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Germany Cannot Get Out Of The Euro. What It Has To Do, Therefore, Is Make The Economy More Flexible - To Eliminate The Restrictions On Prices, On Wages And On Employment; In Short, The Regulations That Keep 10 Percent Of The German Workforce Unemployed.

-Milton Friedman

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Germany Cannot Get Out

Milton Friedman

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Germany Cannot Get Out Of The Euro. What It Has To Do, Therefore, Is Make The Economy More Flexible - To Eliminate The Restrictions On Prices, On Wages And On Employment; In Short, The Regulations That Keep 10 Percent Of The German Workforce Unemployed.

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Fundamentally, There Are Only Two Ways Of Coordinating The Economic Activities Of Millions. One Is Central Direction Involving The Use Of Coercion - The Technique Of The Army And Of The Modern Totalitarian State. The Other Is Voluntary Cooperation Of Individuals - The Technique Of The Marketplace.

We Have A Freer World Because Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Changes In China. Those Two Have Been The Main Contributors To Freedom In Our Time.

Because We Live In A Largely Free Society, We Tend To Forget How Limited Is The Span Of Time And The Part Of The Globe For Which There Has Ever Been Anything Like Political Freedom: The Typical State Of Mankind Is Tyranny, Servitude, And Misery.

If A Tax Cut Increases Government Revenues, You Haven't Cut Taxes Enough.

Anybody Who Was Easily Converted Was Not Worth Converting.

[u]nemployment Is ... A Side Effect Of The Cure For Inflation.

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.

What Most People Really Object To When They Object To A Free Market Is That It Is So Hard For Them To Shape It To Their Own Will. The Market Gives People What The People Want Instead Of What Other People Think They Ought To Want. At The Bottom Of Many Criticisms Of The Market Economy Is Really Lack Of Belief In Freedom Itself.

Every Person Shall Be Free To Do Good ' At His Own Expense.

Underlying Most Arguments Against The Free Market Is A Lack Of Belief In Freedom Itself.

Freedom In Economic Arrangements Is Itself A Component Of Freedom Broadly Understood, So Economic Freedom Is An End In Itself ... Economic Freedom Is Also An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

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.

Business Corporations In General Are Not Defenders Of Free Enterprise. On The Contrary, They Are One Of The Chief Sources Of Danger....every Businessman Is In Favor Of Freedom For Everybody Else, But When It Comes To Himself That's A Different Question. We Have To Have That Tariff To Protect Us Against Competition From Abroad. We Have To Have That Special Provision In The Tax Code. We Have To Have That Subsidy.

We Had Much Freer Trade In The 19th Century. We Have Much Less Globalization Now Than We Did Then.

I Think That The Internet Is Going To Be One Of The Major Forces For Reducing The Role Of Government.

Germany's Problem, In Part, Is That It Went Into The Euro At The Wrong Exchange Rate That Overvalued The Deutsche Mark.

A Society That Puts Equality Before Freedom Will Get Neither. A Society That Puts Freedom Before Equality Will Get A High Degree Of Both.

There Is Still A Tendency To Regard Any Existing Government Intervention As Desirable, To Attribute All Evils To The Market, And To Evaluate New Proposals For Government Control In Their Ideal Form, As They Might Work If Run By Able, Disinterested Men Free From The Pressure Of Special Interest Groups.

There's A Smokestack On The Back Of Every Government Program.

Government Programs

In The 1960s, The National Education Association Changed Its Character. The Nea Changed Into A Union. And From That Point On You Can See Deterioration In The Quality Of Schooling In The United States.

History Suggests That Capitalism Is A Necessary Condition For Political Freedom. Clearly It Is Not A Sufficient Condition.

And What Does Reward Virtue? You Think The Communist Commissar Rewards Virtue? You Think A Hitler Rewards Virtue? You Think, Excuse Me, If You'll Pardon Me, American Presidents Reward Virtue? Do They Choose Their Appointees On The Basis Of The Virtue Of The People Appointed Or On The Basis Of Their Political Clout?

