Econmics Quotes

“Convincing - and confident - disciplines, say, physics, tend to use little statistical backup, while political science and economics, which have never produced anything of note, are full of elaborate statistics and statistical “evidence” (and you know that once you remove the smoke, the evidence is not evidence).”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“Before Keynes, most people agreed with Adam Smith when he said, ‘What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.’ And some people still do. David Cameron, the British prime minister, said in October 2011 that all Britons should try to pay off their credit card debts, without realizing that demand in the British economy would collapse if a sufficient number of people actually heeded his advice and reduced spending to pay off their debts. He simply did not understand that one person’s spending is another’s income – until he was forced by his advisors to withdraw the embarrassing remark.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User's Guide

“If a consumer buys something, theoretically it should rid him of one of his needs —and the aggregate of things they need should be decreased by one item. In reality, though, the aggregate of “I want to have” expands together with the growing aggregate of “I have.”
― Tomáš Sedláček, Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street