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Economics takes a while to learn, even if much of it is in a way quite simple. It is simple to be wrong as well as to be right, and it is none too easy to distinguish between them.

— James Mirrlees

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Finance

More quotes by James Mirrlees

The income tax is a much less effective tool for reducing inequalities than has often been thought.

I must confess that I had expected the rigorous analysis of income taxation in the utilitarian manner to provide arguments for high tax rates. It has not done so.

An approximately linear income tax schedule is desirable; and in particular negative income tax proposals are strongly supported

All James Mirrlees quotes →

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We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living.

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Economics is on the side of humanity now.

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Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.

John Stuart Mill Principles of Political Economy (1848)

Economy, in the estimation of common minds, often means the absence of all taste and comfort.

Sydney Smith Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Mirrlees (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.