Paul Krugman Quotes

What Republicans have actually put on the table is almost nothing. All of the rest is just big talk. So how is the president supposed to negotiate with people who say, 'Here's my demands. By the way, I can't give you any specifics. Just make me happy'?

However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.

The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

What happened after 9/11 - and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not - was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons....The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

In fact, I'd say that the sources of the economy's expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and - very much in third place - tax cuts.

I really think that people have to think safety; taking risks for higher yield is a bad idea once you're in late or latish middle age.

I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.

But where will the Fed find another bubble?

Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they're with.

The public has no idea that the deficit has been falling like a stone.

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.

A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble

Economics is not a morality play.

We should try to create the society each of us would want if we didn't know in advance who we'd be.

Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience.

If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it.

When the Fed decides that inflation is too high, they have the tools, and they've shown historically that they have the will, to bring it down. And, it might be painful.

I'm especially baffled by the idea of taking insurance against a U.S. default. If America defaults, we're talking about a chaotic world - Mad Max, more or less - in which case, who imagines that insurance claims will be honored?

[D]ebt increases that didn't arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments.

[I]n America, at least, we have a pretty good record for behaving in a fiscally responsible fashion, with one exception - namely, the fiscal irresponsibility that prevails when, and only when, hard-line conservatives are in power.

Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader.

Evidence and expertise have a well-known liberal bias.

Generous unemployment benefits can increase both structural and frictional unemployment. So government policies intended to help workers can have the undesirable side effect of raising the natural rate of unemployment.

Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.

There's one thing that the Fed has been really good at cracking down on, and that's inflation.

For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.

I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.

Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away.

The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.

The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.

What our economy needs is direct job creation by the government and mortgage-debt relief for stressed consumers. What it very much does not need is a transfer of billions of dollars to corporations that have no intention of hiring anyone except more lobbyists.

It should be possible to emphasize to students that the level of employment is a macroeconomic issue, depending in the short run on aggregate demand and depending in the long run on the natural rate of unemployment, with microeconomic policies like tariffs having little net effect. Trade policy should be debated in terms of its impact on efficiency, not in terms of phoney numbers about jobs created or lost.

...academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously. If a famous professor repeatedly says stupid things, then tries to claim he never said them, there's no rule against calling him a mendacious idiot - and no special qualifications required to make that pronouncement other than doing your own homework.Conversely, if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background.

Outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing.

Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Raising the minimum wage and lowering the barriers to union organization would carry a trade-off - higher unemployment. A better idea is to have the government subsidize low-wage employment. The earned-income tax credit for low-income workers - which has been the object of proposed cuts by both President Clinton and congressional Republicans - has been a positive step in this direction.

We have a lot of evidence on what happens when you raise the minimum wage. And the evidence is overwhelmingly positive: Hiking the minimum wage has little or no adverse effect on employment while significantly increasing workers' earnings.

The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.

Wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing - correctly - that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.

When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.

The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century ... has taken place via globalization.

The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in 'Metcalfe's law'–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.

When stock prices are rising, it's called ''momentum investing''; when they are falling, it's called ''panic.''

Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.