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

To succeed, you will soon learn, as I did, the importance of a solid foundation in the basics of education – literacy, both verbal and numerical, and communication skills.

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.

We don’t know how to get out of this malaise and I think we now have to consider more radical policies.

Rising inequality can create a more highly leveraged economy, and it can then make the economy vulnerable to a crash like 2008.

We are at a pivotal moment in our shared history. The global goals of a healthy planet, social equality, and economic opportunity for all are within reach. But we cannot prevaricate.

There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.

The capitalist system is not delivering those decade-after-decade increases it promised.

No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober. Such reforms can only be effected by means of individual action, economy and self-denial; by better habits, rather than by greater rights.

On the other hand, a central bank can overregulate and choke the economy, and then we will have a dead banking industry.

I support the state, but not the state-run economy. The state should intervene only to create the conditions necessary for the private sector to thrive.