Economic Discussion Quotes

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.

Our discussions of the economy may sometimes ring in the ears of the public with more certainty than is appropriate.

When Bill Clinton assembled the top minds of the nation to discuss the economy in 1992, no one mentioned the Internet.

Spending when the math's not there and the numbers aren't there and if they look in the social security trust fund, it's filled with IOUs because the government's been pilfering it for years on end. We have to do something. We have to start having this discussion.

I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

The thing I don't understand is why so often one hears discussion of the fruits of human labor as if it's all the creation of some alien race.

I think that Democrats have to think through answers we haven't in the past: How we are going to create those jobs? How should we restructure the entire tax code? Should we have things like a payroll tax, when jobs are so scarce? They weren't - basically the architecture of our employment law, tax law, all these things were from the 1930s - and I do think that one benefit of Donald Trump, which is not worth it, but one perverse thing is, he has widened the scope of things that we should discuss.

If somebody had said to me in June or July of 1987, 'We'd like you to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, but you're never allowed to discuss any economics after you leave,' I'd have said, 'Forget it.' What do they want me to do? Become an anthropologist?'

I've talked about commodity price volatility in the past: go back to the tape... I never said it was about inflation.

Talking about income inequality, even if you're not on the Forbes 400 list, can make us feel uncomfortable. It feels less positive, less optimistic, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to think about how to make the pie bigger.

Any discussion of investment or putting monetary value on the environment must start with the populations who rely on those resources.

I may be a dreamer, but I think monetary economics should be a hot topic.

It is the good fortune of the affluent country that the opportunity cost of economic discussion is low and hence it can afford all kinds.