What Does It Mean To Say That Government Might Have A Responsibility? Government Can't Have A Responsibility Any More Than The Business Can. The Only Entities Which Can Have Responsibilities Are People.

I Cannot Disagree With You That Having Something Like 500 Economists Is Extremely Unhealthy. As You Say, It Is Not Conducive To Independent, Objective Research. You And I Know There Has Been Censorship Of The Material Published. Equally Important, The Location Of The Economists In The Federal Reserve Has Had A Significant Influence On The Kind Of Research They Do, Biasing That Research Toward Noncontroversial Technical Papers On Method As Opposed To Substantive Papers On Policy And Results

I Am In Favor Of Cutting Taxes Under Any Circumstances And For Any Excuse, For Any Reason, Whenever It's Possible. ... Because I Believe The Big Problem Is Not Taxes, The Big Problem Is Spending.

If Instead Of Looking At Income, You Look At Levels Of Consumption, If Anything That's Become More Equal. The Fraction Of Families That Have A Dishwasher, That Have A Sewing Machine, That Have A Television Set. In Respect To Consumption, It's Very Hard To Avoid The View That People Have Been Getting More Equal Rather Than More Unequal.

Socialism, In The Traditional Sense, Meant Government Ownership And Operation Of The Means Of Production. Outside Of North Korea And A Couple Of Other Spots, No One In The World Today Would Define Socialism That Way. That Will Never Come Back.

Saying It Is One Thing. Doing It Is Very Different.

The Great Depression, Like Most Other Periods Of Severe Unemployment, Was Produced By Government Mismanagement Rather Than By Any Inherent Instability Of The Private Economy.

The Invisible Hand In Politics Operates In The Opposite Direction To The Invisible Hand In The Market.

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

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.

. . I Think The Adam Smith Role Was Played In This Cycle I.e. The Late Twentieth Century Collapse Of Socialism In Which The Idea Of Free-markets Succeeded First, And Then Special Events Catalyzed A Complete Change Of Socio-political Policy In Countries Around The World By Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom.

He Moves Fastest Who Moves Alone.

The Problem Of Social Organization Is How To Set Up An Arrangement Under Which Greed Will Do The Least Harm, Capitalism Is That Kind Of A System.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Ecological Crisis

The Argument For Collectivism Is Simple If False; It Is An Immediate Emotional Argument. The Argument For Individualism Is Subtle And Sophisticated; It Is An Indirect Rational Argument. And The Emotional Faculties Are More Highly Developed In Most Men Than The Rational, Paradoxically Or Especially Even In Those Who Regard Themselves As Intellectuals.

I Do Not Believe There Is A Natural Resource Economics. I Believe There Is Good Economics And Bad Economics.

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.

The Central Banks Cannot Control Interest Rates. That's A Mistake. They Can Control A Particular Rate, Such As The Federal Funds Rate, If They Want To, But They Can't Control Interest Rates.

Our Emphasis Here Is Based Not Only On The Growing Seriousness Of Drug-related Crimes, But Also On The Belief That Relieving Our Police And Our Courts From Having To Fight Losing Battles Against Drug Use Will Enable Their Energies And Facilities To Be Devoted More Fully To Combating Other Forms Of Crime.

The Great Danger To The Consumer Is The Monopoly -whether Private Or Governmental. His Most Effective Protection Is Free Competition At Home And Free Trade Throughout The World. The Consumer Is Protected From Being Exploited By One Seller By The Existence Of Another Seller From Whom He Can Buy And Who Is Eager To Sell To Him. Alternative Sources Of Supply Protect The Consumer Far More Effectively Than All The Ralph Naders Of The World.

Unfortunately, Unanimity Is Not Always Feasible.

