Bryan Caplan quotes

Bryan Caplan is an American economist, author, and professor, recognized for his work on public choice theory and libertarian thought. His research explores topics such as immigration, education, and the rationality of voters. He has influenced debates on public policy and economics through his writings and teaching. Here are 9 of his quotes:

Personally, then I have no reason to lash out at the education system. Quite the contrary. Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, convince me that our education system is big waste of time and money. Almost every politician vows to spend more on education. As an insider, I can't help gasping, "Why? You want to waste even more?"

Bryan Caplan

Wars fought exclusively on foreign soil do have marginally higher real output growth than peacetime periods, but real growth during all other wars is sharply below peacetime levels. Evidence for foreign and domestic wars is consistent with monetarist, fiscalist, and mixed theories of wartime booms.

Bryan Caplan

Through the lens of the Jock/Nerd Theory of History, the welfare state doesn't look like a serious effort to "equalize outcomes." It looks more like a serious effort to block the "revenge of the nerds"-to keep them from using their financial success to unseat the jocks on every dimension of social status.

Bryan Caplan

For socialists, of course, Mussolini's apostasy proves nothing except his supreme evil. For everyone else, though, Mussolini's origin story puts his subsequent career in a whole new light. Outsiders can easily see what insiders deny: The apostate fruit rarely falls far from the orthodox tree.

Bryan Caplan

Bioethics is to ethics as astrology is to astronomy.

Bryan Caplan

Magic isn't real. There has to be a logical reason explanation for the effect of Ivory Tower achievement on Real World success. And here it is: despite the chasm between what students learn and what workers do, academic success is a strong signal of worker productivity. The labor market doesn't pay you for the useless subjects you master; it pays for preexisting traits you reveal by mastering them.

Bryan Caplan

Statistical discrimination may be unfair and ugly, but it's hardly weird or implausible. Why is it any more weird or implausible to claim employers statistically discriminate on the basis of educational credentials?

Bryan Caplan

Mussolini wasn't just another socialist; he was the Lenin of Italy – the leader of the hard-line revolutionary faction. And Mussolini wasn't just a "newspaperman”; he was the editor of Avanti!, the official newspaper of the Socialist Party.

Bryan Caplan