Cost-Benefit Quotes

Even an ideal set of trade-offs must—and should—leave a whole spectrum of unmet needs, because the cost of wiping out the last vestige of any problem is leaving other problems in more dire condition. In short, trade-offs must be incremental rather than categorical, if limited resources are to produce optimal results in any social system as a whole.

Opportunity cost is a huge filter in life. If you've got two suitors who are really eager to have you and one is way the hell better than the other, you do not have to spend much time with the other. And that's the way we filter out buying opportunities.

As a producer or financier, you are going to go where you get the best bang for your buck.

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

Unfortunately, in rich-world health, innovation is both your friend and your enemy. Innovation is inventing organ replacement, joint replacement. We're inventing ways of doing new things that cost $300,000 and take people in their 70s and, on average, give them an extra, say, two or three years of life. And then you have to say, given finite resources, should we fire two or three teachers to do this operation?

If the price of a burger goes up 5 cents, and the minimum wage that you have received is going up from $7.25 to $15 an hour - and there have been a number of studies that document just how much the price of a burger might go up if you increase the minimum wage. You match the costs, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

When I was a kid, I reckoned things in Hershey bars. Is this worth three Hershey bars to me?

This is the question I'm asking: Do Americans live twice as long because they consume twice as much energy as Europeans? Are you people twice as smart as the average Frenchman? Do you enjoy life twice as much as the average Danish guy? What have we gotten for consuming twice as much energy as Europe? What have we gotten in return?

When to prevent? When to adapt?" Noting that prevention tends to cost more and favors elites, while adaptation costs less and favors the average person…

A focus on regulatory overreach, things that the benefit doesn't outweigh the cost, is probably the single greatest opportunity we have for having a positive impact on job creation.

The cost of the vaccine is truly minuscule when you think about the benefits you're getting from an opportunity-cost standpoint. If you're going to miss several days of work - and you will - with high fevers, body aches, nausea, and vomiting... you're going to be losing out on a lot more money and productivity if you don't get the flu shot.

Actually, in my advanced, high-falutin' frontier economics, I often work with what I define as 'money metric utility,' and I ask people, 'Do you really want that? What are you willing to pay for that?'

Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infinitely more advantage than any victory with all its expence.

I would say it would be worth it if, in fact, it would - if you could demonstrate that that would be the case and that the results and ramifications around the world wouldn't lead to more problems and more people dying. It's a very complex issue, and that's why I think we need to decide it.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

Countries are very reluctant to impose short term pain for long term gain.

We sin because we see sin as a bargain. We unconsciously calculate that it’s worth it, that it pays.

The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than its worth.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.

Money are very difficult to think about. So, we think about money as the opportunity cost of money. So, we at some point went to a Toyota dealership and we asked people, what will you not be able to do in the future if you bought this Toyota?

I would borrow money all day long, if the cost of borrowing is less than the expected return.

In the short run and for decisions unlikely to have broad impact, it may be more cost effective to use just one expert.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

To know one's own desires, their meaning and their costs requires the highest human virtue: rationality.