Quotes by James Surowiecki

About James Surowiecki:

James Michael Surowiecki is an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Disasters redistribute money from taxpayers to construction workers, from insurance companies to homeowners, and even from those who once lived in the destroyed city to those who replace them. It's remarkable that this redistribution can happen so sm...

James Surowiecki

Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to ma...

James Surowiecki

You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money.

James Surowiecki

The Internet has become a remarkable fount of economic and social innovation largely because it's been an archetypal level playing field, on which even sites with little or no money behind them - blogs, say, or Wikipedia - can become influential.

James Surowiecki

The world's central banks and the International Monetary Fund still have vaults full of bullion, even though currencies are no longer backed by gold. Governments hold on to it as a kind of magic symbol, a way of reassuring people that their money is ...

James Surowiecki

The ban on sports betting does exactly what Prohibition did. It makes criminals rich.

James Surowiecki

Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.

James Surowiecki

If you thought the advent of the Internet, the spread of cheap and efficient information technology, and the growing fragmentation of the consumer market were all going to help smaller companies thrive at the expense of the slow-moving giants of the ...

James Surowiecki

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, allowing us to do things more quickly and efficiently. But too often it seems to make things harder, leaving us with fifty-button remote controls, digital cameras with hundreds of mysterious features a...

James Surowiecki

As technology improves, on-screen avatars look more and more like real people. When they start looking too real, though, we pull away. These almost-humans aren't quite right; they look creepy, like zombies.

James Surowiecki

Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.

James Surowiecki

Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product.

James Surowiecki

Movies' mistrust of capitalism is almost as old as the medium itself.

James Surowiecki

Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.

James Surowiecki

Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude t...

James Surowiecki

In terms of productivity - that is, how much a worker produces in an hour - there's little difference between the U.S., France, and Germany. But since more people work in America, and since they work so many more hours, Americans create more wealth.

James Surowiecki

Author Bio

  • NameJames Surowiecki
  • DescriptionAmerican journalist
  • BornApril 30, 1967
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist