Krugman Quotes & Sayings

There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do. — Paul Krugman

The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will. — Paul Krugman

I've always believed in expansionary monetary policy and if necessary fiscal policy when the economy is depressed. — Paul Krugman

The rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. — Paul Krugman

I'm not sure that the current value of the NASDAQ is justified, but I'm not sure that it isn't. — Paul Krugman

Open immigration can't exist with a strong social safety net; if you're going to assure healthcare and a decent income to everyone, you can't make that offer global — Paul Krugman

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises. — Paul Krugman

Now, it's true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism. — Paul Krugman

Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics. — Paul Krugman

The next time you hear businesspeople propounding their views about the economy, ask yourself. Have they taken the time to study this subject? Have they read what the experts write?If not, never mind how successful they have been in business. Ignore them, because they probably have no idea what they are talking about. — Paul Krugman

If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it. — Paul Krugman

[W]e have a lot of evidence on what happens when you raise the minimum wage. And the evidence is overwhelmingly positive: Hiking the minimum wage has little or no adverse effect on employment while significantly increasing workers' earnings. — Paul Krugman

We should try to create the society each of us would want if we didn't know in advance who we'd be. — Paul Krugman

The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society. — Paul Krugman

Economics is really about two stories. One is the story of the old economist and younger economist walking down the street, and the younger economist says, 'Look, there's a hundred-dollar bill,' and the older one says, 'Nonsense, if it was there somebody would have picked it up already.' So sometimes you do find hundred-dollar bills lying on the street, but not often - generally people respond to opportunities. The other is the Yogi Berra line 'Nobody goes to Coney Island anymore; it's too crowded.' That's the idea that things tend to settle into some kind of equilibrium where what people expect is in line with what they actually encounter. — Paul Krugman

But where will the Fed find another bubble? — Paul Krugman

In fact, I'd say that the sources of the economy's expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and - very much in third place - tax cuts. — Paul Krugman

By rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely. — Paul Krugman

For every dollar that is spent on the (boondoggle) bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. If the bridge costs $1,000,000 the taxpayers will lose $1,000, 000. They will have that much taken away from them which they would otherwise have spent on the things they needed most. — Henry Hazlitt

I'm especially baffled by the idea of taking insurance against a U.S. default. If America defaults, we're talking about a chaotic world - Mad Max, more or less - in which case, who imagines that insurance claims will be honored? — Paul Krugman

The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good. — Paul Krugman

Consumer spending is now plunging at serious-recession rate ... even if the rescue now in train succeeds in unfreezing credit markets, the real economy has immense downward momentum. In addition to financial rescues, we need major stimulus programs. — Paul Krugman

Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight. — Paul Krugman

Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they're with. — Paul Krugman

You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation. — Paul Krugman

When the Fed decides that inflation is too high, they have the tools, and they've shown historically that they have the will, to bring it down. And, it might be painful. — Paul Krugman

Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you've been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we're hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it. — Paul Krugman

The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant
that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them. — Paul Krugman

What happened after 9/11 - and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not - was deeply shameful. [The] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neo-cons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons ... The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it. — Paul Krugman

The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead. — Paul Krugman

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. — Paul Krugman

Obama is very much an establishment sort of guy. The whole image of him as a transcendent figure was based on style rather than substance. If you actually looked at what he said, not how he said it, he said very establishment things. He's a moderate, cautious, ameliorative guy. He tends to gravitate toward Beltway conventional wisdom. — Paul Krugman

Tax cuts were not going to be effective at creating jobs, and the job creation record is lousy. — Paul Krugman

Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn't sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets. — Paul Krugman

If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God. — Paul Krugman

As long as there are no routes back to full employment except that of somehow restoring business confidence, he pointed out, business lobbies in effect have veto power over government actions: propose doing anything they dislike, such as raising taxes or enhancing workers' bargaining power, and they can issue dire warnings that this will reduce confidence and plunge the nation into depression. But let monetary and fiscal policy be deployed to fight unemployment, and suddenly business confidence becomes less necessary, and the need to cater to capitalists' concern is much reduced. — Paul Krugman

