“What next? Economists divided on the future”
Subject line of an MSNBC teaser email whose body said “If you're confused about the outlook for the economy and stocks one year after the market hit bottom, then you've got good company — the Wall Street economists and strategists who are supposed to have this all figured out.” (The actual date, if you care, was March 7, 2010 but just as some words of wisdom are eternal, so are some fatuities.)
“The [tsetse] fly’s devastating effects are similar to those of other known sleeping-sickness carriers, such as the tsetse professor, tsetse boss, and tsetse New York Times op-ed page writer.”
P.J. O’Rourke Eat the Rich
“Robert Reich, President Clinton’s labour secretary, said that economists who question free market theories really ‘want to speak to the reality of our time.’ That’s incredible. Reality doesn’t depend on whether it’s 1907 or 2007. Reich probably thinks the reality of the laws of supply and demand depends on what year it is. I wonder whether he thinks the reality of the laws of gravity does as well.”
Walter E. Williams in Fraser Forum July-August 2007
In my latest Epoch Times column I wax nostalgic about the days when people pretended they’d read books I didn’t want to, instead of admitting they don’t read.
“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.”
Eddie Cantor, according to www.brainyquote.com/quotes/eddie_cantor_309843
“The same sense of the relentlessly interwoven texture of human fate was touched by the schoolboy who said: ‘Dad, I hate war.’ ‘Why, son?’ ‘Because war makes history, and I hate history.’”
Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media
“Popular writing in this connexion is far below the zero of knowledge or common decency. On this plane, not only is any real knowledge of the Classical writers non-existent but, further, their place has been taken by a set of mythological figures, passing by the same names, but not infrequently invested with attitudes almost the exact reverse of those which the originals adopted. These dummies are very malignant creatures indeed. They are the tools or lacqueys of capitalist exploiters – I think that has the authentic stylistic flavour. They are indefatigable opponents of social reform. They can conceive no function for the state other than that of the night watchman.... Now, doubtless, the best remedy for this state of affairs would be that people should once more turn to the original texts. I hope that this... is what will happen in those universities which are once more insisting on some minimum knowledge of the history of economic thought. But, since life is short and the literature is extensive, there is perhaps something to be said for yet another attempt to get the wide field into something like a correct focus.”
Lionel Robbins The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the apparently trivial cancellation of camping lessons in Montreal by Parks Canada is a worrying symptom of mental and moral rot.