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John Komlos
99 quotes
“was supposed to be good for the economy. It meant small government, low taxes, trickle down economics, , and all of these turned out to be bad... The slogan was to starve the beast... the government...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reagan lowered the taxes on the top bracket and that made the [top] 1%... super rich.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today 21% of [total] annual income goes to 1% of households. ...That cannot be the basis of a good democracy.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blackboard economists said that globalization would be good for Americans. ...It had a few winners and... many losers. ...It ...led to an epidemic of Deaths of Despair in which so much was destroyed in America. Hyper-globalization destroyed... neighborhoods and cities and everything in the ... It was like an atomic bomb hit... Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses accelerated... the destruction of human lives.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Deregulation was supposed to make the economy more efficient... but instead it led to the financial crisis... and Blackboard Economists did not even see the crisis coming when it was around the corner.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[H]ousing prices had doubled by 2005 in 10 years time, which would have made sense if incomes had also increased substantially, but they didn't.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[H]ousehold incomes... weren't going up. You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to figure out that something's not right with that.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]n 2016. ...Trump ...said ...this is a good economy ...tremendous, we've never had it so good... but... people do not kill themselves [or kill strangers] to the extent of 150,000 people per annum in a good economy. You've got to generate a lot of despair in order to do that...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They were also disregarding the real true unemployment rate... even in January of 2016, among African Americans 16%... were unemployed... so this is not full employment... and by education, among African Americans [those who did not finish high school] 32% were unemployed. Now you know why the George Floyds get into trouble with the law. They are not able to find their place in the legal labor market. ...So this is what Marty Feldstein and Donald Trump think of [as] a good economy. Not in my view!”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]ith 250 years of growth... we... have 78% of the US workers living from paycheck to paycheck. No savings. ...40% of adults do not have $400 for an emergency expense.”
John Komlos (born 1944) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017 (May 2018) p.21.
“The Gallup poll says that half of the population is doing well, 52%... thriving, but the rest are either struggling or suffering... 44% struggling means that they have a very difficult time meeting their obligations. That's not a good economy.”
John Komlos (born 1944) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, January 2008-November 2013.
“The meltdown of 2008 was a wasted crisis... because the homeowners were not bailed out. The financial sector was bailed out, the banks... the bankers... but... 8 million homeowners were thrown out of their homes.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Usually the relationship between the true unemployment rate and the official unemployment rate is 2:1.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The new normal is what I call Bailout capitalism because Ben Bernanke put a lot of money [creation of $trillions by the Federal Reserve] into the financial sector.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here is the , 2008... the assets of the Federal Reserve is under $1 trillion... and within weeks you have more than a doubling of the assets of the Federal Reserve, and then comes 2 and... 3 and by that time you're at $4 1/2 trillion... and then... comes the Covid crisis and we're up to $7 trillion. Now... that kind of a Capitalism is unsustainable. ...[N]o wonder that there is asset inflation as a consequence... and the stock market went through the roof.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The US became a dual economy... which generated a lot of despair. Half the population is doing well and the other half is getting by... or getting by in very difficult circumstances... Trump would not have won otherwise in 2016. That's the basis of the Trump revolution... against... the political elite, the foreign policy elite, the intellectual elites.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So why were economists so wrong? The problem is that economics is an axiomatic theory, it's deductive, based on assumptions almost all of which are false [with] too many omitted factors, and they don't care about contradictions. They don't care about people killing themselves... That's not an economic problem.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The economic playing field is not level.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With [incomplete or] assymetric information [and that's practically always the case]... Stiglitz and Greenwald proved... markets are inefficient, and that should be the default model.”
John Komlos (born 1944) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: Bruce C. Greenwald and Joseph Stiglitz, "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets" (1986) The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 101, Issue 2, pp. 229-264.