The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. — Paul Krugman

[The US] budget is dominated by the retirement programs, Social Security and Medicare - loosely speaking, the post-cold-war federal government is a big pension fund that also happens to have an army. — Paul Krugman

The trouble with poverty, as an issue, is that it has basically exhausted the patience of the general public. — Paul Krugman

I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of doctrines - how support for a false dogma can become politically mandatory, and how overwhelming contrary evidence only makes such dogmas stronger and more extreme. — Paul Krugman

Under the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933. — Paul Krugman

Raising the minimum wage and lowering the barriers to union organization would carry a trade-off - higher unemployment. A better idea is to have the government subsidize low-wage employment. The earned-income tax credit for low-income workers - which has been the object of proposed cuts by both President Clinton and congressional Republicans - has been a positive step in this direction. — Paul Krugman

Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P. — Paul Krugman

Academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously. If a famous professor repeatedly says stupid things, then tries to claim he never said them, there's no rule against calling him a mendacious idiot - and no special qualifications required to make that pronouncement other than doing your own homework.Conversely, if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background. — Paul Krugman

I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction. — Paul Krugman

Anyone who thinks that the last 80 years, ever since FDR took us off gold, have been a doomed venture, that strikes me as kind of cranky. — Paul Krugman

Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies. — Paul Krugman

Economics is not a morality play. — Paul Krugman

Close the weak banks and impose serious capital requirements on the strong ones ... You see, it may sound hard-hearted, but you cannot keep unsound financial institutions operating simply because they provide jobs. — Paul Krugman

It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover story for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare. To put it in Romneyesque terms, it's all about finding an excuse to slash programs that help people who like to watch Nascar events, even while lavishing tax cuts on people who like to own Nascar teams. — Paul Krugman

If you're doing your job right, some substantial group of people [is] going to be mad at you. — Paul Krugman

I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men. — Paul Krugman

Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves. — Paul Krugman

Whenever you see some business person quoted complaining about how he or she can't find workers with the necessary skills, ask what wage they're offering.
Almost always it turns out what said business person really wants is highly (and expensively) educated workers at a manual-labor wage. No wonder they come up short. — Paul Krugman

I don't want a job in the administration; I think I'm more effective carping from the sidelines. — Paul Krugman

So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment. — Paul Krugman

[I]n America, at least, we have a pretty good record for behaving in a fiscally responsible fashion, with one exception - namely, the fiscal irresponsibility that prevails when, and only when, hard-line conservatives are in power. — Paul Krugman

It was only with the crisis that debt soared.
Yet many Europeans in key positions - especially politicians and officials in Germany, but also the leadership of the European Central Bank and opinion leaders throughout the world of finance and banking - are deeply committed to the Big Delusion, and no amount of contrary evidence will shake them. As a result, the problem of dealing with the crisis is often couched in moral terms: nations are in trouble because they have sinned, and they must redeem themselves through suffering.
And that's a very bad way to approach the actual problems Europe faces. — Paul Krugman

[T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy - policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families - is being built on that foundation. — Paul Krugman

I think if you're a liberal, you believe that we all are, at least to some extent, our brothers' keepers, you really believe that we have a sumptuary responsibility to make sure that life is decent for everybody in America, that you believe that society out to be broadly shared, and you believe that you can't have a real democracy unless you have a little bit, at least, of economic democracy. — Paul Krugman

Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action. — Paul Krugman

These days, however, the main problem comes from the right - from conservatives who, unlike most economists, really do think that the free market is always right-to such an extent that they refuse to believe even the most overwhelming scientific evidence if it seems to suggest a justification for government action. — Paul Krugman

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups — Paul Krugman

Economists don't usually make good speculators, because they think too much. — Paul Krugman

