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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.

Milton Friedman

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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Freedom Government Greatness Hate Religious
The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Destruction Liberty Necessary
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 FRIEDMAN

Drugs Illegal Kill Myself People Right Support
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Market Oneself Role
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
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Bad Government Liberty Problem
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
Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Believe Government Live Way
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Care Freedom Yourself
Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Government Rule
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Goodness Harm Power
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
Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Price
There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Existence Government Ideal Rule
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
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
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Food Freedom
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 FRIEDMAN

Freedom Government Liberty Myself Principle
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
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Noble Politics Profit True
The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Force Liberty People Rule Society
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
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Company Money Profit Responsibility
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Equality Freedom Rule Society
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Oneself Profit
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
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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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