Austan Quotes & Sayings

I am a data hound and so I usually end up working on whatever things I can find good data on. The rise of Internet commerce completely altered the amount of information you could gather on company behavior so I naturally drifted toward it. — Austan Goolsbee

It's clear that the medium and long-run fiscal challenges facing the country have to do with the rise of entitlement spending, they have to do with the longer run imbalances that we've created in the structure of the system. — Austan Goolsbee

Apple knows a lot of data. Facebook knows a lot of data. Amazon knows a lot of data. Microsoft used to, and still does with some people, but in the newer world, Microsoft knows less and less about me. Xbox still knows a lot about people who play games. But those are the big five, I guess. — Robert Scoble

PIE God enters by a private door, into every individual. - Ralph Waldo Emerson — Wm. Paul Young

I don't believe, the president doesn't believe, that the high income tax cuts work, period. I don't think the evidence supports that. — Austan Goolsbee

I think actually the American people are pretty realistic. In polls they ask what do you think of the president's policies. Is he on the right track? They say yes. They ask them how long will it take for the economy to recover. And people are saying two years. — Austan Goolsbee

The president is 100 percent for extending the tax cuts for 98.7 percent of small businesses. — Austan Goolsbee

Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free. — Sigmund Freud

The only question where there is disagreement is should the highest income rates above a quarter million dollars a year go back to where they were under Bill Clinton. That is the dispute about the taxes. — Austan Goolsbee

If you had asked people in 1929, 'Here is what is about to happen. How much would you pay to avoid the Great Depression from occurring?' The answer is they would have paid a lot. They would have borrowed money if it could be used to prevent the Great Depression. — Austan Goolsbee

Giving a man a fish feeds him for one meal. Teaching a man to fish feeds him for a lifetime. As parents and gospel instructors, you and I are not in the business of distributing fish; rather, our work is to help our children learn 'to fish.' — David A. Bednar

We know there are a lot of people in the unemployment pool that do not match up in their skill set for what jobs are going to be created, and that's an area we've got to keep pressing on. — Austan Goolsbee

The data does not support that high-income tax cuts are the main drivers of growth, so I don't think that uncertainty over what the tax rate will be for someone that makes a million dollars a year has that big an impact on the economic growth rate in the country. — Austan Goolsbee

The share of income that small business people are paying in taxes is the lowest it has been in 65 years - since Obama has cut taxes 18 or 22 times for small business. — Austan Goolsbee

Do you want to tell me why I'm getting the silent treatment?' He asked gruffly, his breath hot on my ear.
I hunched up my shoulders, pulling away. His voice had an effect on my body and I didn't want him to know that. 'I'm talking to you.'
'Barely.'
'I've got a lot on my mind.'
'Do you want to talk about it?'
'When have I ever wanted to talk about it? — Samantha Young

I believe - I'm not a political expert, but I believe there is a broad consensus, a middle ground if you will, that Democrats and Republicans, business people and workers can agree on, to get this - the economy growing faster, getting people back to work. — Austan Goolsbee

Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages. — Austan Goolsbee

This recession is the deepest in our lifetimes, the deepest since 1929. If you take the people thrown out of work in the 1982 recession, the 1991 recession, the 2001 recession, not only is this bigger, this is bigger than all of those combined. — Austan Goolsbee

Look, I don't dispute that the deficit has increased. — Austan Goolsbee

We enter the government essentially in a hotel that is on fire. We're throwing people from the windows into the pool to save their lives and this is the evaluation of the Olympic diving committee: Well, the splash was too big. — Austan Goolsbee

Cutting taxes for very high income people an average of more than $100,000 a year for people that make more than a million dollars a year is not an effective way to get the economy going. — Austan Goolsbee

I owned a Ferrari, a Range Rover, a Mercedes 560SL convertible, a Jeep Cherokee and a Nissan 300ZX. I can't remember the intricate decision tree I had to climb in order to determine which one to drive to work on any given day - it probably had something to do with the weather, or which car had more gas in the tank, or upholstery that best matched whatever shirt I happened to throw on that morning. — Michael J. Fox

History teaches that the level of unemployment is not as important as whether the rate's going down. — Austan Goolsbee

Letitia! What a name. Halfway between a salad and a sneeze. — Terry Pratchett

So more than 8 million people lost their jobs. It's going to take a significant push on our part and time before that comes down. I don't anticipate it coming down rapidly. — Austan Goolsbee

A New Campus: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ann Bowers. Steve Jobs, appearance before the Cupertino City Council, June 7, 2011. CHAPTER 41: ROUND THREE Family Ties: Interviews with Laurene Powell, Erin Jobs, Steve Jobs, Kathryn Smith, Jennifer Egan. Email from Steve Jobs, June 8, 2010, 4:55 p.m.; Tina Redse to Steve Jobs, July 20, 2010, and Feb. 6, 2011. President Obama: Interviews with David Axelrod, Steve Jobs, John Doerr, Laurene Powell, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Schmidt, Austan Goolsbee. Third Medical Leave, 2011: Interviews with Kathryn Smith, Steve Jobs, Larry Brilliant. Visitors: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mike Slade. CHAPTER 42: LEGACY Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It (Yale, 2008), 2; Cory Doctorow, Why I Won't Buy an iPad, — Walter Isaacson

There were 14,000 people at the rally for the president in Ohio. There were another 8,000 people in Virginia. If all 22,000 of those people opened their wallets and gave $1,000 each, that would be less than one donation from a billionaire to the super PACs. And that's why he's in for the fight of his life. — Austan Goolsbee

If a lobbyist sets up shop, or a lawyer, in which they're receiving income through what is something like a tax loophole so that it's not counting as corporate income, that is what this is counting as a small business. — Austan Goolsbee

For policy makers interested in using tax policy to stimulate investments or especially to smooth business cycle fluctuations, the results are not promising. — Austan Goolsbee

The U.S. fiscal union has worked, in no small part, by enabling subsidies to the Mississippis without requiring the approval of the Minnesotas. It creates an important form of insurance. — Austan Goolsbee

When Texans suffered from the collapse of the oil market in the 1980s, they could rely on the fiscal union to help them. When Texas boomed with rising oil prices in the 2000s, it contributed to the union to help harder hit regions. — Austan Goolsbee