Seven habits that help produce the anything-but-efficient markets that rule the world.
1. Think short term.
2. Be greedy.
3. Believe in the greater fool
4. Run with the herd.
5. Overgeneralize
6. Be trendy
7. Play with other people's money — Paul Krugman

And when the chickens that didn't hatch come home to roost, we will rue the day when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg. — Paul Krugman

Evidence and expertise have a well-known liberal bias. — Paul Krugman

The French, unfortunately, actually believe what they say, and that has been very destructive. — Paul Krugman

This is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics. — Paul Krugman

The world economy is in a nosedive, and understanding what I call "depression economics" - the weird world you get into when even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, and a messed-up financial system is dragging down the real economy - is essential if we're going to avoid the worst. — Paul Krugman

I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies. — Paul Krugman

One is reminded of the old joke about the centipede who was asked how he managed to coordinate his 100 legs : He started thinking about it and could never walk properly again. — Paul Krugman

If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist. — Paul Krugman

Instead it seems that business - like weight loss - is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility. — Paul Krugman

In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise. — Paul Krugman

The public has no idea that the deficit has been falling like a stone. — Paul Krugman

I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried. — Paul Krugman

The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. — Paul Krugman

If Europe's example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don't drive them too much. — Paul Krugman

Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of so- called economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all; that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because we owe it to ourselves. — Henry Hazlitt

In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price-determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away. — Paul Krugman

Do we know what practices would be effective in resisting aliens? Wouldn't the public have to be convinced, in all countries, that there is such a threat? When have the major nations on this planet shown they can agree on any military course of action? Earthlings are already spending a trillion dollars a year on things military. Where would the money come from? Krugman seems to be suggesting more lies are what is needed. How about everybody cutting their military budgets in half and feeding people instead? — Stanton T. Friedman

Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don't remember it. — Paul Krugman

The planet will continue to cook. — Paul Krugman

America's political landscape is infested with many zombie ideas - beliefs about policy that have been repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die. The most prominent zombie is the insistence that low taxes on rich people are the key to prosperity. — Paul Krugman

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society. — Paul Krugman

I know that when I look at today's Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America. On the other side, however, open immigration can't coexist with a strong social safety net; if you're going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can't make that offer global. So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it's an agonizing issue. — Paul Krugman

If you had to explain America's economic success with one word, that word would be "education" ... Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual - a slow-motion erosion of America's relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis ... deals a severe blow to education across the board ... We need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation's historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process. — Paul Krugman

[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite. — Paul Krugman

There's one thing that the Fed has been really good at cracking down on, and that's inflation. — Paul Krugman

Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups. — Paul Krugman

As an economics professor I am by nature inclined to the view that the truth isn't out there, it's in here - that usually you learn a lot more by thinking really hard about the data than you do by sniffing around for supposedly inside information. — Paul Krugman

Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader. — Paul Krugman

Simple doesn't mean stupid. Thinking that it does, does. — Paul Krugman

We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis. — Paul Krugman

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we're going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOP's leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers. — Paul Krugman

We want an economic team, Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, Joseph Steiglitz's people and others, who say, you know what? We're sophisticated economists but we're concerned about poor and working people. — Cornel West

I mean, do you really think Paul Krugman is checking his Twitter account every day to read what I write? Of course not. Every other day maybe, but not every day. — Michael Showalter

To the extent that sacrifices need to be made, shouldn't the people who've made out like bandits this past generation be first in line? The problem with getting out of the slump is that we need to spend more. It's not that somebody needs to spend less. We have idle workers who have the skills and the willingness to work. We have idle factories. Dealing with this is not about saying somebody needs to suffer. It's saying that we need to be prepared to open the taps. — Paul Krugman

We've got to be prepared to stop these guys if they ever try to use their economic power once again, to hurt the economy, and to hurt so many Americans. And my plan, Paul Krugman, Barney Frank, a lot of experts who understand what the new challenges might be, have said I am exactly on point, and the Wall Street guys actually know that. — Hillary Clinton