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When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.

Milton Friedman

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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Employment Goodness Job People
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Fundamental Principle Simplicity Understand Writing
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Exercise Freedom Liberty People Politics Power
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Difference Freedom Independence Word
The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Destruction Liberty Necessary
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government People Philosophy Problem Protection
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Government Protection See True War
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Forget Freedom Limitation Live Man Misery Politics Time
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Learning People Philosophy Rule
A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Employment Law Limitation Money Person Reality Skill
When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

People Poor Start Wind Yourself
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Civilization Government Greatness Science
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

Hurt Law People Reality Support Tragedy
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Goodness Harm Power
With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Enemy Freedom Man Rival
You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Argument Opponents Right Understand View Yourself

When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.

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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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