Lewis Black Quotes

I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium.

Basic Economics 101. It's the most complicated simple subject there is.

If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it wouldn't be a bad thing.

Economics is not brain surgery.

Middle-out economics rejects the old misconception that an economy is a perfectly efficient, mechanistic system and embraces the much more accurate idea of an economy as a complex ecosystem made up of real people who are dependent on one another.

There's a very good reason for why economics developed the way it did, and that is that in many situations, the assumption that people will exploit the opportunities available to them is very plausible, and it simplifies the analysis of how markets will behave.

My main interest, however, was in economics, not law.

We propose in the following Treatise to give an outline of the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. To that Science we give the name of Political Economy.

I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging, particularly to someone with taste and talent for theoretical reasoning and quantitative analysis.

My research in this period centered around growth, technical change, and income distribution, both how growth affected the distribution of income and how the distribution of income affected growth.

But while I loved all of these courses, there was an irresistible attraction of economics.

We need to use all the resources at our disposal in order to prosper. We need more employment, and we need employment to be spread more fairly across society.

I think I have met nearly all the Laureates in Economics. Among the few I haven't met, I suppose I'd most like to meet Ronald Coase because of his legendary power to persuade his colleagues of the validity of the Coase Theorem.

It became clear I wanted to be a development economist. I mean, I said I wanted to work on the economics of poor countries. And I'd actually say that I don't think that was so much about narrowing the gap as about increasing their incomes, which means economic growth, which is really my prime interest.

The facts of our present industrial system are of so, complicated a nature that they have not only defied the attention of economists for the last fifty years, but they have deceived practical men who have given to them not only the time economists have given, but their whole lives.

Whoever claims that economic competition represents "survival of the fittest" in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics…. The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.

What a surprise. Economists disagree.

With every increase in the power of production, consumption grew, and the labourer received larger returns for his labour, producing a tendency to immigration.

So many of the great thought leaders that have shaped economics - Gary Becker, Milton Friedman - what an unbelievable success story they've had in their field.

The very name of my subject, economics, suggests economizing or maximizing. But Political Economy has gone a long way beyond home economics.

I think economics - and this is what I've tried to impart - has a tremendous amount of human interest in it.

I am a trained economist.

I studied economics with some teachers from ESADE. It's a really good school here in Spain. They helped me to understand a little about numbers, stats, economics, etc.

I never, never in my life took a course in economics.

Can trade help lift people out of poverty? It can, and it has.