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owning capital is not a productive activity.

Joan Robinson

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Joan Robinson
Age: 79 †
Born: 1903
Born: October 31
Died: 1983
Died: August 5
Economist
University Teacher
Camberley
Surrey
Joan Violet Robinson
Joan Violet Maurice
Economics
Activity
Money
Owning
Capital
Productive

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It is much easier to organize control over one industry serving many markets than over one market served by the products of several industries.
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It's a terrible thing to be a worker exploited in the capitalist system. The only worse thing is to be a worker unable to find anyone to exploit you.
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I came away from the talk with the perception that the risk of adverse side effects is so much greater than the risk of cervical cancer, I couldn’t help but question why we need the vaccine at all.
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The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
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Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.
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If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them.
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There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.
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Marxism is the opium of the Marxists.
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Income from property is not the reward of waiting, it is the reward of employing a good stockbroker.
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Unequal distribution of income is an excessively uneconomic method of getting the necessary saving done.
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Capital' is not what capital is called, it is what its name is called.
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When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.
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An economy may be in equilibrium from a short-period point of view and yet contain within itself incompatibilities that are soon going to knock it out of equilibrium.
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A depression is a situation of self-fulfilling pessimism.
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The point of studying economics is so as not to be fooled by economists.
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Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.
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I do not regard the Keynesian revolution as a great intellectual triumph. On the contrary, it was a tragedy because it came so late. Hitler had already found out how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occured.
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The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise.
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The very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism. ... It [was] developed ... in the hope of throwing light upon questions of policy. But policy means nothing unless there is an authority to carry it out, and authorities are national.
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In all the talk in the Principles (as opposed to the formal analysis) it is not the saving of rentiers but the energy of entrepreneurs which governs accumulation.
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