Richard Thaler Quotes
As a general rule, the United States government is run by lawyers who occasionally take advice from economists. Others interested in helping the lawyers out need not apply.
Thaler, Richard H. "Watching Behavior Before Writing the Rules." The New York Times, 7 July 2012.
While this is so in theory, both legislative and executive elected officials often abdicate their responsibility to set policy to the civil servants and Pentagon brass who write the regulations, and interpret the laws and Executive orders. In modern government, there are so many policies that need to be made that Congress and the President and Cabinet often don’t even know the issue exists much less what the national policy is. The Congress and President can choose to make specific policy on whatever they wish, but the Civil Servants as a de facto matter end up making the rest of the policy decisions. When there is Congressional gridlock, Congress can’t make very many policy decisions, so ironically, the civil servants and Pentagon brass make even more of the polices of the government.
There was much argument over the desired relative strength and power of the three branches of government. Wilson suggested equality. We argue about it to this day.
This constitution was written 7 years before the national constitutional convention. It shows that there was concern about the separation of powers in United States even before the Constitution was drafted. See {616750} for an even clearer statement of the separation of powers principle.
Hatch was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.
Responding to an editorial criticizing Malawi's government as a tyranny:
Clark was one of those who believed the Founding Fathers to have been divinely inspired.
Richard H. Thaler is an American economist and the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2015, Thaler was president of the American Economic Association.