It Is My View That What Is Important Is Cutting Government Spending, However Spending Is Financed. A So-called Deficit Is A Disguised And Hidden Form Of Taxation. The Real Burden On The Public Is What Government Spends (and Mandates Others To Spend). As I Have Said Repeatedly, I Would Rather Have Government Spend One Trillion Dollars With A Deficit Of A Half A Trillion Than Have Government Spend Two Trillion Dollars With No Deficit.

The Argument For The Free Market Is A Complicated And Sophisticated One And Depends On Demonstration Of Secondary Effects. I Have Confidence Market Efficiency Will Win Out.

Market Efficiency

It Doesn't Worry Me A Bit That China And Japan Hold So Much Us Debt. In A Way, It Seems Foolish For Them To Do It Because They Get Lower Returns Than They Might Elsewhere. But That Is Their Business.

Our Minds Tell Us, And History Confirms, That The Great Threat To Freedom Is The Concentration Of Power. Government Is Necessary To Preserve Our Freedom, It Is An Instrument Through Which We Can Exercise Our Freedom; Yet By Concentrating Power In Political Hands, It Is Also A Threat To Freedom. Even Though The Men Who Wield This Power Initially Be Of Good Will And Even Though They Be Not Corrupted By The Power They Exercise, The Power Will Both Attract And Form Men Of A Different Stamp.

The History Of Mankind Is The History Of Money Losing Value.

I Think It's A Scandal What Has Been Happening In The School System So Far As Lower Income Classes. The Dropout Rates, The Illiteracy Rate, You Know Literacy In The United States Was A Lot Higher In 1890 Than It Is Now.

How Did We Make The Transition From Using Wood To Using Coal, From Using Coal To Using Oil, From Using Oil To Using Natural Gas? How In God's Name Did We Make That Transition Without A Federal Energy Agency?

The Soviet Experience Was Much Worse Than Experts In The West Had Thought. That Discovery Had A Tremendous Impact Both On The Intellectual Community And On The Public At Large.

The Great Achievements Of Civilization Have Not Come From Government Bureaus.

The Heart Of The Liberal Philosophy Is A Belief In The Dignity Of The Individual, In His Freedom To Make The Most Of His Capacities And Opportunities According To His Own Lights.

How Can Thinking People Believe That A Government That Cannot Deliver The Mail Can Deliver Gas Better Than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, And The Rest?

Education Spending Will Be Most Effective If It Relies On Parental Choice & Private Initiative -- The Building Blocks Of Success Throughout Our Society.

If, For Example, Existing Government Intervention Is Minor, We Shall Attach A Smaller Weight To The Negative Effect Of Additional Government Intervention. This Is An Important Reason Why Many Earlier Liberals, Like Henry Simons, Writing At A Time When Government Was Small By Today's Standards, Were Willing To Have Government Undertake Activities That Today's Liberals Would Not Accept Now That Government Has Become So Overgrown.

Few Trends Could So Thoroughly Undermine The Very Foundations Of Our Free Society As The Acceptance By Corporate Officials Of A Social Responsibility Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible.

If Even A Small Fraction Of The Money We Now Spend On Trying To Enforce Drug Prohibition Were Devoted To Treatment And Drug Rehabilitation, In An Atmosphere Of Compassion Not Punishment, The Reduction In Drug Usage And In The Harm Done To Users Could Be Dramatic.

In A Bureaucratic System, Useless Work Drives Out Useful Work.

If Freedom Were Not So Economically Efficient It Certainly Wouldn't Stand A Chance.

When You Start Paying People To Be Poor, You Wind Up With An Awful Lot Of Poor People.

A Society That Puts Equality - In The Sense Of Equality Of Outcome - Ahead Of Freedom Will End Up With Neither Equality Or Freedom. The Use Of Force To Achieve Equality Will Destroy Freedom. On The Other Hand, A Society That Puts Freedom First Will, As A Happy By-product, End Up With Both Greater Freedom And Greater Equality. Freedom Means Diversity But Also Mobility. It Preserves The Opportunity For Today's Less Well Off To Become Tomorrow's Rich, And In The Process, Enables Almost Everyone, From Top To Bottom, To Enjoy A Richer And Fuller Life.

