Economic Utility Quotes

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?'

Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system - they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics.

Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.

Free trade is not a principle, it is an expedient.

Everybody must have projects all the time. The maximum must be extracted from leisure ... The whole of life must look like a job, and by this resemblance conceal what is not yet directly devoted to pecuniary gain.

A great deal of small change is useful in a state, and tends to reduce the price of small articles.

We judge economics by what it can produce. As such, economics is rather more like engineering than physics: more practical than spiritual.

The most efficient labor-saving device is still money.

It's more useful to have knowledge about cuts of meat than a lot of money.

Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.

What good does the theory [of economics] do if it is not working for people?

There are respectable individuals, who from a just aversion to an accumulation of Public debt, are unwilling to concede to it any kind of utility, who can discern no good to alleviate the ill with which they suppose it pregnant; who cannot be persuaded that it ought in any sense to be viewed as an increase of capital lest it should be inferred, that the more debt the more capital, the greater the burthens the greater the blessings of the community.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.

To me, money is a commodity that a person must have to function, not a goal in itself.

I think, in this country, we have a problem where we view the arts as charity, and therefore, it has no value. Things in America that have value are profitable, and unless you are profitable, we don't know where to put you.

Why should not insolvent Thieves be rather punished with slavery then death? so as being slaves they may be forced to as much labour, and as cheap fare, as nature will endure, and thereby become as two men added to the Commonwealth, and not as one taken away from it;

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

It is a mere futile process to exchange one set of commodities for another, if the parties; after this new distribution of goods has taken place, are not better off than they were before.