People From Budapest

"I do not believe that... income translates... into life satisfaction... particularly... statistical averages, because these hide what is going on in the lower tail of income distribution... [a] skewed... political force... manipulated by... Trumpism."

"My focus is on real human beings... rather than inanimate objects... as money or abstract concepts... which economists often substitute for the human dimension."

"[M]uch work remains to be done before we have even a complete of Europe and America. ...The contributions to this volume testify to the fact that much has already been accomplished. ...It is important that the research continue, inasmuch as it promises to illuminate a large number of problems."

"The growth-at-any-price perspective does not consider... distribution: economic growth will not help the destitute, the uneducated underclass, or the majority of those... unemployed."

"[T]he economy should minimize suffering, while enhancing human dignity and self-worth."

"[E]conomics ought to aspire to... a just society... in which compassion is as important as efficiency, if not more so."

"Reagan lowered the taxes on the top bracket and that made the [top] 1%... super rich."

"Today 21% of [total] annual income goes to 1% of households. ...That cannot be the basis of a good democracy."

"I am advocating... a new paradigm of humanistic Rawlsian economics which puts human beings at the center... and not income, not growth, not GNP..."

"The financial crisis of 2008 illustrated... how markets often go haywire, yet textbooks remain unchanged, failing to convey the fundamental flaws and systematic weaknesses of the free-market system."

"Blackboard economists said that globalization would be good for Americans. ...It had a few winners and... many losers. ...It ...led to an epidemic of Deaths of Despair in which so much was destroyed in America. Hyper-globalization destroyed... neighborhoods and cities and everything in the ... It was like an atomic bomb hit... Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses accelerated... the destruction of human lives."

"With [incomplete or] assymetric information [and that's practically always the case]... Stiglitz and Greenwald proved... markets are inefficient, and that should be the default model."

"[Imperfect information is ubiquitous.] People with more [or better] information can take advantage of people with less information, so exploitation becomes a real possibility."

"Anthropometric history... has the advantage of having an abundant evidential basis beginning with the seventeenth century... This approach acknowledges... the inherent multidimensionality of the concept "" and asserts that the several dimensions might not move synchronously, and therefore they ought not to be collapsed into a single indicator..."

"People are not rational. Mainstream economics is pre-Freudian... because they don't think about the subconscious mind. Daniel Kahneman... has proven that rationality is impossible for mortals, human beings [with finite minds]... We're not superhuman."

"[W]e cannot help but... to organize our thoughts without making some fundamental assumptions... a function of our... mindset, worldview... intellectual and emotional commitments... [that] influence... ideas developed in the discipline."

"Deregulation was supposed to make the economy more efficient... but instead it led to the financial crisis... and Blackboard Economists did not even see the crisis coming when it was around the corner."

"The new normal is what I call Bailout capitalism because Ben Bernanke put a lot of money [creation of $trillions by the Federal Reserve] into the financial sector."

"Although a positive correlation between height and income has been amply documented... the correspondence has been found to be less than perfect... Thus some caveats are in order, because the distribution of income has also been found to affect the mean stature... and... the mix of calorie and intake matters to the growth process."

"The divergence in the trend of biological and conventional indicators of well-being can be explained... [R]apid population growth and... urbanization... increased demand for food at a time when the agricultural labor force grew more slowly than the industrial... and the gains in labor productivity in agriculture... were lagging... Hence food prices rose relative to... other goods. ...Thus while the real wage might actually rise, it often did not rise as fast as food prices..."

"In the United States, beginning with the birth cohorts of the 1830s, adult male stature declined, by more than two centimeters. Men appear to have been quite underweight... an average... of 126 pounds... in their late teen-age years, even though... the economy was expanding rapidly... (between 1840 and 1870, per capita net national product increased by more than 40%). In the Hapsburg Monarchy, the decline in stature during the second half of the eighteenth century was between three and five centimeters. A similar pattern was found for industrializing Montreal. The birth weight of infants there fell after the 1870s, indicating that the nutritional status of mothers was declining."

