Paul Krugman Quotes

Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.

A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble

Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

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.

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

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

Outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing.

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

If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money.

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

The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century ... has taken place via globalization.

Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset.

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

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

Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.

As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren't looking for.

Sometimes economists in official positions give bad advice; sometimes they give very, very bad advice; and sometimes they work at the OECD.

Economics is not a morality play.

The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren't looking for.

In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.

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

What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.

Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.

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

Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine.

For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.

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.

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

If you can create even the illusion of high profitability for a few years, then when the thing collapses you can walk out of the wreckage a very rich man.

Surely I'm not the only person to ask the obvious question: How different, really, is Mr. Madoff's tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?

Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience.

However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.

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

The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.

The planet will continue to cook.

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.

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.

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.

There's nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges.

I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law.

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

When stock prices are rising, it's called ''momentum investing''; when they are falling, it's called ''panic.''

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.

The science fiction world has a lot of people doing seriously imaginative thinking.

[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.

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

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

But where will the Fed find another bubble?