Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (ISBN 0-465-08143-6) is a 2003 nonfiction work by economist Thomas Sowell.
Sowell discuss how basic economics is generally misapplied because politicians think only in Stage One. Stage One is the immediate result of an action, without determining what happens then. He argues that many politicians cannot see beyond Stage One because they do not think beyond the next election. He gives as an example of Stage One Thinking, a State government which raises taxes on a business. The immediate result is more revenue for the State government. However, over the course of time, that business might move bits and pieces of the company to another state or new businesses may choose another state to place a new factory. Over the course of time, the State will lose revenue because businesses will go to other states.
Famous quotes containing the words applied, thinking and/or stage:
“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“I’ve been thinking about the comments that are always made about the shower rooms and the lack of privacy.... How easy it would be just to hang a shower curtain ...”
—Margarethe Cammermeyer (b. 1942)
“I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes;
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)