George Reisman

Economics belongs alongside mathematics, natural science, history, philosophy, and the humanities as an integral part of a liberal education.

What makes the science of economics necessary and important is the fact that while human life and well-being depend on the production of wealth, and the production of wealth depends on the division of labor, the division of labor does not exist or function automatically.

Man’s nature makes him need wealth; his simplest percep­tions make him desire it; the problem, they held, is to produce it. Economic theory, therefore, could take for granted the desire to consume, and focus on the ways and means by which production might be increased.

One of the innumerable destructive consequences of an almost 250-year-old error in economic theory made by Adam Smith.

So many CEOs know so little about economics that they don’t know that in a free market producing for the profit of their stockholders in and of itself implies producing for the benefit of everyone.

As the economic degree of capitalism rises, not only do profit margins and the rate of profit fall, but wage payments come into being and then rise both absolutely and relative to profits.

Despite the support which it historically gave to the exploitation theory, classical economics provides the basis for turning the exploitation theory upside down.