We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
MILTON FRIEDMANHell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
More Milton Friedman Quotes
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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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There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.
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Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
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The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.
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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
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A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
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Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
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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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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.
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Every person shall be free to do good at his own expense.
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The government doesn’t have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
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Governments never learn. Only people learn.
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Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That’s not a statement, it’s a definition.
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Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
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With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
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I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.
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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.
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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.
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Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
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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.
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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.
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Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.
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One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
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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.
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There’s no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest. Because he had real principles and he stuck by them. He made clear what he was going to do, and he did it. He didn’t back down.
MILTON FRIEDMAN