Joan Robinson

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"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"Ideology is like breath: you never smell your own."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"One of the main effects (I will not say purposes) of orthodox traditional economics was ... a plan for explaining to the privileged class that their position was morally right and was necessary for the welfare of society."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"The first essential for economists ... is to ... combat, not foster, the ideology which pretends that values which can be measured in terms of money are the only ones that ought to count."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"It's a terrible thing to be a worker exploited in the capitalist system. The only worse thing is to be a worker unable to find anyone to exploit you."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"I do not regard the Keynesian revolution as a great intellectual triumph. On the contrary, it was a tragedy because it came so late. Hitler had already found out how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occured."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"Capitalism with near-full employment was an impressive spectacle. But a growth in wealth is not at all the same thing as reducing poverty. A universal paean was raised in praise of growth. Growth was going to solve all problems. No need to bother about poverty. Growth will lift up the bottom and poverty will disappear without any need to pay attention to it. The economists, who should have known better, fell in with the same cry."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)

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"Rosa Luxemburg maintained that the capitalist system can keep up its rate of investment (and therefore its profits) only so long as it is expanding geographically."

— Joan Robinson (1903-1983)