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Profits are the lifeblood of the economic system, the magic elixir upon which progress and all good things depend ultimately. But one man's lifeblood is another man's cancer.

Paul Samuelson

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Paul Samuelson
Age: 94 †
Born: 1915
Born: May 15
Died: 2009
Died: December 13
Economist
University Teacher
Gary
Indiana
Paul Anthony Samuelson
Paul A. Samuelson
Economic
Depend
Upon
Ultimately
Another
Profit
Good
Cancer
Things
Depends
Men
Magic
Lifeblood
Progress
Elixir
System
Profits

More quotes by Paul Samuelson

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You could be disqualified for a job [at Harvard] if you were either smart or Jewish or Keynesian. So what chance did this smart, Jewish, Keynesian have?
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Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.
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Our ideal society finds it essential to put a rent on land as a way of maximizing the total consumption available to the society. ...Pure land rent is in the nature of a 'surplus' which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency. A land value tax can be called 'the useful tax on measured land surplus'.
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You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life.
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Two-thirds of a century after [The Road to Serfdom] got written, hindsight confirms how inaccurate its innuendo about the future turned out to be.
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Perhaps there really are managers who can outperform the market consistently - logic would suggest that they exist. But they are remarkably well-hidden.
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If we made an income pyramid out of a child's blocks, with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the peak would be far higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground.
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Let those who will write the nation's laws, if I can write its textbooks.
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The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.
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We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race.
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We're a me-me-me generation. We're borrowing the savings of every nation in the world. We're ... piling up a big tab. Now, I may think we're too big to have a run on us. You may think that. But it's possible that God does not.
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The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution 'exists' the problem is how to 'find' it.
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Mea culpa, mea culpa. MIT and Wharton and University of Chicago created the financial engineering instruments, which, like Samson and Delilah, blinded every CEO. They didn't realize the kind of leverage they were doing and they didn't understand when they were really creating a real profit or a fictitious one.
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Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.
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I couldn't reconcile what I was being taught at the university of Chicago, the lectures and the books I was being assigned, with what I knew to be true out in the streets.
Paul Samuelson
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It isn't that greed's increased. What's increased is the realization that you've got a free field to reach out for what you'd like to do.
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By keeping labor supply down, immigration policy tends to keep wages high. Let us underline this basic principle: Limitation of the supply of any grade of labor relative to all other productive factors can be expected to raise its wage rate and increase in supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress wage rates.
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Investing is like waiting for paint dry and grass grow so. If you like fun, let handle 800 USD and headed to Las Vegas
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Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
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Funeral by funeral, theory advances.
Paul Samuelson