William Vickrey Quotes

There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government.

The insane pursuit of the holy grail of a balanced budget in the end is going to drive the economy into a depression.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

There is no reason inherent in the real resources available to us why we cannot move rapidly within the next two or three years to a state of genuine full employment.

Deficits do not in themselves produce inflation, nor does a balanced budget assure a stable price level.

Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.

Practically, the desirable situation ought to be one in which any reasonably responsible person willing to accept available employment can find a job paying a living wage within 48 hours.

Currently a level of unemployment of 7% or more seems to be required to keep inflation from accelerating, a level quite unacceptable as a permanent situation.

The nominal budget is a poor indicator of the impact of government outlays and revenues.

Nearly all educational expenditure should be considered a capital outlay. Education provides a future return in the form of enhanced taxable income and an enhanced quality of life.

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

It (land value taxation) guarantees that no one dispossess fellow citizens by obtaining a disproportionate share of what nature provides for humanity.

If unemployment could be brought down to say 2 percent at the cost of an assured steady rate of inflation of 10 percent per year, or even 20 percent, this would be a good bargain.

To stick to the present situation would be something like a man who was observed in Times Square looking earnestly along the pavement. He was asked what he was looking for. He said "I lost my watch."