Whenever You Try To Do Good With Someone Else's Money, You Are Committed To Using Force. How Can You Do Good With Somebody Else's Money, Unless You First Take It Away From Them? The Only Way You Can Take It Away From Them Is The Threat Of Force: You Have A Policeman, Tax Collector, Who Comes And Takes It From Them.

The Founding Fathers Envisioned A Federal Government That Trusts Its People With Their Money And Freedom, Outlining This Limited, Non-intrusive Federal Government In...the Constitution, Leaving The Other Powers To People...or To The States.

Complete Free Trade Is Not Politically Feasible. Why? Because It's Only In The General Interest And In No One's Special Interest.

The Proper Role Of Government Is Exactly What John Stuart Mill Said In The Middle Of The 19th Century In "on Liberty." The Proper Role Of Government Is To Prevent Other People From Harming An Individual. Government, He Said, Never Has Any Right To Interfere With An Individual For That Individual's Own Good.

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.

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.

It Is Most Attractive About The Us To People And Countries With Wealth Is That It Can Provide Security, Insurance Really, Against Political Instability. Nobody Is Afraid That The Money They Place In The Us Is At Risk Of Expropriation Or Of In Some Other Way Being Taken Away. For This Safety, The Wealth Holders Of The World Are Willing To Accept A Lower Rate Of Return.

Whenever We Depart From Voluntary Cooperation And Try To Do Good By Using Force, The Bad Moral Value Of Force Triumphs Over Good Intentions.

In The Current World, With The Skills Needed, Dropouts [like No Secondary Education] Are Condemned To Being Members Of The Underclass. In My View, This Is A Fault Of The American School System, Which Is A Government Monopoly.

I Think In Some Ways It Would Make More Sense To Have As A Poverty Level A Relative Concept And Say, The Level Of Poverty Is That Level Of Income Or That Level Of Consumption Below Which 10 Percent Of The People Now Are.

Most Of The Energy Of Political Work Is Devoted To Correcting The Effects Of Mismanagement Of Government.

The Most Unresolved Problem Of The Day Is Precisely The Problem That Concerned The Founders Of This Nation: How To Limit The Scope And Power Of Government. Tyranny, Restrictions On Human Freedom, Come Primarily From Governmental Restrictions That We Ourselves Have Set Up.

The Unions Might Be Good For The People Who Are In The Unions But It Doesn't Do A Thing For The People Who Are Unemployed. Because The Union Keeps Down The Number Of Jobs, It Doesn't Do A Thing For Them.

Self-interest Is Not Myopic Selfishness. It Is Whatever It Is That Interests The Participants, Whatever They Value, Whatever Goals They Pursue. The Scientist Seeking To Advance The Frontiers Of His Discipline, The Missionary Seeking To Convert Infidels To The True Faith, The Philanthropist Seeking To Bring Comfort To The Needy - All Are Pursuing Their Interests, As They See Them, As They Judge Them By Their Own Values.

The Big Problem For A Democratic Government - Democrat With A Small "d" - Is How To Hold Down Government Spending.

If A Country Is An Attractive Place For Foreigners To Invest Their Funds, Then That Country Will Have A Relatively High Exchange Rate. If It's An Unattractive Place, It Will Have A Relatively Low Exchange Rate. Those Are The Fundamentals That Determine The Exchange Rate In A Floating Exchange Rate System.

I Want People To Take Thought About Their Condition And To Recognize That The Maintenance Of A Free Society Is A Very Difficult And Complicated Thing And It Requires A Self-denying Ordinance Of The Most Extreme Kind

Central Bankers Always Try To Avoid Their Last Big Mistake. So Every Time There's The Threat Of A Contraction In The Economy, They'll Over Stimulate The Economy, By Printing Too Much Money. The Result Will Be A Rising Roller Coaster Of Inflation, With Each High And Low Being Higher Than The Preceding One.

