' quotes[1]='"Free Trade! What is it? Why, breaking down the barriers that separate nations; those barriers, behind which nestle the feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bounds, and deluge whole countries with blood; those feelings which nourish the poison of war and conquest, which assert that without conquest we can have no trade, which foster that lust for conquest and dominion which sends forth your warrior chiefs to scatter devastation through other lands, and then calls them back that they may be enthroned securely in your passions, but only to harass and oppress you at home."
' quotes[2]='"The real case for laissez-faire is not that the individual is perfect, but that the state will do worse than the private individual, and the strength of this case has always relied more on the fallibility of the state than on the perfection of markets. Adam Smith\'s case for laissez-faire was grounded in the unarguable historical fact that governments often pursue policies that impoverish and slaughter their own citizenry. Human beings surely make mistakes about their own welfare, but the welfare losses created by these errors are surely second order relative to the welfare losses created by governments which not only make errors, but also pursue objectives far from welfare maximization. Individuals may procrastinate and foolishly invest, but they tend not to voluntarily enroll in concentration camps."
- Ed Glaeser, Psychology and the Market
' quotes[3]='"Tell him I shall not hold his very strong New Deal leanings -- authoritarian to use an abusive term -- against him."
- Aaron Director, to his sister Rose, regarding her fiancee Milton Friedman
' quotes[4]='"A government could print a good edition of Shakespeare\'s works, but it could not get them written...Every new extension of Governmental work in branches of production which need ceaseless creation and initiative is to be regarded as prima facie anti-social, because it retards the growth of that knowledge and those ideas which are incomparably the most important form of collective wealth."
- Alfred Marshall, "The Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry", Economic Journal, 1907
' quotes[5]='"[W]hen economic control did not deliver the communist parties sufficient political security, they killed off their own populations. According to a recent calculation (DeLong, 1998), during the 20th century, communist governments killed over 100 million of their own people in peacetime -- far more than were killed in all of the century\'s wars. The communist tragedy is perhaps the most telling evidence of welfare consequences of government ownership of the means of production, and it should not be forgotten in discussing the niceties of the theoretical aspects of the problem."
- Andrei Shleifer, "State versus Private Ownership", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1998
' quotes[6]='"A determined attempt to remake the American economy into a replica of the textbook model of competition would have roughly the same effect on national wealth as several dozen strategically placed nuclear explosions."
- Robert Bork, The Antitrust Paradox, 1978, p. 92
' quotes[7]='"Early on in my association with the California legislature, I came across the concept of \'milker bills\' -- proposed legislation which had nothing to do with milk to drink and much to do with money, the \'mother\'s milk of politics.\' ...Representative Sam, in need of campaign contributions, has a bill introduced which excites some constituency to urge Sam to work hard for its defeat (easily achieved), pouring funds into his campaign coffers and \'forever\' endearing Sam to his constituency for his effectiveness."
- W. Craig Stubblebine, quoted in Fred McChesney, Rent Extraction and Rent Creation in the Economic Theory of Regulation, Journal of Legal Studies, 1987.
' quotes[8]='"All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.
The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato\'s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men\'s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men\'s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men\'s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them."
-William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1623
' quotes[9]='"With a view to a corporate takeover, Volkswagen AG sent a Herr Heuss to Zwickau to find out how the Trabants (relatively cheap, East German cars) were made there. He emerged shocked from the huge plant, babbling "My God!" The Trabant operation was value-subtracting: valuable material, labor, and capital inputs went in at one end; shabby Trabies came out at the other, their bodies made from compacted trash. The final output was worth less than the sum of the inputs. What was not fully understood at the time was that East Germany\'s whole economy was value-subtracting and cost-unconscious."
- Jan S. Prybyla, World Bank Transition Newsletter
' quotes[10]='"Why are they not holding concerts for the people who are being butchered in Darfur and those who are suffering under Mr. Mugabe, and those who are being killed in Nigeria, and the three million who have died as a result of corrupt warlordism in the Congo? And why are they not demanding first of all clean governments, responsible governments, freedom of the press? But that would be just too difficult. It\'s much easier to hold these concerts, to make world leaders feel guilty, make them look bad ... and I think that ultimately these people are well-meaning individuals who are causing a lot of harm to everyone because what they are refusing to do is to address the real problems."
- Prof. Aurel Braun, National Post, discussing Live 8.
' quotes[11]='"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools."
- Herbert Spencer, State Tamperings with Money and Banks, 1858, p. 354.
' quotes[12]='"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food."
- Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, p. 70.
' quotes[13]='"All wars are full of incompetence, mendacity, fear, and lies. War is big government, authoritarianism, central planning, command and control, and bureaucracy in its most naked form and on the largest scale. The Pentagon is the Post Office with nuclear weapons."
- Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution, 2 August 2006
' quotes[14]='"You are never entitled to your opinion - Ever! You are not even entitled to "I don\'t know." You are entitled to your desires, and sometimes to your choices. You might own a choice, and if you can choose your preferences, you may have the right to do so. But your beliefs are not about you; beliefs are about the world. Your beliefs should be your best available estimate of the way things are; anything else is a lie.
If you ever feel tempted to resist an argument or conclusion by saying "everyone is entitled to their opinion," stop! This is as clear a bias indicator as they come. It may irritate you to give in, but honesty demands it.
