Incentives Quotes

I think any writer is a fool if he doesn't do it for money. There needs to be some kind of incentive in addition to the project. It all goes together. It's fun to sit there and think of characters and get them into action, then be paid for it. ~ Elmore Leonard

One conceit of economics is that markets as a whole can perform fairly rationally, even if many of the participants within them are irrational. But irrational behavior in the markets may result precisely because individuals are responding rationally according to their incentives. ~ Nate Silver

Complex regulation in place of simple-rules capitalism disrupts market processes and corrupts business incentives. ~ Robert L. Bradley, Jr.

If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles. ~ Newt Gingrich

The industrial real estate market completed one of its strongest demand cycles in history as several factors ignited the fire. For projects coming on line in 2005, record-low interest rates during the design phase 12 to 18 months prior provided additional incentive for development and absorption. ~ Brian Gordon

There are moments when the future looks so black that one is afraid to let one's thoughts dwell on it, refuses to let one's mind function and tries to convince oneself that the future will not be, and the past has not been. At such moments, when the will is not governed or modified by reflection and the only incentives that remain in life are our physical instincts, I can understand how a child, being particularly prone owing to lack of experience to fall into such a state, may without the least hesitation or fear, with a smile of curiosity deliberately set fire to his own house - and then fan the flames where is brothers, his father an his mother, all of who he loves dearly, are sleeping. ~ Leo Tolstoy

That's the big difference between [the BookWorld] and [the RealWorld]," said Plum. "When things happen after a randomly pointless event, all that follows is simply unintended consequences, not a coherent narrative thrust that propels the story forward."
I rolled the idea of unintended consequences around in my head. "Nope, I said finally, "you've got me on that one."
"It confuses me, too," admitted Plum, "but that's the RealWorld for you. A brutal and beautiful place, run for the most part on passion, fads, incentives, and mathematics. A lot of mathematics. ~ Jasper Fforde

This position will not be disputed, so long as it is admitted that the desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct, or that the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty. Even the love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds ... would on the contrary deter him from the undertaking, when he foresaw that he must quit the scene before he could accomplish the work ... ~ Alexander Hamilton

The tragedy of government welfare programs is not just wasted taxpayer money but wasted lives. The effects of welfare in encouraging the break-up of low-income families have been extensively documented. The primary way that those with low incomes can advance in the market economy is to get married, stay married, and work - but welfare programs have created incentives to do the opposite. ~ Michael Tanner

Incentives aren't the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste. ~ Paul Krugman

The trans fat label has been an enormous incentive for food companies to take trans fat out of their products. ~ Marion Nestle

I'm doing the 2015 5x50 challenge because ... t's the most awesome incentive for your daily motivation! ~ David

The new black conservatives claim that transfer payments to the black needy engender a mentality of dependence which undercuts the value of self-reliance and of the solidity of the black poor family. They fail to see that the welfare state was a historic compromise between progressive forces seeking broad subsistence rights and conservative forces arguing for unregulated markets. Therefore it should come as no surprise that the welfare state possesses many flaws. The reinforcing of 'dependent mentalities' and the unsettling of the family are two such flaws. But simply to point out these rather obvious shortcomings does not justify cutbacks in the welfare state. In the face of high black unemployment, these cutbacks will not promote self-reliance or strong black families but will only produce even more black cultural disorientation and more devastated black households. This is so because without jobs or incentives to be productive citizens the black poor become even more prone toward criminality, drugs, and alcoholism- the major immediate symptoms of the pervasive black communal and cultural chaos. ~ Cornel West

The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest. ~ Ben Bernanke

Under a socialist mode of production all personal incentives which selfishness provides under capitalism are removed, and a premium is put upon laziness and negligence. Whereas in a capitalist society selfishness incites everyone to the utmost diligence, in a socialist society it makes for inertia and laxity. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

One overly simplistic idea is that we can improve student performance by just by giving financial incentives to parents, teachers, or kids. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that such incentives are effective, but nuances matter. ~ Richard H. Thaler

