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economics, economics

Thursday 2nd of October 2025

Bureaucracy In tacitly partnering with bureaucracies, even as they complain about the partnership, politicians and citizens implicitly rely on an efficiency in the economist's sense:  the efficiency of delegation. That efficiency is ubiquitous. Richard M. Valelly, American Politics © 2018 Kwiple.com
Class The old notion that politicians from different classes essentially want the same things — that the interests of the mechanic “can be more effectually promoted by the merchant” [as Hamilton said] — is deeply mistaken. On the important economic issues of the day, members of Congress routinely vote with class. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Cocks of the walk say My personal ambition is to be the individual who has done the most to teach the world economics, broadly construed. Tyler Cowen © 2023 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say … trade wars are good, and easy to win. Donald Trump, 2:50 AM - 2 MAR 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Death Mortality rates in recent years have been increasing for all whites, in contrast to decreases in the rest of the world. At the same time, it is worth noting that mortality rates for African Americans remain higher than for whites. Adverse economics is bad for health, regardless of race. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Economics [T]he best economic order would help to generate a distribution political resources favorable to voting equality, effective participation, enlightened understanding, and final control of the political agenda by all adults subject to the laws. … But we may reasonably demand that our economic order also be just. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Economics For far too long, the economics profession has had physics envy, rewarding and promoting people who are better at maths than morality. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, December 16, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Economics In economics as in life things often take longer to happen than you think they will and then happen faster than you thought they could. Lawrence Summers, Financial Times, June 4, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Economics In the new version of the law of supply and demand, jobs are so cheap — as measured by the pay — that a worker is encouraged to take on as many of them as she possibly can. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2015 Kwiple.com
Economics Many economic policies that have had painful consequences for working-class Americans probably exist because white-collar Americans are the ones calling the shots. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Economics Their [Janet Yellen and George Akerlof's] paper showed that salaries can be far higher than expected when human emotions are valued. Rational Mom and Dad, it turns out, may behave quite differently from Rational Man. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, November 29, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Economists An economist is a person with a Phi Beta Kappa key on one end of his watch chain and no watch on the other. Ronald Reagan © 2023 Kwiple.com
Forecasts Why did God create economists? — — — — — To make weathermen look good. Old joke © 2017 Kwiple.com
Free lunch Technological progress … has provided society with what economists call a “free lunch,” that is, an increase in output that is not commensurate with the increase in effort and cost necessay to bring it about. Joel Mokyr, Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress © 2016 Kwiple.com
Global warming The reality is that society places extraordinary value on any medical intervention that will extend or improve life, even if only by a fraction. The same intense demand is not in evidence for innovations that reduce carbon emissions. Since it is costless to emit carbon for most companies in most places, there is almost no market for products that set out to capture it. Countless forlorn Project Bs [to capture it] have died or gone unfunded, even if the technology shows promise. Today, only idealists and optimists will back “cleantech” projects. Robin Harding, Financial Times, Nov. 27, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A generation ago, mainstream economists believed that greater equality  fostered dysfunction. Any attempts to restrain income at the top, this mainstream held, would reduce incentives to save and invest and throttle the economic growth necessary to “lift all boats.” But that mainstream has reversed course and now sees inequality as more likely to sink boats than lift them. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary cost cutting (kôst kut'ing), n. Euphemism for firing people. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary deregulation (dē reg'yə lā'shən), n. The process, performed under the guise of ending regulations, of replacing ones fostering public interests with ones fostering private interests. © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary dynamic scoring (dī nam'ik scôr' ring), n. The process used to find the assumptions needed to “prove” that lowering taxes on the rich, lowering spending on the non- rich, and increasing spending on the military will benefit more people more than any other possible set of policies. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary flexible labor market (flek'sə bəl lā'bər märkit), n. A labor market in which workers can be called to or released from work at will. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary gig economy (gig i kon'ə mē), n. An economy in which apps are pimps. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary regulatory capture (reg'ya lə tōr'ē kap'chər), n. The situation that results from letting a corporate fox guard a government henhouse. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary reshoring (ri shôr'ing), n. Replacing low-paid workers overseas with cheaper robots here. © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary sharing economy (shâr'ing i kon'ə mē), n. Synonym for anxiety  and insecurity ; antonym of shared prosperity. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary trickle down (trik'əl doun), phrasal verb of  trickle Euphemism for shit rolls down- hill. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Economic laws are man-made by men with vested interests © 2015 Kwiple.com
Liberalism By the 1980s, you could be a liberal in good standing without holding a particularly liberal position on economics. Joshua Green, in Rebels © 2024 Kwiple.com
