Christina Romer Quotes

Author Image

Christina Romer

Profession : Economist

Birth : December 25, 1958

You care about the deficit because it allows you to do things you need to do to help people who are suffering.

Christina Romer

If increasing income equality is the goal, it might be wiser to put money into infrastructure than to subsidize manufacturing. Construction also pays good wages, but with lower educational requirements. And America's infrastructure needs are enormous.

Christina Romer

Making labor less expensive helps firms hire people.

Christina Romer

In the four decades after World War II, manufacturing jobs paid more than other jobs for given skills. But that is much less true today. Increased international competition has forced American manufacturers to reduce costs. As a result, the pay premium for low-skilled workers in manufacturing is smaller than it once was.

Christina Romer

Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution. Even if workers are getting a competitive wage, many of us are deeply disturbed that some hard-working families still have very little.

Christina Romer

As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy needs to go beyond sentiment and history.

Christina Romer

Raising the minimum wage, as President Obama proposed in his State of the Union address, tends to be more popular with the general public than with economists.

Christina Romer

What we're going to do is redouble our efforts on financial regulatory reform, because that has in it sensible things like say on pay, so at least the shareholders are minding the store, sensible things like saying, for heaven's sakes, compensation should be focused on - on long term, so that you don't have rewards for short-term risk-taking.

Christina Romer

Thanks to former President George W. Bush - remember the compassionate conservative? - I have a good name for the fundamental principle that should guide the Democratic alternative: compassionate deficit reduction.

Christina Romer

Tax increases appear to have a very large sustained and highly significant negative impact on output.

Christina Romer

A successful argument for a government manufacturing policy has to go beyond the feeling that it's better to produce 'real things' than services. American consumers value health care and haircuts as much as washing machines and hair dryers.

Christina Romer

I think where I differ a little bit, we absolutely have to think about the deficit looking down the road. And certainly that's something the president has said that we need to, as the economy recovers, have a plan in place for getting it down.

Christina Romer

You know, I think the, the crucial thing, you know, we have put in place what is, is just simply the biggest, boldest recovery package in history, right; the stimulus package, biggest ever; the financial rescue, absolutely comprehensive; a housing plan - that is incredible medicine for the economy. And we fully expect it to work.

Christina Romer

The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment.

Christina Romer

If you look at the studies coming out of the Congressional Budget Office, the number one thing that's going to blow a hole in the deficit as we go forward 20, 30 years is government spending on healthcare.

Christina Romer

The right way to deal with a budget problem that was years in the making is by formulating a credible plan to reduce the deficit over time and as the economy is able to withstand the necessary fiscal belt-tightening. That is what President Obama is doing.

Christina Romer

There's a joke in economics about the drunk who loses his keys in the street but only looks for them under the lightposts. When asked why, he says, 'because that's where the light is.' That's the problem with the deficit.

Christina Romer