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country. ~ Thomas Sowell

New technology is useful, but it's inefficient and ugly; it knows it'll be obsolete by lunchtime tomorrow, so it has no incentive to be anything else. ~ Tom Holt

economic - when economic security and basic materialistic needs are guaranteed to all - then incentive will not disappear, but be of a different sort, increasing in strength and determination, producing true greatness, not the kind of transparent, transient "greatness" which present incentives produce. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Why pay a fee for Internet content when a million free sites are just a click away? There's no incentive until people are too addicted to the Net to turn off their computers, yet are bored with what's available. ~ Nathan Myhrvold

To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but profitable, and so there is no longer any great incentive to end it. ~ James Risen

The desire of reward is one of the strongest incentives of human conduct; ... the best security for the fidelity of mankind is to make their interest coincide with their duty. ~ Alexander Hamilton

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf. ~ Michael Lewis

It is inconceivable that people are motivated solely or even mainly by external incentives. ~ Bruno Frey

I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Some are trapped in boxes of pea-sized Christianity, full of myths about missions that rob them of incentive to care about the unreached ~ David Bryant

Making wise decisions requires more than incentives. It requires wisdom. ~ James Taranto

Our government is ready to guarantee their investments for them, and then we will create tax incentives. We are interested in having all these things and with the privatization we also want to create more jobs and better conditions for the workers. ~ Ibrahim Rugova

The American economy is driven by small business. And there's nothing basically to create incentives for small businesses. We've done no tax reform. They're the highest-taxed group in the country. And corporations can go anywhere they want and do whatever they want. Small businesses have to stay ... ~ Ed Rollins

If we raise taxes on corporations, what incentive will they have to make money other than the fact that it's the sole reason they exist. ~ Stephen Colbert

Wars have economies. And I don't mean financial economies, although that's often part of it. Why do people continue fighting these wars? There are financial incentives. ~ Elliot Ackerman

Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity. ~ John Lancaster Spalding

When you're managing a large number of people, you learn that incentives matter tremendously. You really want people to be rewarded for doing the right thing for the customers and the organization. ~ Ramez Naam

We didn't wait for the renewable heat incentives to come into place; we wanted to be first to provide consumers with alternative ways to heat their homes. ~ Martin Naughton

Motivating people is more than having the right incentives, the right programs and the right benefit packages. It's about tapping into the unique passions, personalities and strengths of those entrusted to our care. ~ Steve Knox

Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs. ~ Bobby Scott

Encourage your own curiosity; pursue the problems based on that. Don't get diverted by trying to do things for your own advancement. In other words, don't be lured into responding to incentives. ~ James Mirrlees

We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone (We) have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

We are a consumer company and our success is directly linked to our users trusting us. Therefore we have the same incentive as the user: they want to see relevant advertising so their experience of Google is positive and we want to deliver it. ~ Susan Wojcicki

There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right. ~ Elinor Ostrom

Congress is headed in the wrong direction with this bill which removes any and all incentives from the food industry to improve their products for children. ~ Bob Filner

Other and more powerful forms of association have existed, but the major moral and psychological influences on the individual's life have emanated from the family and local community and the church. Within such groups have been engendered the primary types of identification: affection, friendship, prestige, recognition. And within them also have been engendered or intensified the principal incentives of work, love, prayer, and devotion to freedom and order. ~ Robert A. Nisbet

I understand how difficult it can be for an African-American in today's society. In fact, I can relate to black people very well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, and it is in my lineage to work closely with the black community. However, just because they were freed over a century ago doesn't mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to work hard, and the incentives just aren't there for them anymore. When I'm president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of pride and work ethic back into view for them. ~ Mitt Romney

Our present tax system ... exerts too heavy a drag on growth ... It reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking ... The present tax load ... distorts economic judgments and channels an undue amount of energy into efforts to avoidtaxliabilities. ~ John F. Kennedy

