Economist Jokes
Culled largely from http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/our-daily-bleg-econ-jokes-needed
The First Law of Economics:
For every economist, there is an equal and opposite economist.
The corollary:
They’re both wrong.
This was originally about a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer but I will adapt it.
An economist, a sociologist and a psychologist were walking down the street and passed a butcher shop which had a sign in the window which said: Psychologists brains $25/lb, Sociologists brains $50/lb, Economists brains $100/lb.
The economist was elated and said to his friends, “See, I always told you economists’ brains were higher quality than yours.” He then insisted that they ask the butcher how he had reached the same conclusion.
The three then entered the shop. When the economist asked the butcher why the economist brains were so much more valuable than the others, the butcher replied, “Listen, do you realize how many economists you have to kill to get a pound of brains?”
Three economists decide that they want to go deer hunting. They do a whole slew of research, and finally come up with the perfect place and time to catch a deer while everybody they know is snickering at their efforts. So, on the appointed day, at the appointed time, they set out to the forest with their gear and walk to the appointed clearing, and sure enough, there’s a ten-point buck standing there.
The first economist takes aim at the buck and fires: BLAM! He misses just to the right of the buck. The buck lifts its head, but isn’t scared off by the noise.
Now, the second economist takes aim at the buck and fires: BLAM! He misses just to the left! Still, the buck seems untroubled by the noise.
The third economist takes aim at the buck, carefully lining up his sights, and fires: BLAM! His shot goes just over the top of the buck.
All of the economists look at eachother and yell out “Success!”
A lady sent her little boy off to Sunday School. She gave him two dimes–one for the offering and one for himself.
But along the way, he tripped and one of the dimes got away from him and rolled down a storm drain. He could not retrieve it.
After church, when he returned home, his mother asked him about his day.
“On the way to church, I lost God’s dime.”
“What? How did you know it was God’s dime?”
“‘Cause the other one was mine!”
How can you tell an extroverted economist from an introverted one? The extrovert looks at YOUR shoes when he’s talking to you.
What do you call a bus full of economists with one empty seat going over a cliff? A lost opportunity.
This one is a Physics joke, but is easily adaptable.
There is this farmer who is having problems with his chickens. All of the sudden, they are all getting very sick and he doesn’t know what is wrong with them. After trying all conventional means, he calls a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist to see if they can figure out what is wrong. So the biologist looks at the chickens, examines them a bit, and says he has no clue what could be wrong with them. Then the chemist takes some tests and makes some measurements, but he can’t come to any conclusions either. So the physicist tries. He stands there and looks at the chickens for a long time without touching them or anything. Then all of the sudden he starts scribbling away in a notebook. Finally, after several gruesome calculations, he exclaims, ‘I’ve got it! But it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum.’
from the preface to Paul Krugman’s book, “Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations” (1994, page xi): An Indian-born economist once explained his personal theory of reincarnation to his graduate economics class. “If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist,” he said, “you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.”
Two men are flying in a captive balloon. The wind is ugly and they come away from their course and they have no idea where they are. So they go down to 20 m above ground and ask a passing wanderer. “Could you tell us where we are?”
“You are in a balloon.”
So the one pilot to the other:
“The answer is perfectly right and absolutely useless. The man must be an economist”
“Then you must be businessmen”, answers the man.
“That’s right! How did you know?”
“You have such a good view from where you are and yet you don’t know where you are!”