“Need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path.”

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers solves two problems.

If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.

Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that.

If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, America’s system of higher education must remain the world’s leader in generating scientific and technological breakthrough, and in meeting the challenge to educate workers.

I’m a better economist than I was a sax player.

I’m a plain soap kind of guy.

It’s hard to overemphasize how important Ford’s deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first.

Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money.

Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency…and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry.

Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives.

Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don’t think there is any need for a law against fraud.

There’s an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology.

Whatever you tax you get less of.

The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

These days, even out of office, I still read economic reports.

Health care is one-sixth of our economy. If the government can control that, they can control just about everything. We need to understand what is going on, because there are much more economic models that can be used to give us good health care than what we have now.

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.

The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

The Obama-Clinton economy has done enormous damage to the Hispanic community.

We need to have a regulatory budget in America that limits the amount of regulations on our economy. We need to repeal and replace Obamacare and we need to improve higher education so that people can have access to the skills they need for 21st century jobs.

The government doesn’t run the economy. The economy is run by the private sector. The job of the president is to ensure we [the state] have policies that allow the private sector to grow and prosper.