Joseph Stiglitz People Quotations

You can increase the price from 25 to 40 dollars, and people can absorb it. If the price rises above 60 dollars, they become unhappy. They start to adjust, they move to smaller cars, drive a little bit less.

Elderly people remember when they could go to the movie for a nickel or a quarter,

Asia has become the source of finance, the source of savings. It now has the human capital to manage that well. Why doesn't it take the advantage of that opportunity to try and create financial markets that work better for the people of Asia.

There is a growing consensus that the European systems have worked better than the American: They have been able to deliver better health care to more people at lower cost.

You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

Health care is very different from other sectors of the economy in several respects, one of which is the fact that the risk can be very high beyond people's ability. That leads to insurance.

Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.

Any society has to delegate the responsibility to maintain a certain kind of order. Enforcing regulations, making sure people stop at stoplights. We can't function as a society without rules and regulations, and the enforcement mechanism of those rules and regulations.

Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research, more on research on lifestyle drugs than on life saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases that affect developing countries only. This is not surprising. Poor people cannot afford drugs, and drug companies make investments that yield the highest returns.

Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.