William Vickrey's Quotes

The insane pursuit of the holy grail of a balanced budget in the end is going to drive the economy into a depression.

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.

Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.

Deficits do not in themselves produce inflation, nor does a balanced budget assure a stable price level.

Don't you think you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

It's insane to try to balance the budget.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

The nominal budget is a poor indicator of the impact of government outlays and revenues.

This paper was one of my digressions into abstract economics.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is no reason inherent in the real resources available to us why we cannot move rapidly within the next two or three years to a state of genuine full employment.