Topic: Policy

Quotes

Gerald O'Driscoll, The Economics of Time and Ignorance (1985)

• It is a misnomer to speak of “calculating” the benefits and costs of intervention, when the evident effect of such intervention is interference with the market’s calculational procedures.#

James Buchanan, Economic Inquiry and its Logic (2000)

• Statistical inquiry may reveal the existence of parallel increases in minimum wages and in employment. But to rely on such empiricism to invalidate the economists’ scientific enterprise is equivalent to making the observation that Peter Pan really does fly because one’s vision does not disclose the existence of the supporting wires from the rafters.#

Ludwig Von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit (1953)

• It is a display of considerable naiveté to recommend openly a monetary system that can work only if its essential features are ignored by the public.#Quoted in Gerald O'Driscoll, The Economics of Time and Ignorance (1985)

Milton Friedman, “Lerner on the Economics of Control” (1947)

• If a number of random disturbances, each varying by about the same amount, are added, their mean tends to fluctuate less than any one of the disturbances, and in this sense, the errors tend to cancel out; but their sum tends to fluctuate more than any one of the disturbances, and the larger the number of disturbances added, the larger the fluctuations in the sum. The effects of countercyclical actions of government are added to, not averaged with, the economic movements that would otherwise take place.#

Steven Landsburg, Fair Play (1997)

• If your behavior can’t affect your tax bill, then your tax bill won’t affect your behavior.#
• Efficiency is a mixed blessing. When governments can tax efficiently, they are likely to tax excessively. If the power to tax is the power to destroy, then the power to tax efficiently is the power to destroy with dispatch.#