Marginal Utility Quotes

Throwing money after security turns out to be a classic example of the law of diminishing marginal utility.

Actually, in my advanced, high-falutin' frontier economics, I often work with what I define as 'money metric utility,' and I ask people, 'Do you really want that? What are you willing to pay for that?'

Every thing receives a value from its use, and the Value is raised [or lowered], according to its Quality, Quantity and Demand.

But my shift to the serious study of economics gradually weakened my belief in Major Douglas's A+B theorem, which was replaced in my thought by the expression MV = PT.

First rule of Economics 101: our desires are insatiable. Second rule: we can stomach only three Big Macs at a time.

The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice

Economics has revealed a great truth about the natural law of human interaction: that not only is production essential to man's prosperity and survival, but so also is exchange.

Economists typically think that your happiness goes up as you get more money, but the more you have, the less each additional dollar matters. This means that you value money most in times when you have less income and more expenses.

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price.

The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity .

A consumer doesn't take anything away: he doesn't actually consume anything. Giving the same thing to a thousand consumers is not really any more expensive than giving it to just one.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labour required to produce it; its price, the quantity of labourwhich its possessor will take in exchange for it.

Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it's a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.

[on the theory of the firm] It is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility.'

If I gave you now, $10 as a gift, how happy would you be? Would you be happy, is the marginal $10, the best use of $10 you can use? Of course not. If I have you a CD, you know exactly what you are getting and you will have a value for it. So, money has lots of problems with it.

The law of diminishing returns is something I really believe in.

What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.

The dictates of economics, that "dismal science," limit the benefits of medical science

One of the big take-aways from a lot of economic theory is that people should engage in consumption smoothing.

Many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished.

Play, as a consumers' good, is subject to the law of marginal utility, as are all goods, and the time spent in play will be balanced against the utility to be derived from other obtainable goods.

I hear, 'But why do poor people make such bad decisions?' But actually, their decision-making can be far more complex than that of the better-off in many ways. They're not financially illiterate: they're constantly weighing up choices based on the reality of poverty. Somehow the international development community has resisted accepting this.

Because economics is all about optimising, doing the best you can with what you have - it's usually the first place you should look for answers if you want to maximise your happiness.

People don't trade money for things when they value their money more highly than they value the things.

We make choices every single day of our lives and those choices mean we must give up something in exchange for another. In economics it's called an 'opportunity cost.'