I am a libertarian with a small “l” and a Republican with a capital “R”. And I am a Republican with a capital “R” on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
MILTON FRIEDMANOnly a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
More Milton Friedman Quotes
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Governments never learn. Only people learn.
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The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.
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Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.
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Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
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A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
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What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.
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When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.
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If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
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Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That’s not a statement, it’s a definition.
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Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.
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I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.
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The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can’t do that.
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There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
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The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn’t do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn’t do a thing for them.
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The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
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In the 1960s, The National Education Association changed its character. The NEA changed into a union. And from that point on you can see deterioration in the quality of schooling in the United States.
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Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
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A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
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If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment.
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See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.
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There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.
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The word ‘free’ is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with ‘freedom.’ The word ‘fair’ is not used in either of our founding documents.
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Society doesn’t have values. People have values.
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I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.
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Every person shall be free to do good at his own expense.
MILTON FRIEDMAN