I don’t want a job in the administration; I think I’m more effective carping from the sidelines.
Debt is one person’s liability, but another person’s asset.
There’s nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges.
I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.
In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.
If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.
Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine.
This is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.
Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it’s often painful.
Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.
The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy.
The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will.
In fact, I’d say that the sources of the economy’s expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and – very much in third place – tax cuts.
Generous unemployment benefits can increase both structural and frictional unemployment. So government policies intended to help workers can have the undesirable side effect of raising the natural rate of unemployment.
People respond to incentives. If unemployment becomes more attractive because of the unemployment benefit, some unemployed workers may no longer try to find a job or may not try to find one as quickly as they would without the benefit.
The problem isn’t that people don’t understand how good things are. It’s that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren’t that good.
The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World.
But Wall Street people are in fact very smart; they’re funny, they’re not company men who work their way up the chain.
I’m not sure that the current value of the NASDAQ is justified, but I’m not sure that it isn’t.
I don’t think I’ve had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.