Tyler Cowen Quotes & Sayings

You might like either the Republicans or the Democrats more than I do, but still something is wrong in today's politics, even if we don't always agree — Tyler Cowen

Real cultural diversity results from the interchange of ideas, products, and influences, not from the insular development of a single national style. — Tyler Cowen

One of the major Lockhart restaurants, Kreuz Market, ships to anywhere in the continental United States. — Tyler Cowen

Buying from a local farmer can mean that he makes a two-hour extra truck drive, which can damage the environment more than a bunch of bananas on a boat. — Tyler Cowen

In chess, computers show that what we call 'strategy' is reducible to tactics, ultimately. It only looks creative to us. They are still just glorified cash registers. This should make us feel uncomfortable, whether or not we think computers will ever be good composers of music or artistic painters. — Tyler Cowen

Marcel Proust shut out visitors from his cork-lined room, where he wrote, but he probably expected to be immortalized in the literary canon. Even the most introverted drives and motives are set in a social context and amplified by the potential for achieving fame. — Tyler Cowen

I think higher ed in the U.S. is fairly healthy, and by global standards it dominates, and it makes people more productive. But a lot of our K-12 is a disaster. And the single most important reform would just be to fire the worst ten or 15 percent of teachers in the lot, and we would have massive improvements. — Tyler Cowen

Throwing more science at things isn't always the answer. — Tyler Cowen

I'm not a vegetarian. But I think people who are vegetarians, they are actually more virtuous than the rest of us. I think they should be admired. — Tyler Cowen

In truth, it's not the shareholders of the American International Group who benefited most from its bailout; they were mostly wiped out. The great beneficiaries have been the creditors and counterparties at the other end of A.I.G.'s derivatives deals - firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Barclays and UBS. — Tyler Cowen

Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today's silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society. — Tyler Cowen

Look at electricity in human history - it took a few decades for electricity to really revolutionize the American economy. And the Internet will be the same. At some point in the future, we will arrive at a new era of low-hanging fruit. — Tyler Cowen

When you look at the actual data on technological innovation, one thing you see is that what I call the 'low-hanging fruit' has been exhausted. So radio, flush toilets, electricity, and automobiles - a lot of very basic inventions - have spread to almost all households. — Tyler Cowen

The more information that's out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn't what's scarce; it's the willingness to do something with it. — Tyler Cowen

perhaps we are not as free as we might think in the first place. Given your background, your friends, your family, the books you read, and the movies you watch, how surprising is your vote in a federal election? — Tyler Cowen

Today most of the debate on the cutting edge in macroeconomics would not call itself "Keynesian" or "monetarist" or any other label relating to a school of thought. The data are considered the ruling principle, and it is considered suspect to have too strong a loyalty to any particular model about the underlying structure of the economy. — Tyler Cowen

Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism. — Tyler Cowen

Some Google employees have their self-driving vehicles take them to work. These car robots don't look like something from 'The Jetsons'; the driverless features on these cars are a bunch of sensors, wires, and software. This technology 'works.' — Tyler Cowen

Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. — Tyler Cowen

In the early stages of negotiation software, on your smartphone, there may be programs that listen to the pitch of a voice, or that test for stress. You'll just ask the program, 'Was he lying? Was he eager to do business with me?' Maybe the computer will be right sixty per cent of the time. — Tyler Cowen

I don't really watch TV. — Tyler Cowen

When I hear people express extreme optimism about the Internet, I say, we've had it in mature form for about ten years. Macroeconomically speaking, those are about the worst 10 years we've had since about the 1930s. I don't blame the Internet for that - that would be ridiculous. — Tyler Cowen

If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis. — Tyler Cowen

I'm a pessimist about the euro, but not about Europe. So the southern periphery, Spain, Italy, Greece, leave - Italy might be the first to go - and the rest stay. That will work just fine. But unless they want to give up democracy, I don't see greater fiscal union as the answer. — Tyler Cowen

What the banking system needs is creditors who monitor risk and cut their exposure when that risk is too high. Unlike regulators, creditors and counterparties know the details of a deal and have their own money on the line. — Tyler Cowen

Marshall Jevons is the pioneer for integrating economics and detective fiction, and The Mystery of the Invisible Hand is another fine effort in this genre. — Tyler Cowen

For many artists fame complements the value of creative self-expression. Ludwig van Beethoven loved composing music, but he probably would have enjoyed it less if no one ever listened to the product. — Tyler Cowen

Once you're using sides and sauces you're on the right track and you're also following the general principles about how to eat well in the United States. — Tyler Cowen

