Zitat des Tages von Robert J. Shiller:
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
This is an anxiety driven world - the whole world is driven by anxiety. It is anxiety about the aftermath of the global financial crisis; it's anxiety about inequality and about computers replacing jobs.
I think we do need to try to not just rely on the central bank to, in its wisdom, adjust interest rates, but allow for people to avoid being exposed to inflation risk.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
I think that a lot of people in all walks of life have the impression, of course, that, 'I specialize in something. I can't - I don't have the time to read other things. I'll just go to pure entertainment when I'm relaxing, and then I'll come back to my pure specialty.' That produces - that attitude produces idiot savants, unfortunately.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
Hesitation is often like procrastination. One may have vague doubts and feel a need to mull things over; meanwhile, other issues intrude on thought, and no decision is taken. Ask people why they procrastinate, and you probably won't get a crisp answer.
Trump does magic. Maybe it will be black magic sometime, but he's an amazing phenomenon.
Finance is not merely about making money. It's about achieving our deep goals and protecting the fruits of our labor. It's about stewardship and, therefore, about achieving the good society.
Fifty years ago or a hundred years ago, generally, most people would buy a house the way you buy a car. When you buy a car, do you think, 'I better buy this year rather than next year because car prices might go up?'
As a child, I was fascinated by any branch of physical or biological science. Even today, I find great excitement in discovering the complexity and variability of the world we live in, getting a glimpse into the deeper reality that we mostly ignore in our everyday human activities.
In my first few years of elementary school at the Edison School in Detroit, I did poorly. I remember worrying that I might fail the second grade and be held back.
We judge economics by what it can produce. As such, economics is rather more like engineering than physics: more practical than spiritual.
This is the paradox of thrift: belt-tightening causes people to lose their jobs, because other people are not buying what they produce, so their debt burden rises rather than falls.
Oppression thrives on distance - on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
My very first publication was an estimator - this was a statistical procedure - a kind of invention. My father got a patent and started a business; it wasn't successful, but maybe I have some of him in me.
The future is always coming up with surprises for us, and the best way to insulate yourself from these surprises is to diversify.
People might just decide, 'Yeah, I'll diversify my portfolio. I'll live in a rental.' That is a very sensible thing for many people to do.
One thing I've noticed about history - you can search on newspapers going back hundreds of years, search for 'economic forecast,' you don't find it. It would be very rare to find it.
There's so much disagreement about investing, and it's because nobody really knows.
Somehow, talking to young students brings you back to reality - it should, anyway.
We don't know the probabilities of future events. Still, you have to take action, and so you do it on gut feeling. That's the world we live in.
Some of the best theorizing comes after collecting data because then you become aware of another reality.
People aren't as impressed by homes anymore after they saw how they collapsed in price with the financial crisis.
The desperately poor may accept handouts, because they feel they have to. For those who consider themselves at least middle class, however, anything that smacks of a handout is not desired. Instead, they want their economic power back.