"Rapid economic growth brought about stress on the human organism, even though by conventional measures the standard of living was increasing."

"[P]er-capita income can be an ambiguous measure of welfare during the early stages of economic development unless it moves in the same direction as the biological standard of living..."

"Because the price of a calorie is much greater if purchased through meat... there was a tendency to substitute away from meat consumption during the early phases of industrialization. This caused the intake of protein... to fall, making it difficult... to fight off nutrition-sensitive diseases."

"[I]n Europe the quantity of land under cultivation could be expanded only slowly; therefore, population growth ran again into Malthusian ceilings in the eighteenth century. The subsequent rise in food prices led to a decline in consumption, particularly of meat, because the for meat was much greater than that of grains."

"[A] more unequal distribution in income will have a negative effect on the mean height of a population."

"The recent election of Donald Trump was fueled by... an economic system that skews its benefits to a select few and leaves too many... scrambling to eke out a bare existence."

"People who are cheaters, swindlers who can take advantage, especially of poor people... [who] do not have the education... the information. They cannot afford to buy the information so they get the short end of the stick... [O]pportunistic behavior is a big problem in the economy, and economists are not paying... attention..."

"[F]our economists have received Nobel Prizes for Behavioral economics... [T]hat should be the default model. ...Forget about rationality. That's a silly assumption."

"[W]e should begin... economic analysis with empirical evidence instead rather than on ivory-tower theorizing."

"The US became a dual economy... which generated a lot of despair. Half the population is doing well and the other half is getting by... or getting by in very difficult circumstances... Trump would not have won otherwise in 2016. That's the basis of the Trump revolution... against... the political elite, the foreign policy elite, the intellectual elites."

"Here is the , 2008... the assets of the Federal Reserve is under $1 trillion... and within weeks you have more than a doubling of the assets of the Federal Reserve, and then comes 2 and... 3 and by that time you're at $4 1/2 trillion... and then... comes the Covid crisis and we're up to $7 trillion. Now... that kind of a Capitalism is unsustainable. ...[N]o wonder that there is asset inflation as a consequence... and the stock market went through the roof."

"So why were economists so wrong? The problem is that economics is an axiomatic theory, it's deductive, based on assumptions almost all of which are false [with] too many omitted factors, and they don't care about contradictions. They don't care about people killing themselves... That's not an economic problem."

"The economic playing field is not level."

"János Major started to take photographs in cemeteries at the beginning of the sixties most probably around 1962-63."

"After being expelled from the Academy, Major worked one year unskilled labourer in the Orion Factory."

"Vasarely Go Home!"

"If we follow Jesus' thinking, spirit and deeds in our life. We can defeat the spreading of hatred, if we stop it in ourselves and instead recall the teaching of Jesus about the love to enemies. The peace, for which we have been praying for months so eagerly, first of all has to be born in ourselves. Then it can spread in the society – maybe not today, not nowadays, but in the future. The hatred kept in human heart leads to war."

"As far as I can remember, I’ve always thought in pictures and had a vivid imagination. In my animated films the design of every frame is of great importance, as if it would be a painting. Most of the time, and particularly in a mythical, fabulous context, my human characters, even lead characters, are only a minor part of the whole image. To try to express realistic human behavior in animation has limitations. Such attempts in serious animation are often absurdly ridiculous. Why would one imitate reality? Just leave it to living actors! Earthbound reality is not for animation. Animation is a stylized, fantastic world."

"There is a close and obvious connection between the embrace of Marxist socialism and the social critical impulse. Marxism is a philosophy of intense moral indignation -- a worldview that helps to organize and systematize moral passion and which provides a seemingly scientific foundation for protesting social injustice. Marxism performs additional religious functions by pointing towards a better future which will arrive as a combined result of both the inexorable forces of history and the freely chosen effort of individuals who achieved the proper understanding of social forces. Leszek Kolakowski concluded his monumental study of Marxism as follows:"

"The influence Marxism has achieved, far from being the result or proof of its scientific character, is almost entirely due to its prophetic, fantastic and irrational elements...Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful... for it is a certainty not based on any empirical premises or supposed 'historical laws', but simply on the psychological need for certainty. In this sense Marxism performs the function of religion..."

