William Vickrey Quotes

"Practically, the desirable situation ought to be one in which any reasonably responsible person willing to accept available employment can find a job paying a living wage within 48 hours."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Job, Living, Wage)

"The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Government, Ability, Debt, Desire, Longevity, Retirement)

"The insane pursuit of the holy grail of a balanced budget in the end is going to drive the economy into a depression."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Depression, Economy, End, Pursuit)

"The nominal budget is a poor indicator of the impact of government outlays and revenues."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Government, Poor)

"Nearly all educational expenditure should be considered a capital outlay, whether it provides a future return in the form of enhanced taxable income or in terms of an enhanced quality of life."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Life, Quality, Future, Income)

"There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Government, Justification)

"If unemployment could be brought down to say 2 percent at the cost of an assured steady rate of inflation of 10 percent per year, or even 20 percent, this would be a good bargain."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Bargain, Inflation, Unemployment)

"This paper was one of my digressions into abstract economics."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Economics)

"The supply-side effect of a restrictive monetary policy is likely to be perverse, in that high interest rates enter into costs and thus exert inflationary pressure."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Policy, Effect, Interest, Pressure)

"Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Evil, Unemployment, Welfare)

"Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Gain, Loss, Sales)

"I define genuine full employment as a situation where there are at least as many job openings as there are persons seeking employment, probably calling for a rate of unemployment, as currently measured, of between 1 and 2 percent."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Job, Unemployment)

"Firms would be given initial entitlements to gross markup on the basis of past performance. These entitlements would be transferable and a market in them would be developed."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Performance, Past)

"Don't you think you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?"
- William Vickrey

"Deficits do not in themselves produce inflation, nor does a balanced budget assure a stable price level."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Inflation)

"Currently a level of unemployment of 7 percent or more seems to be required to keep inflation from accelerating, a level quite unacceptable as a permanent situation."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Inflation, Unemployment)

"Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Balance, Nothing, Will)

"It's insane to try to balance the budget."
- William Vickrey
(Related: Balance)