Many People Want The Government To Protect The Consumer. A Much More Urgent Problem Is To Protect The Consumer From The Government.

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.

Only A Crisis - Actual Or Perceived - Produces Real Change. When That Crisis Occurs, The Actions That Are Taken Depend On The Ideas That Are Lying Around. That, I Believe, Is Our Basic Function: To Develop Alternatives To Existing Policies, To Keep Them Alive And Available Until The Politically Impossible Becomes The Politically Inevitable.

Only A Crisis—actual Or Perceived—produces Real Change. When That Crisis Occurs, The Actions That Are Taken Depend On The Ideas That Are Lying Around.

All Of The Progress That The Us Has Made Over The Last Couple Of Centuries Has Come From Unemployment. It Has Come From Figuring Out How To Produce More Goods With Fewer Workers, Thereby Releasing Labor To Be More Productive In Other Areas. It Has Never Come About Through Permanent Unemployment, But Temporary Unemployment, In The Process Of Shifting People From One Area To Another.

A Free Society Releases The Energies And Abilities Of People To Pursue Their Own Objectives. It Prevents Some People From Arbitrarily Suppressing Others. It Does Not Prevent Some People From Achieving Positions Of Privilege, But So Long As Freedom Is Maintained, It Prevents Those Positions Of Privilege From Becoming Institutionalized; They Are Subject To Continued Attack By Other Able, Ambitious People.

Only A Crisis, Actual Or Perceived, Produces Real Change.

My Major Problem With The World Is A Problem Of Scarcity In The Midst Of Plenty ... Of People Starving While There Are Unused Resources ... People Having Skills Which Are Not Being Used.

There's No Way To Avoid A Burden On Your Freedom. The Costs Themselves Are A Burden On Your Freedom. The Restrictions That Are Necessary In Order To Get Rid Of The Terrorists Are A Burden To Your Freedom. So There's No Way In The Short Run To Avoid A Restriction On Your Freedom.

I Think Almost Every Economist Would Agree That Government Gets Itself In Trouble When It Tries To Interfere With Voluntary Behavior.

As A Nation, We Have Been Responsible For The Murder Of Literally Hundreds Of Thousands Of People At Home And Abroad By Fighting A War That Should Never Have Been Started And Can Be Won, If At All, Only By Converting The United States Into A Police State.

They Think That The Cure To Big Government Is To Have Bigger Government... The Only Effective Cure Is To Reduce The Scope Of Government - Get Government Out Of The Business.

Never Try To Walk Across A River Just Because It Has An Average Depth Of Four Feet.

Reality Ensures That The End Of History Will Never Come.

The Rule Of Law Does Not Guarantee Freedom, Since General Law As Well As Personal Edicts Can Be Tyrannical. But Increasing Reliance On The Rule Of Law Clearly Played A Major Role In Transforming Western Society From A World In Which The Ordinary Citizen Was Literally Subject To The Arbitrary Will Of His Master To A World In Which The Ordinary Citizen Could Regard Himself As His Own Master

When A Man Spends His Own Money To Buy Something For Himself, He Is Very Careful About How Much He Spends And How He Spends It. When A Man Spends His Own Money To Buy Something For Someone Else, He Is Still Very Careful About How Much He Spends, But Somewhat Less What He Spends It On. When A Man Spends Someone Else's Money To Buy Something For Himself, He Is Very Careful About What He Buys, But Doesn't Care At All How Much He Spends. And When A Man Spends Someone Else's Money On Someone Else, He Does't Care How Much He Spends Or What He Spends It On. And That's Government For You.

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.

The Government Solution To A Problem Is Usually As Bad As The Problem.

If You Do Not Force Political Freedom, Economic Freedom Will Be Stymied Sooner Or Later.

