Top Robert H. Frank Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Robert H. Frank Biography

Robert Harris Frank (born January 2, 1945) is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and a Professor of Economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He contributes to the "Economic View" column, which appears every fifth Sunday in The New York Times. Frank's 2011 book is on wealth inequality in the United States.

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Robert H. Frank Quotes

It is no exaggeration to say that rising inequality has driven many of the 99 percent into a financial ditch. It also helped spawn the housing bubble that gave us the financial crisis of 2008, the lingering effects of which have forced many OWS protesters to try to launch their careers in by far the most inhospitable labor market we've seen since the Great Depression. Even those recent graduates who manage to find jobs will suffer a lifelong penalty in reduced wages.

Careers, Jobs, Manage, Ows, Penalty, Suffering

The fact that many private expenditures are mutually offsetting actually happens to constitute a remarkably good bit of fiscal news. Mutually offsetting spending patterns are wasteful in the same way that military arms races are. In such situations, if each party spends less, nothing is sacrificed, yet resources are freed up that can be put to much better uses.

Constitute, Happens, Military, Party, Race, Spends

As economists have long noted, the puzzle is not that so few people vote, it's that so many do. After all, no individual's vote has ever tipped the balance in a presidential election.

Economists, Election, Long, People, Presidential, Tipped

Unless we can act collectively, there would be no way to defend ourselves, no way to define or enforce property rights. We couldn't curb congestion or pollution or build and maintain public infrastructure.

Enforce, Pollution, Rights, Way, Would Be

If top marginal income tax rates are set too high, they discourage productive economic activity. In the limit, a top marginal income tax rate of 100 percent would mean that taxpayers would gain nothing from working harder or investing more. In contrast, a higher top marginal rate on consumption would actually encourage savings and investment. A top marginal consumption tax rate of 100 percent would simply mean that if a wealthy family spent an extra dollar, it would also owe an additional dollar of tax.

Activity, Gains, Investing, Limits, Mean, Set

We could curtail private spending by several trillion dollars a year without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That would be more than enough to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and eliminate government indebtedness once and for all.

Eliminate, Government, Requiring, Sacrifice, Trillion, Years

All parents want to send their children to the best possible schools. But because a good school is a relative concept, a family cannot achieve its goal unless it outbids similar families for a house in a neighborhood served by such a school. Failure to do so often means having to send your kids to a school with metal detectors at the front entrance and students who score in the 20th percentile in reading and math. Most families will do everything possible to avoid having to send their kids to a school like that. But because of the logic of musical chairs, they're inevitably frustrated.

Children, Having, Mean, Neighborhood, Reading, Similar

The primary source of waste in government is that legislators are often under heavy pressure to vote for projects that will benefit their campaign contributors, even when those projects fail a simple cost-benefit test. But with the Supreme Court showing little interest in permitting tighter rules on campaign contributions in recent years, there is little reason to be optimistic that we'll start curbing this kind of waste any time soon.

Government, Optimistic, Pressure, Simple, Tighter, Waste

For the three decades after WWII, incomes grew at about 3 percent a year for people up and down the income ladder, but since then most income growth has occurred among the top quintile. And among that group, most of the income growth has occurred among the top 5 percent. The pattern repeats itself all the way up. Most of the growth among the top 5 percent has been among the top 1 percent, and most of the growth among that group has been among the top one-tenth of one percent.

Growth, Income, People, Way, Years

The most common mistake we make as teachers is attempting to tell our students too much.

Attempting, Common, Make, Mistake, Teacher, Too Much

The link between rational individual behavior and collectively desirable outcomes is extremely tenuous.

Behavior, Individual, Links, Outcomes, Tenuous

Many social critics wag their fingers at what they perceive to be frivolous luxury spending. But that misses the point that consumption norms are local. It's not just the rich who spend more when they get more money. Everyone else does, too. The mansions of the rich may seem over the top to people in the middle, but the same could be said of middle-class houses as seen by most of the planet's seven billion people.

Billion, Class, Luxury, People, Rich, Same

Trusting others puts us at risk. Yet failure to trust entails risk as well. The ability to navigate through this minefield successfully is one of life’s most valuable assets. DeSteno provides by far the best account of what science has learned about how we do this. The Truth About Trust is also a terrific read.

Ability, Assets, Entails, Risk, Trusting

Only the federal government has the power to spend beyond its current revenue. It shouldn't do that when the economy is at full employment. But it's an essential step for an economy mired in recession.

Current, Employment, Essential, Essentials, Federal, Government

When the rich build bigger, they shift the frame of reference that shapes the demands of the near rich, who travel in the same social circles. Perhaps it's now the custom in those circles to host your daughter's wedding reception at home rather than in a hotel or country club. So the near rich feel they too need a house with a ballroom. And when they build bigger, they shift the frame of reference for the group just below them, and so on, all the way down.

Bigger, Country, Daughter, Home, Hotel

One reason that might motivate a worker to accept a riskier job at higher pay, for example, would be that doing so would enable him to bid more effectively for a house in a better school district. But if other workers did likewise, none would achieve the goal they were striving for.

Goal, Jobs, Motivate, School, Worker, Workers

A good school is a relative concept, and the better schools are located in more expensive neighborhoods. But when everyone bids more for a house in a better school district, they succeed only in bidding up the prices of those houses. As before, 50 percent of all children will attend schools in the bottom half of the school quality distribution. As in the familiar stadium metaphor, all stand, hoping to get a better view, only to discover that no one sees better than if all had remained seated.

Children, Familiar, Hoping, Percent, School, Views

The private sector is first of all much larger than the public sector. The waste we see in that sector does not result from the fact that people spend their money carelessly. Mostly, it occurs because what one family must spend to achieve its goals often depends heavily on what other families spend.

Achieve, Doe, Family, Goal, Money, People

In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.

Depend, Depends, Feels, Needs, Short, Things

Economics, as it is often taught today, portrays us as homo economicus-someone who doesn't vote in presidential elections, doesn't return lost wallets, and doesn't leave tips when dining out of town. Julie Nelson reminds us that most people aren't really like that. She helps point the way to a richer, more descriptive way of thinking about economic life.

Leave, People, Presidential, Reminds, Taught, Thinking

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