If you turn back time and look, 5100 years ago in the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna did the same thing. He has been the first HR manager India knows. When Arjuna was so depressed and was not ready to do his job, Lord Krishna was with him in the battlefield, and told him all sorts of things. First, He warned Arjuna that people would blame him for sure. Then He incited Arjuna's ego and tried to wake him up. And then He offered His disciple different incentives, saying, "If you win, you will have the kingdom. If you lose, you will enjoy Heaven. Come on, fight." In many ways, Lord Krishna lifted Arjuna out of that depression. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The vital consideration of incentives is almost systematically overlooked in the proposals of agitators for more and bigger government welfare schemes. We should all be concerned about the plight of the poor and unfortunate. But the hard two-part question that any plan for relieving poverty must answer is: How can we mitigate the penalties of failure and misfortune without undermining the incentives to effort and success. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within reasonable bounds it tends to reduce the incentives to work and to save both of those who receive it and of those who are forced to pay it. It may be said, in fact, that practically every measure that governments take with the ostensible object of 'helping the poor' has the long-run effect of doing the opposite. ~ Henry Hazlitt

It is human nature to be shortsighted and to lose momentum to make changes once the story is out of the headlines and there aren't financial incentives or political rewards. We owe to ourselves to learn from the past so we can try to do better. ~ Sheri Fink

Economic growth springs not chiefly from incentives - carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments for workers and entrepreneurs. The incentive theory of capitalism allows its critics to depict it as an inhumane scheme of clever manipulation of human needs and hungers scarcely superior to the more benign forms of slavery. Wealth actually springs from the expansion of information and learning, profits and creativity that enhance the human qualities of its beneficiaries as it enriches them. Workers' learning increasingly compensates for their labor, which imparts knowledge as it extracts work. Joining knowledge and power, capitalism focuses on the entropy of human minds and the benefits of freedom. Thus it is the most humane of all economic systems. ~ George Gilder

With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. ________ General commanding ~ Shelby Foote

Bitcoin actually has the balance and incentives right, and that is why it is starting to take off. ~ Julian Assange

If you want better behavior from bankers, then make their financial incentives more like those in the hedge-fund world - where managers have 'skin in the game,' and their net worth is tied to their long-term performance. ~ David Ignatius

Our study suggests that given the right culture, women are as competitively inclined as men, and even more so in many situations. Competitiveness, then, is not only set by evolutionary forces that dictate that men are naturally more so inclined than women. The average woman will compete more than the average man if the right cultural incentives are in place. ~ Uri Gneezy

I think the problem with schools is not too many incentives but too few. Because of tenure, teachers' unions, and the fact that teachers generally aren't observed in their classrooms, they can do whatever they want in class. ~ Steven Levitt

Forces of Destruction: grades in school, merit system, incentive pay, business plans, quotas. ~ W. Edwards Deming

The poor need the motivation, the incentives, the skills, the education so they can help themselves. ~ John M. Perkins

One day incentives may catch up with inflation, but it will never catch up with our aspirations. ~ Amit Kalantri

When I read a script and have my first interaction with this character, do I feel like there's something I'm gonna' learn here? If I feel like it's something I've done before, then what's the incentive for me to do it? ~ Bill Skarsgard

That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword - the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men - stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica. ~ Winston S. Churchill

Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience. Nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice. You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and to grow. Your action on behalf of others, or their action on behalf of you, is only virtuous when it is derived from voluntary, mutual consent. For virtue can only exist when there is free choice. ~ Ken Schoolland

Physicians today, as human beings, are not exempt from the perverse economic pressures created by fee-for-service regimes to see more patients for shorter appointments and order more tests and procedures. If the incentives were changed to pay to foster better health outcomes, I am convinced physician behavior would change over time. ~ Mitch Kapor

A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence
often the sole evidence offered
of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions. ~ Thomas Sowell

The survey findings reflect the growing trend toward incentive compensation programs as a way for employers to share the wealth with workers, ... Roughly 80 percent of those surveyed offer bonus programs and 401(k) or profit-sharing plans ... as they compete for the best and brightest workforce. ~ Jerry Jasinowski

Every time we pretend to know something, we are doing the same: protecting our own reputation rather than promoting the collective good. None of us want to look stupid, or at least overmatched, by admitting we don't know an answer. ~ Steven D. Levitt