The Key Insight Of Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations Is Misleadingly Simple: If An Exchange Between Two Parties Is Voluntary, It Will Not Take Place Unless Both Believe They Will Benefit From It. Most Economic Fallacies Derive From The Neglect Of This Simple Insight, From The Tendency To Assume That There Is A Fixed Pie, That One Party Can Gain Only At The Expense Of Another.

The Internet Moves Us Closer To "perfect Information" On Markets. Individuals And Companies Alike Can Buy And Sell Across Borders And Jurisdictions Wherever They Find The Best Match Of Supply And Demand.

The Use Of Quantity Of Money As A Target Has Not Been A Success. I'm Not Sure That I Would As Of Today Push It As Hard As I Once Did.

The Existence Of A Free Market Does Not Of Course Eliminate The Need For Government. On The Contrary, Government Is Essential Both As A Forum For Determining The "rule Of The Game" And As An Umpire To Interpret And Enforce The Rules Decided On.

The State Of Our Educational System Is A Disgrace To Our Country. We Have An Elementary And Secondary School System In Which Close To Half Of The Youngsters Never Graduate Properly. It's A Disgrace That There Is More Illiteracy Today Than There Was 100 Years Ago.

A Free Man Will Ask Neither What His Country Can Do For Him Nor What He Can Do For His Country.

Prohibition Is An Attempted Cure That Makes Matters Worse - For Both The Addict And The Rest Of Us.

Because It Is One Thing To Have Free Immigration To Jobs. It Is Another Thing To Have Free Immigration To Welfare. And You Cannot Have Both. If You Have A Welfare State, If You Have A State In Which Every Resident Is Promises A Certain Minimal Level Of Income, Or A Minimum Level Of Subsistence, Regardless Of Whether He Works Or Not, Produces It Or Not. Then It Really Is An Impossible Thing.

Impossible Things

You Can Only Make Money If You Buy A Product, Whatever It Is - Maybe A Currency, Maybe Wheat And Maybe Something Else - At A Relatively Low Price And Sell It At A Higher Price Than You Buy It At. There's No Other Way To Make Money.

There Is No Good Way Of Measuring Poverty.

What Is Not Forbidden In Sweden, Is Obligatory.

Economic Freedom Is ... An Indispensable Means Toward The Achievement Of Political Freedom.

If You Really Want To Engage In Policy Activity, Don't Make That Your Vocation. Make It Your Avocation. Get A Job. Get A Secure Base Of Income. Otherwise, You're Going To Get Corrupted And Destroyed.

I Believe That The Monetary Stability Is An Absolutely Critical Element In The Satisfactory Operation Of A System.

Freedom Means Diversity But Also Mobility. It Preserves The Opportunity For Today's Disadvantaged To Become Tomorrow's Privileged And, In The Process, Enables Almost Everyone, From Top To Bottom, To Enjoy A Fuller And Richer Life.

One Man's Opportunism Is Another Man's Statesmanship.

There's Only One Thing That All Of The Central Banks Control And That Is The Base, Their Own Liability, And They Can Control That In Various Ways. They Can Control It Directly By Open Market Operations, Buying And Selling Government Securities Or Other Assets, For Example, Buying And Selling Gold, Or They Can Control It Indirectly By Altering The Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another.

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.

The Future Of Private Enterprise Capitalism Is Also The Future Of A Free Society. There Is No Possibility Of Having A Politically Free Society Unless The Major Part Of Its Economic Resources Are Operated Under A Capitalistic Private Enterprise System.

What Kind Of Society Isn't Structured On Greed?

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.

On Aging Societies, There Is No Reason Why A Country That Has A Lot Of Old People Can't Be Prosperous If, During Their Working Lives, Individuals Provide For Their Retirement.

What Works For Sweden Wouldn't Work For France Or Germany Or Italy. In A Small State, You Can Reach Outside For Many Of Your Activities. In A Homogeneous Culture, They Are Willing To Pay Higher Taxes In Order To Achieve Commonly Held Goals. But "common Goals" Are Much Harder To Come By In Larger, More Heterogeneous Populations.

