William Vickrey Quotes

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

- William Vickrey

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

- William Vickrey

It's insane to try to balance the budget.

- William Vickrey

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

- William Vickrey

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

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

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

- William Vickrey

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.

- William Vickrey

This paper was one of my digressions into abstract economics.

- William Vickrey