...The idea that everyone is entitled to their opinion comes in part from our cult of democracy. We are proud to live in a society where we all can "have our say" by talking and voting, and those who claim we do not know enough to have a useful say, we suspect are trying to disenfranchise us. We must therefore all know enough to have a useful say on any public issue. But that is wrong.
...But never forget that on any question about the way things are (or should be), and in any information situation, there is always a best estimate. You are only entitled to your best honest effort to find that best estimate; anything else is a lie."
- Robin Hanson, Overcoming Bias, 21 December 2006
' quotes[15]='"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."
- Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, Chapter 4.
' quotes[16]='"If you want to fight carbon emissions, then join the Pigou Club and push for taxes on bad energy. If you want to fight carbon emissions at a personal level, then act as if there were a high tax on your use of energy from carbon-emitting sources, and reduce your use of that energy. If you are not really all that worried about carbon emissions, but you get pleasure from making empty, self-righteous gestures, then do what Al Gore does -- buy carbon offsets."
- Arnold Kling, The Political Economy of Alternative Energy, Tech Central Station, 2007.
' quotes[17]='"First of all, please bear with me as I explain to you what a minister does in our system and what he does not do. A minister does not run his department. He has neither the time nor the freedom to do so. When appointed to head a department, a minister is instructed to consider his deputy minister as principal adviser in exercising his new functions. The new minister does not appoint his principal adviser, nor can he fire him. His principal adviser is chosen by the Privy Council Office. He serves in that capacity at the office\'s pleasure, and not the minister\'s. ... For all of these functions, I was seconded by more than 90,000 employees, and I supervised a budget in excess of $4 billion. ... I acted as a spokesman for my department, and unless I had some serious reason to disagree with him, I accepted my deputy minister\'s recommendation as the position I should take."
- Alfonso Gagliano, Testimony before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Parliament of Canada, 18 March 2004.
' quotes[18]='"In short, as far as I can tell, there\'s nowhere where the grass is greener than in the economics profession. It\'s far from perfect, but economics is an oasis of reason in a desert of demagoguery. It\'s gotten markedly better in the last decade. And it\'s still on the upswing."
- Bryan Caplan, Free Exchange, July 2007.
' quotes[19]='"Caplan is the sort of economist (are there other sorts? there must be) who engages with the views of non-economists in the way a bulldozer would engage with a picket fence if a bulldozer could express glee."
- Louis Menand, "Fractured Franchise: Are the wrong people voting?" New Yorker Review, 9 July 2007, of Bryan Caplan\'s The Myth of the Rational Voter.
' quotes[20]='"Stata is rational. The state is not."
- Matt Dobra, 29 August 2007.
' quotes[21]='"I come, lastly, to the case of the simple. Here, in the first place, I think I am by this time entitled to observe, that no simplicity, short of absolute idiotism, can cause the individual to make a more groundless judgment, than the legislator, who, in the circumstances above stated, should pretend to confine him to any given rate of interest, would have made for him."
- Jeremy Bentham, 1787, Defence of Usury.
' quotes[22]='"When you have a working knowledge of economics, it\'s like having a mild super power."
' quotes[23]='"Macroeconomics is the evil twin of classical economics. Classically, we say that work is bad and leisure is good. Resources are limited and wants are unlimited. Macro says that we need to "create jobs." The entire edifice of macro is a monument to what Bryan Caplan scorns as "make-work bias." Classically, we say that saving is good, or at least an acceptable option for consumers. Macro says that if consumers don\'t spend like drunken sailors, terrible things will happen. Classically, we have nothing good to say about government deficits. Macro says that government deficits provide "stimulus.""
- Arnold Kling, 23 Jan 2007, EconLog.
' quotes[24]='"When the stormtroopers wear clown shoes instead of jackboots, it\'s easy to forget that they\'re still stormtroopers."
' quotes[25]='"Death to all food and wine rules. Down with the health establishment. Bacon is the ultimate expression of freedom... Bacon is sex in a skillet... It\'s the ultimate aphrodisiac for all living things. Except pigs, of course."
- Dan Philips, Salon.com.
' quotes[26]='"It is you people, you who resent Coase (1972), you people who induce wage and price stickiness and widen the Okun gap. You people, who don\'t know what it means to sit back and enjoy your consumer surplus. You beasts! And to think you are all carrying around these wonderful icons of modernity in your pockets...AAARRRGGGHH!"
' var whichquote=Math.floor(Math.random()*(quotes.length)) document.write(quotes[whichquote])"My main beef with economists is that standard macroeconomics does such a poor job of describing what is going on. The textbooks models are pretty much useless. Where in the textbooks is "liquidity preference" a demand for Treasury securities? Where in the textbooks does it say that injecting capital into banks is a policy tool?
Graduate macro is even worse. Have the courses that use representative-agent models solving Euler equations been abolished? Have the professors teaching those courses been fired? Why not?
I have always thought that the issue of the relationship between financial markets and the "real economy" was really deep. I thought that it was a critical part of macroeconomic theory that was poorly developed. But the economics profession for the past thirty years instead focused on producing stochastic calculus porn to satisfy young men\'s urge for mathematical masturbation.
Economists ought to admit that we do not know much about what is going on today. Neither do the Fed Chairman and the Treasury Secretary. Of course, the market demand is for "strong" leaders and for "strong" economists, who can fool the public into believing that they have great knowledge. The ones who do this best are those who have fooled themselves.
- Arnold Kling, EconLog.