We Do Not Influence The Course Of Events By Persuading People That We Are Right When We Make What They Regard As Radical Proposals. Rather, We Exert Influence By Keeping Options Available When Something Has To Be Done At A Time Of Crisis.

Times Of Crisis

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon In The Sense That It Is And Can Be Produced Only By A More Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money Than In Output... A Steady Rate Of Monetary Growth At A Moderate Level Can Provide A Framework Under Which A Country Can Have Little Inflation And Much Growth. It Will Not Produce Perfect Stability; It Will Not Produce Heaven On Earth; But It Can Make An Important Contribution To A Stable Economic Society.

We Don't Have A Desperate Need To Grow. We Have A Desperate Desire To Grow.

The Economic Miracle That Has Been The United States Was Not Produced By Socialized Enterprises, By Government-unon-industry Cartels Or By Centralized Economic Planning. It Was Produced By Private Enterprises In A Profit-and-loss System. And Losses Were At Least As Important In Weeding Out Failures, As Profits In Fostering Successes. Let Government Succor Failures, And We Shall Be Headed For Stagnation And Decline.

You Never Can Cure Poverty. Poverty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder.

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.

In This Day And Age, We Need To Revise The Old Saying To Read, "hell Hath No Fury Like A Bureaucrat Scorned.

Hell Hath No Fury

There Is Not A Line In 'the Wealth Of Nations' That Is Not Still Applicable To This Day.

Inflation Is A Monetary Phenomenon. It Is Made By Or Stopped By The Central Bank.

The Problem Is That, In A World Of Floating Exchange Rates, As Italy Was Before The Euro, If One Country Is Subjected To A Shock Which Requires It To Cut Wages, It Cannot Do So With A Modern Kind Of Control And Regulation System. It Is Much Easier To Do It By Letting The Exchange Rate Change. Only One Price Has To Change, Instead Of Many.

The Essential Notion Of A Capitalist Society ... Is Voluntary Cooperation, Voluntary Exchange. The Essential Notion Of A Socialist Society Is Force.

Individual Price And Wage Changes Will Not Be Prevented. In The Main, Price Changes Will Simply Be Concealed By Taking The Form Of Changes In Discounts, Service, And Quality, And Wage Changes, In Overtime, Perquisites And So On…. But To Whatever Extent The Freeze Is Enforced, It Will Do Harm By Distorting Relative Prices.

The Most Important Ways In Which I Think The Internet Will Affect The Big Issue Is That It Will Make It More Difficult For Government To Collect Taxes.

The Benefits Of A Tariff Are Visible. Union Workers Can See They Are "protected". The Harm Which A Tariff Does Is Invisible. It's Spread Widely. There Are People That Don't Have Jobs Because Of Tariffs But They Don't Know It.

Government Power Must Be Dispersed. If Government Is To Exercise Power, Better In The County Than In The State, Better In The State Than In Washington. If I Do Not Like What My Local Community Does, Be It In Sewage Disposal, Or Zoning, Or Schools, I Can Move To Another Local Community, And Though Few May Take This Step, The Mere Possibility Acts As A Check. If I Do Not Like What Washington Imposes, I Have Few Alternatives In This World Of Jealous Nations.

The Countries That Have Risen And Separated Out As A Result Of The Collapse Of The Soviet Union Are, On The Whole, Following Freer Economic Policies. Most Of These States Have Freer Government And Less Restrictions On Trade.

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 Preservation Of Liberty, Not The Promotion Of Efficiency, Is The Primary Justification For Private Property. Efficiency Is A Happy, Though Not Accidental, By-product - And A Most Important By-product Because Liberty Could Not Have Survived If It Had Not Also Produced Affluence.

One Role Of Prohibition Is In Making The Drug Market More Lucrative.