“[Imperfect information is ubiquitous.] People with more [or better] information can take advantage of people with less information, so exploitation becomes a real possibility.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People who are cheaters, swindlers who can take advantage, especially of poor people... [who] do not have the education... the information. They cannot afford to buy the information so they get the short end of the stick... [O]pportunistic behavior is a big problem in the economy, and economists are not paying... attention...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People are not rational. Mainstream economics is pre-Freudian... because they don't think about the subconscious mind. Daniel Kahneman... has proven that rationality is impossible for mortals, human beings [with finite minds]... We're not superhuman.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[F]our economists have received Nobel Prizes for Behavioral economics... [T]hat should be the default model. ...Forget about rationality. That's a silly assumption.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“IQ, intelligence quotient is normally distributed. ...The smart can take advantage of those with low IQ. That's not going to be the basis of a good economy and a good democracy if if people take advantage of one another. ...That's especially true of an educational system that is mediocre for a goodly portion of the population.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Economists disregard the... crucial result that people can be conditioned and... corporations can take advantage of that.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The character is formed during the first few years of life, and the corporations have an impact on the way we think... so ... is not realistic, because producers spend an incredible amount of money in order to condition children and youth to drink Coca-Cola, to depend on the iPhone, to go to hamburger joints, to McDonald's... So adult economics, forget it! You've got to start the analysis with children, and that means that tastes are endogenous [determined within the economic system! ...The assumption of exogenous tastes is toxic.]”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Status seeking is important. Relative incomes matter... Mainstream... economists said inequality was not a problem, and that's how we got an oligarchy [and populism].”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're not s. We live in a society and we're influenced by social forces, social processes, and that's not included in the DSGE models.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wealth is... political power... and that's how we got from a democracy, to an oligarchy, to a plutocracy. Economists forgot completely about the need for countervailing power... and the oligarchs have taken over...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power is the ability to control the action or thought of others. ...The oligarchs use their power also to control the thinking. They invested heavily... to control the thinking of the population.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Oligarchs] are spending a lot of money on lobbies to influence government, and... the laws are made to benefit those that already are privileged.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Future generations cannot influence our decisions today unless we approach the problem from a moral perspective.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[The need for [j]ustice [and morality] is innate in human beings, and mainstream economics neglects [ethics,] justice [and morality].”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[J]ustice is as important as efficiency.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of the models pertain to perfect competition. Forget about it! The default model should be or monopoly.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“means that many processes are non-reversible... Poor people who go to poor schools... can't get into college and their whole life course is messed up...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Taxes are not all bad. ...[T]axes are used for infrastructure investments, for schooling, for basic research, and to bail out markets when they go haywire.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]arkets were not made in heaven... and they are helping the privileged, as they are constituted today.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]ainstream economics is fundamentally flawed [and] ignores the elephant in the room, which is the real existing economy.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am advocating... a new paradigm of humanistic Rawlsian economics which puts human beings at the center... and not income, not growth, not GNP...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he current system depends too much on luck. If you choose your parents right and you live in a decent neighborhood, you can grow up and become a productive member of the society... and John Rawls argues that... [luck] cannot be the basis of a just society.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rawls says... let's design an economy... in such a way that you would be willing to enter that society at random. That's a just society... You don't know your position in it. You don't know whether you're smart or dumb. You don't know your skin color. You don't know your gender. You don't know your parents. You don't know anything about yourself. ...[In that case] we wouldn't design a society like it is today. You would make sure that there is an equitable distribution of power.... that the power is not concentrated... that there is countervailing power, that wealth is not concentrated...”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]f we're not able to shift our paradigms, if we are stuck in the Arrow–Debreu world, then we're going to become the neoserfs of the oligarchs. Just like Aldous Huxley predicted in his novel, a Brave New World”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Friedrich Hayek made a tremendous mistake in arguing that The Road to Serfdom leads through tyrannical governments... because there are multiple roads to serfdom... [A]nother... leads through the tyranny of oligarchs.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[[w:Humanistic economics|[H]umanistic economics]] advocates a creation of a capitalism with a human face. That requires a paradigm shift... away from a rat race, [away from] a social Darwinistic economy with a few winners and many losers.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism with a human face would require the elimination of poverty... the reduction of inequality... the establishment of real true... ... a less stressful life. ...Economists disregard stress.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Less anxiety, less insecurity and less crime. That's Capitalism with a human face, and you can read more about it in my textbook...”
John Komlos (born 1944) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: John Komlos, Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to Know (2019)
“In the United States, beginning with the birth cohorts of the 1830s, adult male stature declined, by more than two centimeters. Men appear to have been quite underweight... an average... of 126 pounds... in their late teen-age years, even though... the economy was expanding rapidly... (between 1840 and 1870, per capita net national product increased by more than 40%). In the Hapsburg Monarchy, the decline in stature during the second half of the eighteenth century was between three and five centimeters. A similar pattern was found for industrializing Montreal. The birth weight of infants there fell after the 1870s, indicating that the nutritional status of mothers was declining.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“George Akerlof, Kenneth Arrow, Daniel Kahneman, Paul Krugman, Thomas Schelling, Herbert Simon, Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, , and Oliver Williamson... these Nobel Prize winning economists... are usually excluded from mainstream Econ 101 textbooks or relegated to obscure footnotes. ...[I]ntroductory textbooks hype a free-market utopia ...Hence ...do not help to understand the essentials of the real existing market economies... Rather, they present a caricature at a level of abstraction that creates a fantasy world and distorts the student's vision... [A] stereotype that markets are efficient... automatically leading to a blissful life, and they continue to sing the praises... keeping any demurrals muted.”
John Komlos (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source