On the lighter side…

Chaba, Chaba, Chaba…the mess is too grim to contemplate, so it’s time for some levity. Here are some economist jokes emailed in from Saipan Tribune readers over the years. If you’ve heard a good one lately, please email it in.

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Young’s Law of Bureaucracy: It is the dead wood that holds up the tree.

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A guy piloting a hot air balloon gets lost in the fog, so he descends and maneuvers to ask a pedestrian for directions.

“Excuse me,” shouts the balloonist, “can you please tell me where I am?”

“Certainly,” says the pedestrian. “You are in a balloon.”

Balloonist: “You must be an economist.”

Pedestrian: “Yes, indeed, I am. How did you know?”

Balloonist: “Because your answer is technically correct, but utterly useless.”

Pedestrian: “And you must be a businessman.”

Balloonist: “Why, yes, I am. How did you know?”

Pedestrian: “Because you have such a good view of where you are from where you are, and yet you have no idea where you are.”

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Three economists go deer hunting. They see a deer, and the first economist raises his rifle and fires. He misses by three feet to the left.

The second one raises his rifle and fires. He misses by three feet to the right.

The third raises his hands and cheers: “Yea, we got him!”

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Horngren’s Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case.

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And then we have the statistician who drowned in a river that had an average depth of only six inches.

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Marshall’s First Law: Never let the facts get in the way of a carefully thought-out bad decision.

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Bentley’s second Law of Economics: The only thing more dangerous than an economist is an amateur economist.

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This has been attributed to Ronald Reagan, but I don’t know if he really said it. “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

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And, finally, my favorite economist joke of all time…

Two policemen responded to a bank robbery, but the crook had already sped off. One policeman, who had studied economics, started writing a series of optimization equations to predict which direction the crook was most likely to have gone for his escape.
“While you’re wasting time with your formulas, the robber is getting away,” said the cop’s partner.

“Relax,” said the cop. “He’s got to figure it out, too.”

(Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com)