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The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

Milton Friedman

There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Goodness Harm Intention Liberty
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Harm Limitation
Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Freedom Greatness Mindset Ourselves Plant
I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Equality Government Greatness Myself Privilege World
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Creation Harm Intention Liberty Power
A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Country Freedom Himself Patriot
With respect to teachers’ salaries …. Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Determination Difference Oppression Poor Respect Teaching
Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Money Save
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Direction Government Improvement Philosophy
Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Believe Government Live Way
Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Care Himself Independent Money
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
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Depression Employment Government Greatness Management
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 power to do good is also the power to do harm.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Goodness Harm Power
Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters’ own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Dream Money Politics Technique Vote

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

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The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

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