The key questions will be: Are you good at working with intelligent machines or not? Are your skills a complement to the skills of the computer, or is the computer doing better without you? Worst of all, are you competing against the computer? — Tyler Cowen

Firms and employers and monitors will be able to measure economic value with a sometimes oppressive precision. — Tyler Cowen

The measure of self-motivation in a young person will become the best way to predict upward mobility. — Tyler Cowen

Few people read coffee-table photo books, and indeed they are not intended to be read. I find the text in these books is often surprisingly good, perhaps because the author
or more importantly, the editor
feels no need to pander. — Tyler Cowen

Food is a product of supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed. — Tyler Cowen

For the U.S., I think we should have a carbon tax, for environmental reasons. — Tyler Cowen

I see three forces militating in favor of growing inequality: increasing measurement of worker value added, automation through smart software, and globalization. — Tyler Cowen

A lot of local food is very tasty. I'm very happy to eat it. I just don't think it's the same thing as saving the world. — Tyler Cowen

It's an open debate how much education can boost innate aptitude or IQ, but the trait of "conscientiousness" does consistently predict educational and job success and also subjective happiness. Yet as access to information increases, conscientiousness will become all the more important. It will be less about whose parents could afford Harvard or who could charm the admissions officer, and more and more about who sits down and actually starts trying to master the material. And so a large part of the educational sector will be directed toward boosting conscientiousness, though not always with success. — Tyler Cowen

I think as individuals, people overrate the virtues of local food. Most of the energy consumption in our food system is not caused by transportation. Sometimes local food is more energy efficient. But often it's not. The strongest case for locavorism is to eat less that's flown on planes, and not to worry about boats. — Tyler Cowen

Sports is remarkably cognitive. I think it's underrated just how smart it is. Actually, if I had more time, I would spend more time with sports. Watching it, reading about it, I think it's oddly underrated. — Tyler Cowen

Economics is everywhere, and understanding economics can help you make better decisions and lead a happier life. — Tyler Cowen

Machines have no fear of the unfamiliar. — Tyler Cowen

When it comes to ethnic markets, most of the shoppers really are very well informed. Most of the shoppers come from cultures - including China - where food preparation receives a lot more attention than in the United States. These shoppers also are largely immigrants or children of immigrants. Either they come from cultures where most food prices are lower than in the United States, or the immigrants have lower incomes themselves, or both. — Tyler Cowen

If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch. Ever more people are starting to fall on one side of the divide or the other. That's why 'average is over.' — Tyler Cowen

El Paso is parasitic off of Juarez rather than vice versa. — Tyler Cowen

The more extreme conservatives will embrace religion and nationalism to a higher degree. — Tyler Cowen

The 'low' quality of many American films, and of much American popular culture, induces many art lovers to support cultural protectionism. Few people wish to see the cultural diversity of the world disappear under a wave of American market dominance. — Tyler Cowen

There's so much free material on the Internet you can learn from, and some people are pure self-starters: they pick up computers and teach themselves everything. Certainly there are millions of people like that. But at the same time, I think it's a pretty small percentage of the population. — Tyler Cowen

We will be returning to historical levels of inequality. We'll view post-war America as a kind of strange interlude not to be repeated. It won't be the dreams that we all had that virtually all incomes go up in lockstep at three percent a year. It hurts to give that up. — Tyler Cowen

Most of us are not pure self-starters; most people need role models, they need coaches, they need exemplars, they maybe need some discipline or some rewards. We need to be motivated. — Tyler Cowen

I sometimes say I am a 'happiness optimist' but a 'revenue pessimist.' — Tyler Cowen

If we want to improve American food and make it much cheaper, we should deregulate the food trucks and the other street vendors, provided they meet certain sanitation standards. Many cities have already moved down this path, and people are not keeling over with salmonella. — Tyler Cowen

The lesson about food is that the most predictable and the most orderly outcomes are always not the best. They are just easier to describe. Fads are orderly. Food carts and fires aren't. Feeding the world could be a delicious mess, full of diverse flavors and sometimes good old-fashioned smoke. — Tyler Cowen

A bad or mediocre meal is more than just an unpleasant taste, it is an unnecessary negation of one of life's pleasures - a wasted chance to refine our palates, learn about the world, and share a rewarding experience. — Tyler Cowen

Economics is sometimes associated with the study and defense of selfishness and material inequality, but it has an egalitarian and civil libertarian core that should be celebrated. — Tyler Cowen

