At the simplest level, economics can better show us the consequences of our actions. Less simple are cases in which we don't have the knowledge to predict the full consequences. Global warming and climate change are examples.
Edmund PhelpsRead
No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True prosperity requires long-term solutions rather than temporary fixes for financial issues.
In this quote, Edmund Phelps emphasizes that Greece's economic troubles cannot be solved simply through measures like debt restructuring or forgiveness. Instead, a more sustainable approach focused on long-term economic growth and structural reforms is essential for ensuring genuine prosperity and stability in the future.
Themes
DebtProsperityLong-TermCureEconomy
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about economic recovery plans, one might reference this quote to highlight the need for sustainable solutions.
More from Edmund Phelps
All quotes βIf every effect of any new products or methods were required to be known before they could be produced and marketed, they would not be true innovations - and thus not represent new knowledge of what people would like, if offered.
Edmund PhelpsRead
The good life, as it is popularly conceived, typically involves acquiring mastery in one's work, thus gaining for oneself better terms - or means to rewards, whether material, like wealth, or nonmaterial - an experience we may call 'prospering.'
Edmund PhelpsRead
The epic story of the West is the development in the 19th century of a mass prosperity the world had never seen and its near-disappearance in one nation after another in the 20th.
Edmund PhelpsRead
Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity: they don't know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be - there is the law of unanticipated consequences.
Edmund PhelpsRead
When the word 'morality' comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and financial stability are usually the issues. Is it moral for rich countries to use such a high proportion of the world's resources or for investment bankers to earn large bonuses?
Edmund PhelpsRead
Similar quotes
The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.
Ludwig Von MisesRead
In reality there is no such thing as an inflation of prices, relatively to gold. There is such a thing as a depreciated paper currency.
Lysander SpoonerRead
It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
Thomas B. MacaulayRead
Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.
Warren BuffettRead
They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
Frederic BastiatRead
I've never believed protectionism of that kind will lead us anywhere. I think you can have certain specific rules for engaging with India.. for example, not allowing mineral resources to be taken out of the country.. but there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that when you open an economy you should do it in totality. Foreign investment adds a sense of competition; we should see this as a wake-up call to modernise and upgrade. Companies that do not will undoubtedly die.
Ratan TataRead