A Quote by Steven Landsburg
Most of economics can be summarized in four words: 'People respond to incentives.' The rest is commentary.
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Tax rates aren't everything with regard to incentives to work. I would probably work at a 100% tax rate next to a nude modeling studio. I'm joking, but you know what I'm saying. There's a lot more to it than just tax rates. It's economics that I do; I don't do nude modeling studio economics. People do respond to taxes.
In the United States especially, politics and economics don’t mix well. Politicians have all sorts of reasons to pass all sorts of laws that, as well-meaning as they may be, fail to account for the way real people respond to real-world incentives.
Of the major incentives to improve safety, by far the most compelling is that of economics. The moral incentive, which is most evident following an accident, is more intense but is relatively short lived.
Most Americans and other Westerners claim to have read all or part of the Bible. However, when asked to identify even four books of the Bible or four of Jesus' disciples or four of the Ten Commandments, fewer than half even attempt to respond and fewer than one in ten respond correctly.
If you go back to Adam Smith, you find the idea that markets and market forces operate as an invisible hand. This is the traditional laissez-faire market idea. But today, when economics is increasingly defined as the science of incentive, it becomes clear that the use of incentives involves quite active intervention, either by an economist or a policy maker, in using financial inducements to motivate behavior. In fact, so much though that we now almost take for granted that incentives are central to the subject of economics.
Like everyone else, rich people respond to incentives.
I believed in realism, as summarized by John McCarthy's comment to the effect that if we worked really hard, we'd have an intelligent system in from four to four hundred years.
Experts are human, and humans respond to incentives. How any given expert treats you, therefore, will depend on how that expert's incentives are set up.
Governments that don't need to broaden their tax base have few incentives to respond to the needs of their people.
I believe in market economics. But to paraphrase Churchill - who said this about democracy and political regimes - a market economy might be the worst economic regime available, apart from the alternatives. I believe that people react to incentives, that incentives matter, and that prices reflect the way things should be allocated. But I also believe that market economies sometimes have market failures, and when these occur, there's a role for prudential - not excessive - regulation of the financial system.
Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.
People's position on immigration, once they get "sophisticated," and they rise to the higher levels of commentary or government, it's usually determined solely by economics. And not by anything else.
Thou shalt not kill: the four most important, and yet, most ignored words in all religious teachings. There is not an asterisk next to that commandment saying, “Unless you walk on all four and have fur, feathers, horns, beaks or gills.
I try to motivate people and align our individual incentives with organizational incentives. And then let people do their best.
People get excited about things like 'Swan Lake' because they generate a personal involvement. If you set up the story properly, audiences respond to the ambiguity. People ask, 'What exactly is happening in Act Four?' and I never say. I can't put it into words, but they've got a feeling about it, and that's good enough.
Today's comics use four-letter words as a shortcut to thinking. They're shooting for that big laugh and it becomes a panic thing, using four-letter words to shock people.
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