Kenneth Arrow Quotes

The market economy does not automatically guarantee growth, social justice, or even economic efficiency; achieving those ends requires that government play an important role.

The free market is the most efficient for utilizing resources and responding to needs, but there are many human needs which find no place on the market.

Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.

Capitalism has never stood back and examined itself properly. I think everybody knows that capitalism is the only thing that works, but is the current form of capitalism the best way of it working?

While admirers of capitalism, we also to a certain extent believe it has limitations that require government intervention in markets to make them work.

I think that the future belongs to democracy, but not to capitalism, because they are opposite camps.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

But our energy woes are in many ways the result of classic market failures that can only be addressed through collective action, and government is the vehicle for collective action in a democracy.

When consumers do not take full advantage of efficiency gains, it is because they are weighing other factors that influence their decision making. When the federal government arbitrarily places one of those factors over others, it makes consumers worse off.

I'm not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to resolve them through legislation of that nature.

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.

However, leaving everything to the market is not necessarily good for society.

Political freedom can be inimical to economic freedom.

The agencies of production, of manufacture, distribution, and of finance: all the parts of the capitalist system, have only one purpose and that is to work for the welfare of the people. And when any of those instruments in any way fails, it is the plain duty of a government which represents the people to remove the cause of the failure.

I’m a big fan of the free market system but the free market system works [only] when you have robust competition.

The idea of privatization is nutty .... What do you think has been the predominant system here for the past century. How do they think we got into this mess to begin with. There is nothing more inefficient and corrupt in Honduras than private enterprise.

There are needs and common goods that cannot be satisfied by the market system.

Markets don’t always self-correct fast enough. Until they do there is an immense amount of damage that has been done which is why we need government intervention.

Markets are smart and governments are dumb.

Capitalism’s intrinsic dynamism, however, produces insecurity along with benefits and so its advance has always met resistance…. It was only the creation of the modern welfare state in the middle of the 20th century that finally enabled capitalism and democracy to coexist in relative harmony.

Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn't necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.

If all political parties are committed to the role of the free market, the politicians act as, I don't know, as traffic policemen; they stand outside the ring and let the real decisions be slugged out by entrepreneurs. That doesn't seem to me a proper democracy.

Socialism most always leads to a failure of democracy because the economic system ultimately cannot provide for its people.

I think things that contribute to the destruction of our free-incentive system are wrong. A trend against that free-incentive system is wrong, and should only be temporarily engaged in, in the event that war or something of that kind requires it. Otherwise, it should be reduced.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic - yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.