In 1859 the human race discovered a huge treasure chest in its basement. This was oil and gas, a fantastically cheap and easily available source of energy. We did, or at least some of us did, what anybody does who discovers a treasure in the basement - live it up, and we have been spending this treasure with great enjoyment

Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods.

At the opposite pole from the gift is tribute - that is, a grant made out of fear and under threat. A threat is a statement of the form "you do something that I want or I will do something that you do not want.

The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist - a skill which he shares with many other scientists, but in which he has perhaps a certain comparative advantage.

Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself.

We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

There is no such thing as economics, only social science applied to economic problems.