The incentive to ambition is the love of power. ~ William Hazlitt

Politicians like to talk about incentives - for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local. ~ Tom Golisano

No subject was more important in the 2014 elections than healthcare, and Republicans in Congress should waste no time in taking decisive action in response to the voters'€ demands. Obamacare has escalated costs, disrupted coverage, and introduced bad incentives throughout our healthcare system. Congress must repeal Obamacare and send the president a replacement package of reforms that protects freedom and focuses on the real problem with American healthcare -€" affordability. ~ Bobby Jindal

Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up. ~ Philip Larkin

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn't depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives. ~ Timothy Ferriss

Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentives. ~ Jimmy Wales

Where was innovation to come from? We have argued that innovation comes from new people with new ideas, developing new solutions to old problems. In Rome the people doing the producing were slaves and, later, semi-servile coloni with few incentives to innovate, since it was their masters, not they, who stood to benefit from any innovation. As we will see many times in this book, economies based on the repression of labor and systems such as slavery and serfdom are notoriously noninnovative. This is true from the ancient world to the modern era. In the United States, for example, the northern states took part in the Industrial Revolution, not the South. Of course slavery and serfdom created huge wealth for those who owned the slaves and controlled the serfs, but it did not create technological innovation or prosperity for society. N ~ Daron Acemoglu

This figuring-out step is crucial, since overly optimistic economic models have often assumed that demand and incentives are enough to stimulate the production of any product. Incentives work to motivate intermediaries and traders, but makers, who are the ones that provide the substance of what is traded, need more than an incentive to make something. They need to know how to do it. ~ Cesar Hidalgo

A combination of unrealistic goals, unnecessarily pessimistic expectations, and the wrong incentives for teachers contributes to ensure that education systems in developing countries fail their two main tasks: giving everyone a sound basic set of skills, and identifying talent. ~ Abhijit V. Banerjee

I would not be opposed to devising a new system of pensions, in which one part was based on collective provision, but which also gave incentives for people to take out an additional, personal plan. ~ Jacques Delors

The Microsoft actions announced today are exactly the kinds of industry initiatives we need. Microsoft is using its resources to bring real privacy protection to Internet users by creating incentives for more websites to provide strong privacy protection. ~ William M. Daley

I have learned that human beings are all about incentives ~ Harlan Coben

If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it. ~ Paul Krugman

If it's of any comfort, B. J. Casey and her colleagues speculate that there's an evolutionary reason why Kirk rather than Spock so often emerges the victor in the quest for control over an adolescent's mind. Human beings need incentives to leave the family nest. Leaving home is dangerous; leaving home is hard. It requires courage and learning lessons of independence. It may even require a purposeful recklessness. ~ Jennifer Senior

Singapore's tragedy is not the absence of idealism, but that it systematically rewards the individualistic majority and discourages the socially-conscious minority. This is at odds with Singapore's self-image as a communitarian Asian society, an image conjured up largely to justify the protection of family values and paternalistic government. In truth, the overwhelming ethos is to mind your own business. Singapore's embrace of the market forces - based on the PAP's clear appreciation of the fact that people's desire to live in comfort is the most powerful force for civilisation's progress - has provided rich incentives for Singaporeans to work hard, and create wealth. But its exercise of illiberal controls to maintain ownership of the public sphere adds up to a heavy tax on thinking socially and acting politically. The public has been privatised. ~ Cherian George

Banks have come to realize in the recent crisis that they are paying the price for having designed compensation packages which provide incentives that are not, in the long run, in the interests of the banks themselves, and I would like to think that would change. ~ Mervyn King

Libraries can offer important alternatives to the services provided by the corporate sector, which will always have incentives to offer biased, limited, and costly access to knowledge. ~ John Palfrey

Supply-side economists argue that because lower tax rates allow everyone in the private sector to keep more of what they earn, tax relief provides citizens with strong incentives to work longer hours (thus increasing labor), to save and invest more of their income (thus increasing capital), and to devote more attention to innovation of all kinds (thus increasing efficiency, or TFP). ~ David A. Moss

