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Milton Friedman Quotes - Page 14

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China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more

China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more democratic society. So taken as a whole, the one real failure in this whole business has been Russia.

Milton Friedman
Real, Moving, Taken
Source: www.npr.org

[Trade licensing] almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to maintain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public. There is no way to avoid this result.

Milton Friedman
Hands, Special, Groups

The case against a fully independent central bank is strong indeed.

Milton Friedman
Strong, Independent, Cases
Milton Friedman, Kurt R. Leube (1987). “The essence of Friedman”, Hoover Inst Pr

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.

Milton Friedman
Country, Men, Individual
Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.1, University of Chicago Press

The big issue is whether the United States will succeed in its venture of reshaping the Middle East. It is not clear to me that using military force is the way to do it. We should not have gone into Iraq. But we have.

Milton Friedman
Military, Iraq, Issues
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

I'd like to promote lots of things. I'd like to promote elimination of drug prohibition. I'd like to promote parental choice in education through vouchers. Those are two things I think are very urgent and important. They're both more important than the harm which Social Security will do.

Milton Friedman
Thinking, Two, Choices
Source: rightwingnews.com

"Free markets" is a very general term. There are all sorts of problems that will emerge. Free markets work best when the transaction between two individuals affects only those individuals. Most often, a transaction between you and me affects a third party. That is the source of all problems for government. That is the source of all pollution problems, of the inequality problem. This reality ensures that the end of history will never come.

Milton Friedman
Party, Reality, Government
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

There is likely to be a lag between the need for action and government ["an individual's" or "a team's"] recognition of the need; a further lag between recognition of the need for action and the taking of action; and a still further lag between the action and its effects

Milton Friedman
Team, Government, Needs

John Lott documents how far 'politically correct' vested interests are willing to go to denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them. Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue.

Milton Friedman
Thoughtful, Issues, Done

The Great Depression in the United States, far from being a sign of the inherent instability of the private enterprise system, is a testament to how much harm can be done by mistakes on the part of a few men when they wield vast power over the monetary system of the country.

Milton Friedman
Country, Mistake, Men
Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.50, University of Chicago Press

The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B, without A knowing B or B knowing A.

Milton Friedman
Knowing, Missing, Cash

No major institution in the US has so poor a record of performance over so long a period as the Federal Reserve, yet so high a public reputation.

Milton Friedman
Long, Records, Reputation
1988 'The Fed Has No Clothes', in The Wall Street Journal,15 Apr.

I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression.

Milton Friedman
Thinking, Agreement, Roles
Source: www.pbs.org

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

Milton Friedman
Ideas, Floating, Times Of Crisis
Source: www.pbs.org

We had much freer trade in the 19th century. We have much less globalization now than we did then.

Milton Friedman
Globalization, Century, Trade
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

If you continue to use monetary policy to attempt to promote full employment the result would be that you would have higher inflation, and that you would not have lower unemployment.

Milton Friedman
Would Be, Unemployment, Use
Source: www.pbs.org

Italy may well be the main problem. It has benefited most from the euro by having been able to get the euro interest rate instead of what otherwise would have been its own. That would be much higher because Italy has been accumulating so much debt. In the past, Italy has inflated away its debt. The virtue of the euro is that Italy can't do it alone. A tight ECB policy wouldn't permit that to happen again.

Milton Friedman
Past, Would Be, Debt
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. 'But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?' 'Oh, no,' they'll say, 'We couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a bare subsistence level.'

Milton Friedman
Thinking, Should Have, Soul

Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold.

Milton Friedman
Effort, Salary, Tariffs
"Milton Friedman RIP" by Walter Block, mises.org. November 17, 2006.

George Stigler was a delightful correspondent. In a letter from London in 1948, after remarking on the inconvertibility of the pound and the inedible, still-rationed food, he concluded, "So here I am losing weight and gaining pounds.

Milton Friedman
Here I Am, Weight, Letters

There is no other complex field in our society in which do-it-yourself beats out factory production or market production. Nobody makes his or her own car. But it is still the case that parents can perform the job of educating their children [homeschooling], in many cases better than our present education system.

Milton Friedman
Jobs, Children, Car

It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.

Milton Friedman
Government, Oil, Gone

A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head.

Milton Friedman
Politics, Economy, Theory

I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.

Milton Friedman
Thinking, Government, Roles

The current oil crisis has not been produced by the oil companies. It is a result of governmental mismanagement exacerbated by the Mideast war.

Milton Friedman
War, Government, Oil
"There's no such thing as a free lunch".

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