Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedmanwas an American economist who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the second generation of Chicago price theory, a methodological movement at the University of Chicago's Department of Economics, Law School, and Graduate School of Business from the 1940s onward. Several students and young professors that were recruited...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth31 July 1912
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
If you look at the balance sheet, the US is heavily in debt. If you look at the income account - the amount of interest the US pays abroad - it is almost exactly equal to the amount of interest that it receives from abroad. American assets held abroad are earning a higher rate of return than foreign assets held here.
Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. He's always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that and the other thing.
I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.
There's no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn't exist.
Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all.
He moves fastest who moves alone.
Rich people are the experimental ground for every new development. The nature of progress is that what begins as a luxury for the rich becomes a necessity for the poor as it's developed and passed on.
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions, rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions. The people who go around talking about their 'soft heart,'-I admire them for the softness of their heart, but very often it extends to their head as well.
Now that I'm 60, every morning I look in the mirror and say, "I don't know who you are, stranger, but I'm gonna shave you anyway".
The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.
I think almost every economist would agree that government gets itself in trouble when it tries to interfere with voluntary behavior.
Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.