I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.
MILTON FRIEDMANWe have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
More Milton Friedman Quotes
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Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
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Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters’ own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.
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When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union – like public housing in the United States – look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
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Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.
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There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
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You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.
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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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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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The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
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One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
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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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There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
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Society doesn’t have values. People have values.
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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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN