Economics Quotes
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
— Thomas Sowell
The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.
— David Friedman
A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
— Milton Friedman
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
— Milton Friedman
It is because it's prohibited. See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.
— Milton Friedman
If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can only gain at the expense of another.
— Milton Friedman
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
— Milton Friedman
For one thing, there are many “inventions” that are not patentable. The “inventor” of the supermarket, for example, conferred great benefits on his fellowmen for which he could not charge them. Insofar as the same kind of ability is required for the one kind of invention as for the other, the existence of patents tends to divert activity to patentable inventions.
— Milton Friedman
The real minimum wage is zero: unemployment.
— Thomas Sowell
State run lotteries: think of them as tax breaks for the intelligent.
— Evan Leibovitch
From the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by free men comes cheaper in the end than the work performed by slaves. Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.
— Adam Smith
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair
When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.
— Milton Friedman
of course the country could never listen to this guy....it just makes too much damn sense.
— ryanx0 about Milton Friedman [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se_TJzB9-z0]
Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes -- excusable or not -- can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic -- this is the key political argument against an independent central bank. . .To paraphrase Clemenceau: money is much too serious a matter to be left to the Central Bankers.
— Milton Friedman
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.
— Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
When goods don't cross borders, soldiers will.
— Fredric Bastiat, early French economist
Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies.
— Alan Burris, A Liberty Primer
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.
- - Ludwig Mises, “Socialism”
Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers.
— Frank Chodorov
The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.
— Albert Jay Nock
Regulation - which is based on force and fear - undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. A fly-by-night securities operator can quickly meet all the S.E.C. requirements, gain the inference of respectability, and proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated economy, the operator would have had to spend a number of years in reputable dealings before he could earn a position of trust sufficient to induce a number of investors to place funds with him. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.
— Alan Greenspan
See, when the Government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of Taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.
— Dave Barry
The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.
— Joan Violet Robinson
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
— Joan Violet Robinson
John Maynard Keynes: "In the long run we are all dead." Joan Robinson: "Yes, but not all at the same time."