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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Richard Thaler

Think

School

Good

" Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist. "

" Doctors and hospitals should be paid for keeping their patients well. Paying them for doing more tests and surgeries creates bad incentives. "

Richard Thaler

Paid

Doing

" People are less likely to think it's immoral to walk away from their home if they know others who have done so. And if enough people do it, the stigma begins to erode. "

" People make just as many mistakes when the stakes go up, maybe more. "

Richard Thaler

Just

Mistakes

" It's not that we can predict bubbles - if we could, we would be rich. But we can certainly have a bubble warning system. "

" God did not say that you should be able to borrow one hundred percent of the price of a house. "

" It is true that I am one of the co-authors of 'Nudge,' and I am a behavioral economist, but it does not mean that everything we write about in that book is behavioral economics, nor does it mean that my co-author, the distinguished legal scholar Cass Sunstein, is a behavioral economist. "

" In a democracy, if a government creates bad policies, it can be voted out of office. Competition in the private sector, however, can easily work to encourage phishing rather than stifle it. "

" If governments want to encourage good citizenship, they should try making the desired behavior more fun. "

" Companies are accumulating vast amounts of information about your likes and dislikes. But they are doing this not only because you're interesting. The more they know, the more money they can make. "

" Many Americans say they want to be organ donors, but they just don't get around to acting on their intentions. Helping these potential good Samaritans overcome their inertia could prolong thousands of lives a year. "

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

Richard Thaler

Reason

Fail

" 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. "

" Lotteries are just one way to provide positive reinforcement. Their power comes from the fact that the chance of winning the prize is overvalued. "

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

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

" Pundits are no better at forecasting election outcomes than they would be at predicting the final path of a hurricane. Smart pundits should consider either abandoning this activity or consulting with the geeks before rendering their guesses. "

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

" 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.' "

" Shopping for an annuity with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake can be daunting, even for an economist. "

" I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible. "

" 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

" Tax cuts are one of many ways to stimulate the economy. Building infrastructure, for example, is another. "

" As both a consumer and producer of newspaper articles, I have no beef with pay walls. But before signing up, I read the fine print. "

" I think behavioral economists don't have any more of an explanation about the rise of Trump than anyone else. "

Richard Thaler

Economists

I Think

" We behavioralists differ from our more traditional brethren in the way we characterize agents in the economy. "

" Signing up to be an organ donor should be at least as easy as downloading a song to your iPhone. "

" The ability of businesses to monitor our behavior is already a fact of life, and it isn't going away. Of course we must protect our privacy rights. But if we're smart, we'll also use the data that is being collected to improve our own lives. "

" The government employs scientists of many varieties in technical capacities, from estimating the environmental toxicity of a chemical to the structural soundness of a bridge. But when it comes to forming policies, these scientists and, especially, behavioral scientists are rarely at the table with the lawyers and the economists. "