Friedman, Milton (Milton Friedman)

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

Adam Smith's key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange can take place unless both parties do benefit.
-- Milton Friedman

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
-- Milton Friedman

"There's no such thing as a free lunch."
-- Milton Friedman

"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible."
-- Milton Friedman

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it [...] gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
-- Milton Friedman

"Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."
-- Milton Friedman

"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
-- Milton Friedman

"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork."
-- Milton Friedman

"We don't have a desperate need to grow. We have a desperate desire to grow."
-- Milton Friedman

"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes.
-- Milton Friedman

"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you
-- Milton Friedman

Governments never learn. Only people learn.
-- Milton Friedman

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman


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At Age 94, Milton Friedman passed away today

Milton Friedman, economist, dies aged 94:

Milton Friedman, who has died aged 94, was the last of the great economists to combine possession of a household name with the highest professional credentials. In this respect he was often compared to John Maynard Keynes, whose work he always respected, even though he to some extent supplanted it...

Thanks for your work and the works that will live beyond you.

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