As a legal and economic instrument, the zone presides over a cocktail of enticements and legal exemptions that are sometimes mixed together with domestic civil laws, sometimes manipulated by business to create international law, and sometimes adopted by the nation in its entirety. Incentives vary in every location but might include: holidays from income or sales taxes, dedicated utilities like electricity or broadband, deregulation of labor laws, prohibition of labor unions and strikes, deregulation of environmental laws, streamlined customs and access to cheap imported or domestic labor, cheap land and foreign ownership of property, exemption from import/export duties, foreign language services, or relaxed licensing requirements. ~ Keller Easterling

To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth. ~ Mary Church Terrell

America's wealth comes from the efforts of people striving for success. Take away their incentive with badmouthing success and you take away the wealth that helps us take care of the needy. ~ Thomas Peterffy

The strategy for the discoverers and entrepreneurs is to rely less on top-down planning and focus on maximum tinkering and recognizing opportunities when they present themselves. So I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill. The strategy is, then, to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Incentives are not strategy, they are tactics. Defensive measures. ~ Carlos Ghosn

The incentive for business is not, and cannot, be anything other than the root incentive for all business: they must profit. ~ Edward Norton

The fact that the United States has political, economic, and legal structures that do indeed create incentives to control hazards (in the workplace) is one the reasons the corporations have moved to Latin America and Asia. ~ Vincent A. Gallagher

The money has to be deferred with what they call "clawback," which means they can get it back if I lose it all. So that guy making ten million a year selling credit default swaps, if we're going to keep five million of it in escrow for ten years, and with the right to go back and get it, if he starts losing money, then we're going to give people the right incentives not too take so much risk. ~ Richard Thaler

The most overwhelming proof that tax incentives have a relatively minor effect on individual charity is the tremendous consistency over time of giving as a percentage of income. Although the tax code has changed frequently and dramatically over the past twenty-three years, giving as a share of personal income has hovered around 1.83 percent. This measure reached as high as 1.95 percent in 1989 and as low as 1.71 percent in 1985. The narrow range has persisted even though the top marginal tax rate has fluctuated in that period from between 28 and 70 percent. ~ John S. Barry

Whether it means prizing the value of lessons learned, building games into your creative process, or getting gifts upon certain milestones of achievement, self-derived rewards make a big difference ... You cannot ignore or completely escape the deeply ingrained short-term reward system within you. But you can become aware of what really motivates you and then tweak your incentives to sustain your long-term pursuits. ~ Scott Belsky

Simplification of the tax code would not only unlock dormant economic potential, but, in the process, it would blunt the preferred weapon of social engineers, who reward favored industries, punish success and distort economic incentives. ~ David Harsanyi

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them. ~ Maria Montessori

Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. And understanding them - or, often, deciphering them - is the key to understanding a problem, and how it might be solved. ~ Steven D. Levitt

There are many reasons for increased spending on health care, including an aging population, technological change, perverse incentives, supply-induced demand, and fear of malpractice litigation. The broader point is that the basic underlying problem does not entail misbehavior or incompetence but rather stems from the nature of the provision of labor-intensive services. ~ William J. Baumol

Even the wisdom of God hath not suggested more pressing motives, more powerful incentives to charity, than these, that we shall be judged by it at the last dreadful day. ~ Francis Atterbury

There are no benefactors in Canada because there is no incentive. ~ Lara St. John

It is not enough for us to know what is right and to believe it is good. We must be willing to stand up and be counted. We must be willing to act in accordance with what we believe under all circumstances. It is of little value for us to believe one way if we behave contrary to that belief in our private actions or in our public performance. ~ Dean L. Larsen

The only way of life satisfying the need of all times must be motivated by incentives and rewards – materially, morally and spiritually because motivation for work is produced by incentives and rewards only, an aspect built into the fundamental specification of human nature itself. Any prescription not recognising this important aspect of life is bound to fail in the life-styles of human beings. ~ Mohammed Ali Muhiyaddin