The shortage of buyers, which the world is suffering from, is readily understood, not as due to people not wishing to obtain possession of goods, but as people being unwilling to part with something which might earn a regular income in exchange for those goods.
Interpretation
People are hesitant to trade valuable income-generating assets for goods.
This quote by Paul Dirac emphasizes the reluctance of individuals to exchange their income-generating possessions for goods, highlighting a broader economic issue where the desire for goods is impeded by the uncertainty of giving up stable income sources. It suggests that the market struggles not because of a lack of desire for goods, but rather due to a cautious attitude towards exchanging assets that can provide financial stability.
In practice
In a discussion about current economic conditions, this quote could illustrate why there is low market activity.
The research worker, in his efforts to express the fundamental laws of Nature in mathematical form, should strive mainly for mathematical beauty. He should take simplicity into consideration in a subordinate way to beauty ... It often happens that the requirements of simplicity and beauty are the same, but where they clash, the latter must take precedence.
The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers.
One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.
The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.
It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one's culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on...But mathematical beauty is of a rather different kind. I should say perhaps it is of a completely different kind and transcends these personal factors. It is the same in all countries and at all periods of time.
It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.
Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Passive commerce . . . should thus . . . [compel us] to content ourselves with the first price of our commodities, and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us, to enrich our enemies and persecutors. That unequalled spirit of enterprise . . . an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost; and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country, which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.
Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.
Budget consolidation and economic growth are two sides of the same coin.
Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism.
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