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Governments never learn. Only people learn.

Milton Friedman

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 problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power – we must have a dispersion of power.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Avoid Power Problem Rule World
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
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 combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Destruction Hands Politics Power
The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Destruction Liberty Necessary
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
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
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
You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Difference Freedom Yourself
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Market Oneself Role
Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That’s not a statement, it’s a definition.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Employment Government Limitation Money
The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Achievement Civilization Government Greatness
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Law Liberty Politics Society
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
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
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
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
Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Government Rule
Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Devotion Energy Government Management Politics
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
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Design Game Oneself Responsibility Rule
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Bad Government Liberty Problem
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
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
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
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Argument Belief Freedom Liberty

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

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Governments never learn. Only people learn.

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