If you’re ever invited to a dinner where you’ll be sitting with one or more economists, here are 10 quotes and one-liners that won’t make you very popular. They’re jokes to avoid, because they’re no good for breaking the ice. At least not when you’re surrounded by economists.
To put them in context: economics is often “sold” as if it were a science, when in reality economists tend to have a view colored by politics and their ideology. In fact, back in the day economics was called “political economy”. That’s why two economists can have different solutions to the same problem and both be wrong, even if one of them receives a Nobel Prize, or both do.
They make economic predictions that are sometimes right and sometimes wrong. That’s how it goes when you play heads or tails. There will always be an economist who gets it right, because a coin rarely lands on its edge.
Economists are known for their persistence. If they predict a crisis and it doesn’t arrive on the date they gave, they put out a new prediction, again and again, until at some point in the future the crisis comes. Entrepreneurs have a lot to learn from them here.
Some people make the mistake of comparing an economist to an astrologer. They don’t realize that an astrologer can predict the future up to 60% better than an economist.
10 famous quotes about economists and economics
1. The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look a little more respectable. — J. K. Galbraith
2. Definition of an economist: an expert who will be able to explain tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. — Laurence J. Peter
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3. Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — J. K. Galbraith
4. In the long run, we’ll all be dead. — John Maynard Keynes, criticizing the concern with the economy’s long term instead of a focus on the more immediate problems people were suffering.
5. Economists aren’t really that pessimistic. They’ve only predicted 6 of the last 3 recessions. — Anonymous
6. The economy depends on economists about as much as the weather depends on weather forecasters. — Anonymous
7. Inflation is when you pay €15 for the €10 haircut that used to cost €5 back when you still had hair. — Sam Ewing
8. Economics is the only field in which two people can win a Nobel Prize for saying exactly opposite things. — Anonymous
9. Ironically, many economics students failed their exams for getting wrong things that, over time, have turned out to be false anyway. — Anonymous
10. An economist is someone who earns money explaining to other people how they lost theirs. — Anonymous
And we’ll finish with something Oscar Wilde once said:
Advising the poor to be economical is grotesque and insulting. It’s like advising someone who is starving to death to eat less.
See also: 15 short jokes about accountants
Featured image: Hans van Dijk for Anefo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
