, picking winners and losers in the economy, that's not pro-growth economics. That's not entrepreneurial economics. That's not helping small businesses. That's cronyism, that's corporate welfare.”

Helping Individual Growth Economy Successful Industry Capitalism Economics Winner Corporate Welfare Loser Small Business Entrepreneurial Winner And Loser Cronies Cronyism Crony Capitalism

Author:Paul Ryan

“The fundamental flaw in Social Security and Medicare is that they violate the 'welfare principle' in economics. The welfare principle forms the fundamental basis of all charitable work in churches and other private organizations: assist those who need help, and equally important, don't assist individuals who can take care of themselves.”

“As long as we place millions of Indians at the canter of our thought process, as long as we think of their welfare, their future, their opportunities for self realization we are on the right track. For India can grow, prosper, flourish only if they grow, prosper, flourish. We cannot grow by any esoteric strategies. Our purchasing power, our economic strength, our marketplace all depends on the prosperity of our people.”

“The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time.”

Matter States Differences Liberty Economic Economics Welfare Welfare State Matter Of Time Totalitarian State

Author:Ayn Rand

“It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.”

Want Use Government Liberty Economic Economics Fundamentals Property Preserves Welfare Characteristics Fascism Private Property Socialization

Book:Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Source: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

“And here we encounter the seeds of government disaster and collapse - the kind that wrecked ancient Rome and every other civilization that allowed a sociopolitical monster called the welfare state to exist.”

Kind States Government Liberty Economic Civilization Economics Ancient Seeds Monsters Disaster Welfare Encounters Rome Collapse Welfare State Ancient Rome

Book:The coming breakpoint

Source: The coming breakpoint

“Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle.”

People Humans Liberty Rights Economic Gun Empowerment Economics Slavery Lists Welfare Expanding Housing Empowered Entitlement Cattle Dependency Barns Hay Bosnia Rations

Author:P. J. O'Rourke

“The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.”

People World Giving Firsts States Games Liberty Economics Libertarian Welfare Libertarianism Welfare State

Author:Thomas Sowell

“Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.”

Source: Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea

“The consequences for human welfare involved in questions about human capital spillovers are simply staggering. Once one starts to think about them, it's hard to think of anything else”

Thinking Humans Hard Involved Consequence Economics Welfare Staggering

Author:Robert Lucas, Jr.

“We are confronted by the appearance of social institutions unintentionally created, vital for the welfare of society, which are not the result of reasoned planning”

Social Results Economics Institutions Appearance Planning Welfare Social Institutions

Author:Carl Menger

“Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.”

“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.”

“This, by the way, is the welfare state in action: Its a whole bunch of special interest groups screwing consumers and taxpayers, and making them think they're really benefiting.”

“And for man to look upon himself as a capital good, even if it did not impair his freedom, may seem to debase him... by investing in themselves people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. It is one way free men can enhance their welfare.”

People Ifs Men Way Looks May Philosophy Seems Political Choices Economics Investing Available One Way Range Welfare Look Up Free Man

Author:Theodore Schultz

“This is the welfare generation, and that is incredibly sad. That will be judged in history as being far worse, I believe, than the stolen generation, because we are literally losing thousands and thousands of our indigenous brothers and sisters to the effects of welfare – drugs, gunja, low morale, alcoholism. I see it everyday and it can stop. The solution is education, training and a guaranteed opportunity.”

“By government giveaway programs, individuals are often hurt far more than they are helped. The recipients of these programs become dependent on the government and their dignity is destroyed. Is it compassionate to enslave more and more people by making them a part of the government dependency cycle? I think compassion should be measured by how many people no longer need it. Helping people to become self-sufficient is much more compassionate than drugging them with the narcotic of welfare.”

“I look in a right of property - on the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separate and selfish use and enjoyments, the produce of their own industry, with power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most agreeable to themselves, as essential to the welfare and even to the continued existence of society.”

Looks Philosophy Whole Use Political Individual Existence Produce Industry Essentials Economics Property Selfish Welfare Enjoyment

Book:The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted. A Series of Letters Addressed, Without Permission, to H. Brougham, Esq., ... by the Author of

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted. A Series of Letters Addressed, Without Permission, to H. Brougham, Esq., ... by the Author of