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The important lesson of the deficit is - and the national debt - is we have to be careful about how we're spending money.

Joseph Stiglitz

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Joseph Stiglitz
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 9
Critic
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Professor
Science Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Gary
Indiana
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz
Money
Important
Deficit
Lesson
Debt
Spending
Careful
National
Lessons

More quotes by Joseph Stiglitz

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The war in Iraq has been very, very expensive - partly because the Administration tried to keep the apparent costs down. But the benefits have been elusive at best - partly because the ostensible reasons for going war were unconnected with reality - no weapons of mass destruction, no connections with 9/11.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The issue is: $1 trillion or $2 trillion is a lot of money. If our objective is to have stability in the Middle East, secure oil, or extend democracy, you can do a lot of democracy buying for this sum. To put it in context: The whole world spends $50 billion a year on foreign aid.
Joseph Stiglitz
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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.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Any society has to delegate the responsibility to maintain a certain kind of order. Enforcing regulations, making sure people stop at stoplights. We can’t function as a society without rules and regulations, and the enforcement mechanism of those rules and regulations.
Joseph Stiglitz
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In developing countries, lack of infrastructure is a far more serious barrier to trade than tariffs.
Joseph Stiglitz
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We could, of course, always make the payments, simply by printing more money - we simply promise to pay people by giving them dollar bills - but that could set off inflation.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Poverty is what we call the extremes at the bottom.
Joseph Stiglitz
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It is unlikely that others would even demand their money back overnight, for doing so would lead to the value of the dollar plummeting what they would get back with be worth little. But what we are already seeing is an erosion of confidence of the dollar, which is seeing the dollar fall in value.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The only people benefiting in Iraq war are George Bush's Jr. friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The attempt to minimize cost and maximize profits often interfered with our true mission in Iraq. We should have been working to get jobs for Iraqis, but the contractors found it cheaper to import Nepalese and others. This increased resentment, contributed to unemployment, and to our losing the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The roots of the crisis in East Asia were in private sector decisions. The biggest problems were the misallocation of investment, most notably to speculative real estate, and risky financing, especially borrowing short-term debt on international markets.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The military is focusing only on the short run costs. If they don't provide appropriate body armor, they save some money today, but the healthcare cost is going to be the future for some other president down the line. I view that as both fiscally and morally irresponsible.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Health care is very different from other sectors of the economy in several respects, one of which is the fact that the risk can be very high beyond people's ability. That leads to insurance.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The grand larceny that occurred in Russia, the corruption that resulted in nine or ten people getting enormous wealth through loans-for-shares, was condoned because it allowed the reelection of Boris Yeltsin.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The national debt will have increased by approximately 50% in just eight years! We will have created a new unfunded entitlement - disability and health care benefits for the huge number of disabled veterans returning from the Iraq war.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.
Joseph Stiglitz
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For 60 years, since World War II, we have been trying to create a rules-based system, a global economic system. We understand that what makes our economy function is what we call the rule of law, and what is true domestically is also true internationally. It is important to have rules by which we govern our relations with other countries.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded - 17,000 so far including roughly 20 percent with serious brain and head injuries. Even the estimate of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that taxpayers will have to spend for years to come.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The striking thing about America is - it's historically, extraordinary unusual, I don't of any other instance - is that productivity of workers and wages have not moved in tandem.
Joseph Stiglitz