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" Academia does not provide many opportunities for immediate gratification. You work for two years on a project, it takes two more years to get it published, and then you start hoping someone might read it. "

Related Quotes:

" For many people, being asked to solve their own retirement savings problems is like being asked to build their own cars. "

Richard Thaler

Build

People

Problems

" In the 1940s, economics started getting highly mathematical. It was basically because economists weren't smart enough to write down models of real behavior that they started writing down models of highly rational behavior - and they kind of forgot about humans. "

" Even if we grade on a very generous curve, many Americans flunk when it comes to financial literacy. "

" If no estate tax is imposed, capital gains taxes can be avoided indefinitely. "

" Whenever I'm asked to autograph a copy of 'Nudge,' the book I wrote with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor, I sign it, 'Nudge for good.' Unfortunately, that is meant as a plea, not an expectation. "

" In some ways, the finding that financial education doesn't provide long-term payoffs is hardly surprising. After all, how much do you remember from your high school chemistry class? Unless you use chemistry at work, you probably don't recall much about ionic bonding. "

" There's a reason why start-ups, especially disruptive start-ups - like Google or Amazon or Uber - are full of young people. That's because young people are not as wedded to the old fashioned ways of doing things. "

" The sad truth is that many behavioral economists know very little about psychology. "

" Claiming that Social Security benefits are safe may sound naive, but my view is actually quite cynical. I believe that as long as the elderly continue to vote in large numbers, no Congress will renege on promised payouts for those already eligible to receive benefits. "

" One reason for high health care costs is that patients fail to follow their treatment regimen. "

Richard Thaler

Reason

Fail

" For amateur golfers, I think one of the biggest mistakes is to model their play on professionals. "

" Arthur Laffer's idea, that lowering taxes could increase revenues, was logically correct. If tax rates are high enough, then people will go to such lengths to avoid them that cutting taxes can increase revenues. What he was wrong about was in thinking that income tax rates were already so high in the 1970s that cutting them would raise revenues. "

Richard Thaler

Wrong

People

" When employees are first eligible for a retirement savings plan, they should be enrolled unless they choose to opt out. "

" Economists discount any factors that would not influence the thinking of a rational person. "

" Social Security may be the most beloved of all the government's programs, partly because it requires so little thinking. You pay taxes while you work, then you and your spouse collect until you die. "

" The voting public is not very good at attributing credit and blame to presidents. They get too much credit when things go well and too much blame when things go badly. The same applies to coaches, C.E.O.'s, parents, and anyone else in charge. "

Richard Thaler

Blame

Credit

" We humans actually need help controlling our impulses - nudges. "

" If you're trading individual securities, you're almost certainly making a mistake. Because most professional managers can't outperform their benchmarks, and there's little reason to think that individuals can. "

" Don't get trapped by looking at what the price was that you paid for some stock originally. "

" It's hard to have any idea of how much money is enough to finance an appropriate lifestyle in retirement. But if a lump sum is translated into a monthly income, it's much easier to determine whether you have enough put away to afford to stop working. "

" If we think that high marginal tax rates are bad because they distort incentives, the same is then true for tax subsidies. "

" I am all for trying to teach household finance in schools, starting as early as possible. And when it comes to high school, I think learning about compound interest is at least as important as trigonometry or memorizing the names of all 50 state capitals. "

" There can be legal conflicts over whether registering intent is enough to qualify you as an organ donor or whether a doctor must still ask your family's permission. "

" Traditional economics is based on imaginary creatures sometimes referred to as 'Homo economicus.' I call them Econs for short. Econs are amazingly smart and are free of emotion, distraction or self-control problems. Think Mr. Spock from 'Star Trek.' "

" High school seniors should receive help in how to think about a student loan and how to make sure that the education bought with the loan offers good prospects for repayment. "

" If you're not putting enough away for emergencies or retirement, making commitments in advance, such as signing up for payroll withholding, can help. "

Richard Thaler

Retirement

You

" One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness. "

" Behavioral economics offers a plausible explanation for overreactions by the market. For example, a long period of bad performance can lead to stereotyping. "

" The lesson of my field, behavioral economics, is that we need to understand the ways in which we differ from the rational human assumed in standard economic theory. "

" I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he's very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me. "

Richard Thaler

Writing