My very first publication was an estimator - this was a statistical procedure - a kind of invention. My father got a patent and started a business; it wasn't successful, but maybe I have some of him in me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the author's early beginnings in innovation and the influence of a parent despite initial failure.
In this quote, Robert J. Shiller discusses his early venture into the world of invention through a statistical estimator that his father patented. While the business was not successful, he acknowledges the impact of his father’s entrepreneurial spirit on his own life, suggesting that the essence of that initial attempt and the striving for innovation lives on within him, illustrating the connection between familial influence and personal ambition.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a business workshop to inspire entrepreneurs to embrace both their successes and failures.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.
Why don't you think we should dream of an African team winning the World Cup for the first time? People never allow this thought to cross their minds, and it is shameful. When you try to even say it, people look at you as if you're joking, but they forget that dreaming is the first step to success.
It's a difficult place being on top because, for me, beating the Average Joe has no significance, but for the Average Joe, beating me could be the biggest match of his life, potentially.
Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.
What could be better than walking down any street in any city and knowing you're the heavyweight champion of the world?
I don't go near the money and the money doesn't go near me.
The secret of success is that it is not the absence of failure, but the absence of envy.
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