Modernity The economy is to the moderns what the polis was to the Greeks: a way of being and appearing in the world, a place to do something “grand and beautiful and noble” that will be recognized now and remembered later. Corey Robin, New York Review of Books, December 8, 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Pfizer, whose donations to the GOP in 2016 totaled $16 million, would reap $39 billion [in savings from the tax cuts passed by Congress in 2017]. [2,437:1] GE contributed $20 million and will get back $16 billion in tax savings. [800:1] Chevron donated $13 million and received $9 billion. [692:1] Not even a sizzling economy can deliver anything close to the returns on political investments. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
Occupiers say Trickle down made us “pee-ons” Placard, Los Angeles, 2011 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Oligarchy Importantly, oligarchy as a governing strategy accounts for both politics and economics. Oligarchs use economic power for political purposes, and, in turn, use politics to expand their economic power. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Great Democracy © 2020 Kwiple.com
Political inequality [T]he unequal social class makeup of our political institutions affects who wins and who loses in the policy-making process. Like ordinary Americans, lawmakers from different classes tend to think, vote, and advocate differently on economic issues. The numerical underrepresentation of the working class in our legislatures consequenly skews economic policy- making toward outcomes that are more in line with what more privileged Americans want. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poltical philosophy Many current observers of the inter- national scene foresee a kind of market triumphalism, in which economic forces prevent any nation-state from making real political choices. Self-determination becomes meaningless if the only option is to adopt policies that ensure maximum economic competitiveness. … if there really are no political choices for us to make, then political philosophy, whether national or international in focus, becomes useless, nothing more than fiddling while Rome burns. David Miller, Political Philisophy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Politics The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and liberty. John Maynard Keynes © 2019 Kwiple.com
Politics Remember the phrase, “It's the economy, stupid?” It was coined by James Carville, strategist of US President Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign against George H W Bush. … Yet it doesn't appear to be working for Joe Biden, even though many of the top economic indicators … have been in his favour. … I suspect if Carville was on Biden’s team today, he might come up with a different phrase for the next election cycle: “It's geopolitics, stupid.” Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 21, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Race I can't name a single issue with roots in race that doesn't have economic implications, and I cannot think of a single economic issue that doesn't have racial implications. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez © 2020 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cook the books with supply side sauce © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say It's bigly easy to fuck over people economically if you convince them they're winning the culture war  a.k.a. Trump's Law  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Preaching economic nationalism with no economic plan other than to make big corporations and the rich even richer relative to the rest is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Sacrifice equality on the altar of economic efficiency © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Higher productivity results in higher wages © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Lower unemployment results in higher wages  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say A rising tide lifts all boats © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Surging economic confidence leads to surging household spending © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Tax cuts pay for themselves © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say You understand the expression “prime the pump”? Have you heard that expression used before? I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It's what you have to do. Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out. Donald Trump, defending raising deficits by cutting taxes on the rich, to the editors of The Economist, the world's foremost business magazine © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Almost nothing remains of his intellectual legacy. It has proven to be a disastrous misdirection for the world's economies. Milton Friedman portrayed by Jeffrey Sachs © 2021 Kwiple.com
Snapshot His life-long idée fixe – that every exchange creates a winner and a loser – is the germ of economic nationalism. Donald Trump portrayed by Janan Ganesh © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Before economic reform there will have to be political reform. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Labor can't strike, but capital goes on investment strikes by threatening to move if its demands for wage cuts, tax cuts, subsidies, union-free workplaces and/or business-friendly judges aren't met © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Hasta la vista mom & pop Abercrombie & Fitch . Aeropostale . Albertso ns . Amazon . American Eagle Outfitters . Ba rnes & Noble . Bath & Body Works  .  Bed Bat h & Beyond  .  Best Buy . Burger King . Chick- fil-A . Chipotle . Costco . CVS . Dillard's . Doll ar General . Dollar Tree . DSW .  Dunkin' Don uts  . Family Dollar . Foot Locker . Gap . H&M Home Depot . IKEA . J.C. Penney . J. Crew . J os. A. Bank . Kohl's . Kroger . LongHorn Stea khouse .  Lowe's .  Macy's .  Marshalls . McDo nald's  .  Mens Warehouse   .  Michaels Stores Nieman Marcus  .  Nordstrom  .  Olive Garden Payless Shoesource  .  Pink . Publix . Rite Aid Ross Stores  .  Safeway .  Saks . Sears .  Stapl es . Starbucks . Subway . T J Maxx . Taco Bel l . Target . Toys “R” Us . Victoria's Secret . W algreens  . Walmart . Wendy's . Whole Foods © 2015 Kwiple.com
Thinking Oy vey ist mir! I'm with stupid! What Gary Cohn, Trump's chief economic adviser, and Steve Mnuchin, his Treasury Secretary, must have been thinking when being interviewed by the editors of The Economist, along with Trump, who asked the editors if they'd heard the expression “prime the pump” and then said he created it “a couple of days ago and I thought it was good” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Voting We have noticed that whereas in depressions  or during great bursts of economic reform people vote for what they think are their economic interests, in times of prosperity they feel free to vote their prejudices. Richard Hofstadter, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt—1965” © 2020 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality To those that have is shall be given. That is the doctrine of Mr Trump. It is also the old Republican trickle-down doctrine in purest form. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, May 2, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com