Presidents always want to do nice, noble, long-run things, and Congress is less keen to do so. We've seen that throughout the history of this country. — Tyler Cowen

At least in the United States, most economic resentment is not directed toward billionaires or high-roller financiers - not even corrupt ones. It's directed at the guy down the hall who got a bigger raise. It's directed at the husband of your wife's sister, because he earns 20 percent more than you do. — Tyler Cowen

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there. — Tyler Cowen

Most restaurants in most cities, including Washington, are at a sort of mid-level. They're somewhat trendy, or they have some sort of gimmick, or they're somewhat expensive. And they make a lot of money off drinks. I tell people don't go to most of them, unless your goal is just to socialize. — Tyler Cowen

The way to make the world a better place, through your eating, is simply to eat a bit less meat. Local is sometimes good, sometimes bad. But even when it's good, its environmental impact is relatively small compared to other possible improvements. — Tyler Cowen

Social systems proceed by (usually) covering up the brutalities upon which they are based. The doctor doesn't let you get to his door and then turn you away, rather his home address is hard to find. The government handcuffs you so they don't have to shoot you trying to escape. And so on. — Tyler Cowen

Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away. — Tyler Cowen

We need to accept the principle that sometimes poor people will die just because they are poor. — Tyler Cowen

Newton expected no money from establishing his originality but rather desired recognition for his excellence. — Tyler Cowen

When humans team up with computers to play chess, the humans who do best are not necessarily the strongest players. They're the ones who are modest and who know when to listen to the computer. Often, what the human adds is knowledge of when the computer needs to look more deeply. — Tyler Cowen

Apart from the seemingly magical internet, life in broad material terms isn't so different from what it was in 1953 ... The wonders portrayed in THE JETSONS, the space-age television cartoon from the 1960s, have not come to pass ... Life is better and we have more stuff, but the pace of change has slowed down compared to what people saw two or three generations ago. — Tyler Cowen

We're seeing an enormous amount of global upward mobility that's quite rapid and quite sudden, and undiscovered individuals have a chance - using the Internet, using computers - to prove themselves very quickly. So I think the mobility story will be a quite complicated one. — Tyler Cowen

A particular personality trait that doesn't come easily to everyone will be needed in a lot of situations: the ability to handle or maybe just ignore the ongoing appearance of stressful situations. — Tyler Cowen

Countries with lots of unmarried young men are the most vulnerable to sudden upheavals - this is what fueled the Arab Spring. — Tyler Cowen

The iPhone is made on a global scale, and it blends computers, the Internet, communications, and artificial intelligence in one blockbuster, game-changing innovation. It reflects so many of the things that our contemporary world is good at - indeed, great at. — Tyler Cowen

My view of the internet is that it is way overrated in what it's done to date but considerably underrated in what it will do. — Tyler Cowen

Let's say that you could carry around a perfect copy of a three-dimensional realization of a Caravaggio painting (or if your tastes are more modern make it a Picasso). You would carry a small box in your pocket, and whenever you wanted, you could press a button and the box would open up into life-sized glory and show you the picture. You would bring it to all the parties you attended. The peak of the culture of the seventeenth century (or say the 1920s if you prefer Picasso) would be at your disposal. Alternatively, let's say you could carry around in your pocket an iPhone. That gives you thousands of songs, a cell phone, access to personal photographs, YouTube, email, and web access, among many other services, not to mention all the applications that have not yet been written. You will have a strong connection to the contemporary culture of small bits. — Tyler Cowen

It's harder to get outside your own head than you think. — Tyler Cowen

What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small 'l' but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. That's more or less the empty set. — Tyler Cowen

I've been a foodie most of my life. I started when I lived for a year in Germany in my early 20s, and here was this new food environment, and I decided I needed to make sense of it. And I found it was the rules of economics that do the best job. Food is a capitalist product of supply and demand. — Tyler Cowen

Vietnamese food has probably been saved from the mass market because most people never master the sauces and condiments that must be added to the food, at the table, for its glories to become apparent. It's too much trouble, and a lot of people don't like asking for help, especially if the interaction involves some linguistic awkwardness. — Tyler Cowen

After aircraft production, the entertainment industry is America's largest source of trade surplus. — Tyler Cowen

The right wing will be identified with the monied class, even when the left often has more money. And the left wing will be identified as the whiners, even though the right at times whines as much or more. You might say that both sides are monied, high human capital whiners, on the whole. — Tyler Cowen

To get anything done, Obama has to be seen as having winning economy - which isn't easy. — Tyler Cowen

