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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.

Milton Friedman

Every person shall be free to do good at his own expense.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Freedom Person Price
The growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Education Government Money Play Poor Role Waste
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Market Oneself Role
There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Existence Government Ideal Rule
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
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
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 government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Bad Government Liberty Problem
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
You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Difference Freedom Yourself
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
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 most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Freedom Important Place Profit
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
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Noble Politics Profit True

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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