"In the final analysis alienation is, among other things a response to the frustration created by the lack of meaning in modern society. It has been pointed out often enough that politics takes on religious overtones when religion proper withers, at any rate among intellectuals. Along these lines Doris Lessing observed: "There are certain types of people who are political out of a kind of religious reason...I think it's fairly common among socialists: They are in fact God-seekers, looking for the kingdom of God on earth...trying to abolish the present in favor of some better future -- always taking it for granted that there is a better future. If you don't believe in heaven you believe in socialism.""

"In the realm of emotion, early childhood experiences have been suspected to be at the root of psychopathology since the earliest theories of Sigmund Freud. Freud's psychoanalytic method aimed at tracing the threads of a patient's earliest childhood memories. Franz Alexander added the goal of allowing the patient to relive these memories in a less pathological environment, a process known as a corrective emotional experience. Although neuroscientists have no data demonstrating that this method operates at the level of neurons ad circuits, emerging results reveal a profound effect of early caregivers on an adult individual's emotional repertoire."

"Deep shock and sadness I heard the sad news, Zoltán Kocsis passed away. He was a musical giant, one of the rare geniuses. His impact on our whole generation is immeasurable. The Budapest Festival Orchestra on behalf and in my own name sincerely farewell track from co-founding partner, from the many common music production partner and unforgettable musician, a role model. May he rest in peace."

"During the past three decades numerous empirical studies of economic behavior have been carried out and their theoretical foundation has been clarified. There was a rapid development and articulation of data, theory, and methodology. A new discipline of behavioral economics was emerging [which] consists of the empirical investigations of the behavior of businessmen and consumers in one country in one time. Generalizations about economic behavior emerge gradually by comparing behavior observed under different circumstances."

"Unlike pure theorists, we shall not assume at the outset that rational behavior exists or that rational behavior constitutes the topic of economic analysis. We shall study economic behavior as we find it. In describing and classifying different reactions, as well as the circumstances that elicit them, we shall raise the question whether and in what sense certain reactions may be called “rational.” After having answered that question and thus defined our terms, we shall study the fundamental problem: Under what conditions do more and under what conditions do less rational forms of behavior occur?"

"Intervening variables are essential to psychological analysis because without them our description of economic behavior would remain incomplete, our understanding of behavior limited, and our predictions of future behavior incorrect."

"Motives, attitudes, and expectations of consumers and businessmen play a significant role in determining spending, saving, and investing and that modern psychology provides conceptual as well as methodological tools for the investigation of economic behavior."

"Assuming the division of behavioral economics into old and new, the paper begins to argue that old behavioral economics began with the works of two giants – George Katona and Herbert Simon during the 1950s and early 1960s. The contributors of Herbert Simon are well established, thanks to the popularity of bounded rationality and satisficing, and his being award Noble Prize in economics. However, economists are much less familiar with the contributions of George Katona that can be viewed as the father of behavioral economics... Katona was also misunderstood by various economists when he was attempting to create a psychologically based economics that rejected the mechanistic psychology of neoclassical economics and introducing the survey method to economic research that he had been using in his experimental psychology research previously. He also had influenced various economists during their debates in the 1950s without given the credit for."

"Central Europe has several recognizably common architectural features that make some towns in Galicia look remarkably like towns in Transylvania and Slovakia; shared musicians—Liszt, Chopin, Mahler, Dvořák, Smetana, Bartók, Kodály; shared writers, such as Musil, Gombrowicz, Koestler, Brod, Mickiewicz, Kafka, Roth, Zweig, Faludy; and some peculiar shared traditions, such as the tiny coffee spoon and the oversweet desserts with whipping cream."