It's becoming increasingly clear that mechanized intelligence can solve a rapidly expanding repertoire of problems. — Tyler Cowen

Often, economists spend their energies squabbling with one another, but arguably the more important contrast is between our broadly liberal economic worldview and the various alternatives - common around the globe - that postulate natural hierarchies of religion, ethnicity, caste and gender, often enforced by law and strict custom. — Tyler Cowen

Our time and attention is scarce. Art is not that important to us, no matter what we might like to believe ... Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them.
Keep in mind that books, like art museums, are not always geared to the desires of the reader. Maybe we think we are supposed to like tough books, but are we? Who says? Many writers (and art museums) produce for quite a small subsample of the ... public. — Tyler Cowen

In most of the world, breakfast is an important meal. — Tyler Cowen

I think a lot of people will be liberated from a lot of oppressive manufacturing jobs, or a lot of service jobs, because they'll be done by computers. There'll be the world's best education available online and free. — Tyler Cowen

At fancy and expensive restaurants (say, $50 and up for a dinner), you can follow a simple procedure to choose the best meal. Look at the menu and ask yourself: 'Which of these items do I least want to order?' Or: 'Which one sounds the least appetizing?' Then order that item. — Tyler Cowen

Everything will have a Yelp review. And if you're a worker, there will be like credit scores. There already are to some extent. How reliable are you? How many jobs have you had? Have there been lawsuits filed against you? How many traffic tickets? — Tyler Cowen

The Christian right, which trumpets the theme of family values, damns contemporary culture for undermining older traditions. Yet many individuals from this camp are not concerned first and foremost about family values per se. Family is a codeword for constraint; families and family values place constraints on individuals more effectively than any other institution, including government. The Christian right seeks a society in which all are constrained; they reject big government for failing at constraint, and for undermining those institutions, like the family, that have a chance at succeeding. — Tyler Cowen

When I look back at the last decade, I think the following: There are some very wealthy people, but a lot of their incomes are from financial innovations that do not translate to gains for the average American citizen. — Tyler Cowen

Our love of art is often quite temporary, dependent upon our moods, and our love of art is subservient to our demand for a positive self-image. How we look at art should account for those imperfections and work around them. — Tyler Cowen

And to be blunt - while I know I can't prove this - I wonder how much of the middle class consists of people in government or protected service-sector jobs who don't actually produce nearly as much as their pay. — Tyler Cowen

France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. The French spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing film production, extend interest-free loans to designated filmmakers, and have placed quotas not only on imports but on television time. — Tyler Cowen

Economics evolved as a more moral and more egalitarian approach to policy than prevailed in its surrounding milieu. Let's cherish and extend that heritage. The real contributions of economics to human welfare might turn out to be very different from what most people - even most economists - expect. — Tyler Cowen

For the very top earners, vision and inspiration are essential. You need those to become the next Steve Jobs, but perhaps not to be the highest paid dentist in Beverly Hills. — Tyler Cowen

The hours from 7 to 12 are your time to build for the future before the world descends on you. — Tyler Cowen

If you have an unusual ability to spot, recruit, and direct those who work well with computers, even if you don't work well with computers yourself, the contemporary world will make you rich. — Tyler Cowen

To get a person's real opinion, ask what she thinks everyone else believes ... If people truly hold a particular belief, they are more likely to think that others agree or have had similar experiences. [People] tend to assume that other people have had life histories at least somewhat similar to their own. When we talk about other people, we are often talking about ourselves, whether we know it ourselves. — Tyler Cowen

The fourth and final step is that the human isn't needed much at all because the program on its own is so strong. — Tyler Cowen

I think people who are not rich can be extremely happy. And I think the chances to be happy in this new world - with many more opportunities to be creative, to be online, to educate yourself - there'll be a lot more chances to be happy. It's not to say everyone will take them, but there will be a lot of new paths to opportunity. — Tyler Cowen

1. Quality land and natural resources 2. Intellectual property, or good ideas about what should be produced 3. Quality labor with unique skills — Tyler Cowen

The world - not to mention the American Medical Association - is pretty far from accepting this fact, but the person working with the computer doesn't have to be a doctor or even a medical expert. She has to be good at understanding and correcting the computer's mistakes, which is a very different skill. This will involve some knowledge of medicine, brain scans, or whatever, but it is a less comprehensive medical knowledge than what a prestigious MD would have. It may well involve more knowledge of smart machines, how they work, and what their failings are likely to be. — Tyler Cowen