Top 77 Joseph Stiglitz Quotes

If there is a silver lining in the Trump cloud, it is a new sense of solidarity over core values such as tolerance and equality, sustained by awareness of the bigotry and misogyny, whether hidden or open, that Trump and his team embody.

In an economy, when the government spends more and invests in the economy, that money circulates, and recirculates again and again. So not only does it create jobs once: the investment creates jobs multiple times.

One can only hope that America, and other countries, will not need more natural persuasion before taking to heart the lessons of Hurricane Harvey.

Donald J. Trump has the good fortune of taking office as the economy is finally recovering from the 2008 crisis.

It’s very hard to persuade a young person who has seen the Great Recession, who has seen all the problems with inequality, to tell them inequality is not important and that markets are always efficient. They’d think you’re crazy.

Europe can’t rely on a Trump-led U.S. for its defence. But, at the same time, it should recognise that the cold war is over – however unwilling to acknowledge it America’s industrial-military complex may be.

Trump can bring jobs back, but they will be minimal-wage jobs, not the high-paying jobs of the 1950s.

Trump has been criticized by mainstream Republicans for not really being one of them. But he is definitely one of them when it comes to the central palliative for any ill befalling the country: a tax cut for the rich.

I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one’s own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are.

I don’t think we can have democracies that work where most of the people are not benefiting economically, where most of the people are worried about their job security.

I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely.

With neoliberalism discredited and austerity failed, we need to rewrite the rules of the economy once again. But this time in the right way. We need rules that focus on long-term economic growth, and the only kind of sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.

When you don’t have equality of opportunity because you don’t have equal access to education, it just seems so outrageous. It weakens our economy and leads to more inequality.

Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.

What I argued in ‘The Great Divide’ is that societies can’t function without trust, both politically and economically.

There is something about the mindset of a scientist that is different – an awareness of uncertainty, modeling, proof.

Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation.

It’s very clear that TPP was promoted by corporate interests, it was driven by ideology, not by economic science. And when they started looking at the net trade benefits, they are miniscule.

If Trump wants to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, the rest of the world should impose a carbon-adjustment tax on U.S. exports that do not comply with global standards.

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged – debating – helped shape my interests in public policy.

Hedge funds are not noted for their long-term thinking – for them, a quarter is an eternity.

Under Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the U.K., there was a rewriting of the basic rules of capitalism. These two governments changed the rules governing labour bargaining, weakening trade unions, and they weakened anti-trust enforcement, allowing more monopolies to be created.

Climate change poses an existential threat to the planet that is no less dire than that posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

In addition to offering benefits to those who invest, carry out research, and create jobs, higher taxes on land and real-estate speculation would redirect capital toward productivity-enhancing spending – the key to long-term improvement in living standards.

As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability – the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.

A single currency entails a fixed interest rate, which means countries can’t manage their own currency to suit their own needs. You need a variety of institutions to help nations for which the policies aren’t well suited. Europe introduced the euro without providing those structures.

To someone like me, who has watched trade negotiations closely for more than a quarter-century, it is clear that U.S. trade negotiators got most of what they wanted. The problem was with what they wanted. Their agenda was set, behind closed doors, by corporations.

European officials thought that austerity was part of what they called their ‘convergence policies,’ of trying to bring countries together. Instead, it actually made things worse. There’s more inequality within countries and more disparity across countries.

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.

China-led globalization in some ways worries me because they are not concerned about human rights, labor rights. They probably aren’t even really concerned about competitive marketplaces. So in some ways, they’re like Mr. Trump.

What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.

Tax policy should reflect a country’s values and address its problems.

If Trump actually wants to help those who have been left behind, he must go beyond the ideological battles of the past.

Trump sees the world in terms of a zero-sum game. In reality, globalisation, if well managed, is a positive-sum force: America gains if its friends and allies – whether Australia, the E.U., or Mexico – are stronger. But Trump’s approach threatens to turn it into a negative-sum game: America will lose, too.

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.

Negative interest rates hurt banks’ balance sheets, with the ‘wealth effect’ on banks overwhelming the small increase in incentives to lend.

There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

Ensuring preschool education for all and investing more in public schools is essential if the U.S. is to avoid becoming a neo-feudal country where advantages and disadvantages are passed on from one generation to the next.

International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn’t go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief.

In the end, the politics of the euro zone weren’t strong enough to create a fully integrated fiscal union with a common banking system, etc.

Having excessive power in the hands of one country meant the fate of the world was too dependent on what happened in that one country.

An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year – an economy like America’s – is not likely to do well over the long haul.

Globally, manufacturing jobs are on the decline, simply because productivity growth has outpaced growth in demand.

Letting bygones be bygones is a basic principle in economics.

While it was an experiment to bring them together, nothing has divided Europe as much as the euro.

A politically astute president who understood deeply the economics and politics of corporate tax reform could conceivably muscle Congress toward a reform package that made sense. Trump is not that leader.

If stability and efficiency required that there existed markets that extended infinitely far into the future – and these markets clearly did not exist – what assurance do we have of the stability and efficiency of the capitalist system?

When you have a highly divided society, it’s hard to come together to make investments in the common good.

The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.

To maximise global social welfare, policymakers should strongly encourage the diffusion of knowledge from developed to developing countries.

With my kids, I’m a little sappier than my father may have been.

Growth is not an objective in itself; we should be concerned with standards of living.

Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently.

But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.