The Evidence Of History Speaks With A Single Voice. I Do Not Know Any Exception To The Proposition That If You Compare Like With Like, The Freer The System, The Better Off The Ordinary Poor People Have Been.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them. He Is Proud Of A Common Heritage And Loyal To Common Traditions. But He Regards Government As A Means, An Instrumentality, Neither A Grantor Of Favors And Gifts, Nor A Master Or God To Be Blindly Worshipped And Served.

The Excuse For The Destruction Of Liberty Is Always The Plea Of Necessary ' That There Is No Alternative

Nobody Spends Somebody Else's Money As Carefully As He Spends His Own. Nobody Uses Somebody Else's Resources As Carefully As He Uses His Own. So If You Want Efficiency And Effectiveness, If You Want Knowledge To Be Properly Utilized, You Have To Do It Through The Means Of Private Property.

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

Statistics Do Not Speak For Themselves.

There's No Point In Comparing An Actual, Operating System With An Ideal System That Doesn't Exist.

Operating Systems

Columbus Did Not Seek A New Route To The Indies In Response To A Majority Directive.

Even The Most Ardent Environmentalist Doesn't Really Want To Stop Pollution. If He Thinks About It, And Doesn't Just Talk About It, He Wants To Have The Right Amount Of Pollution. We Can't Really Afford To Eliminate It - Not Without Abandoning All The Benefits Of Technology That We Not Only Enjoy But On Which We Depend.

Speeches By Businessmen On Social Responsibility...may Gain Them Kudos In The Short Run. But It Helps To Strengthen The Already Too Prevalent View That The Pursuit Of Profits Is Wicked.... There Is One And Only One Social Responsibility Of Business-to...engage In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

Making Prohibition Work Is Like Making Water Run Uphill; It's Against Nature.

A Society That Aims For Equality Before Liberty Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Liberty. And A Society That Aims First For Liberty Will Not End Up With Equality, But It Will End Up With A Closer Approach To Equality Than Any Other Kind Of System That Has Ever Been Developed.

When A Private Enterprise Fails, It Is Closed Down; When A Government Enterprise Fails, It Is Expanded. Isn't That Exactly What's Been Happening With Drugs?

It Is Taken For Granted That Workers Should Receive Their Pay Partly In Kind, In The Form Of Medical Care Provided By The Employer. How Come? Why Single Out Medical Care? Surely Food Is No Less Essential To Life Than Medical Care. Why Is It Not At Least As Logical For Workers To Be Required To Buy Their Food At The Company Store As To Be Required To Buy Their Medical Care At The Company Store?

What Happened Was That For Every $100 Of Money, By Which I Mean The Cash That People Keep In Their Pockets, And The Deposits They Have In The Bank, For Every $100 Of Money That There Was In 1929, By 1933 There Was Only $67. The Federal Reserve Allowed The Quantity Of Money To Decline By A Third. While, At All Times, It Had The Possibilities And The Power Of Preventing That From Happening.

There Is One And Only One Social Responsibility Of Business - To Use It Resources And Engage In Activities Designed To Increase Its Profits So Long As It Stays Within The Rules Of The Game, Which Is To Say, Engages In Open And Free Competition Without Deception Or Fraud.

The True Test Of Any Scholar's Work Is Not What His Contemporaries Say, But What Happens To His Work In The Next 25 Or 50 Years.

The Only Reason There Is A Crisis About Social Security In The Us And Pensions In Europe And Japan Is That You Cannot Maintain A "ponzi" Scheme Indefinitely. We Have Collected From Today's Young To Pay Today's Old And Counted On Tomorrow's Young To Keep Doing So. That Was A Fine Scheme As Long As The Number Of Young People Was Rising Faster Than Old People. When That Ratio Comes To An End, Such A System Also Has To End.

There Is Only One Social Responsibility Of Business

Social Responsibility

If You Have Free Immigration, In The Way We Had It Before 1914, Everybody Benefited. The People Who Were Here Benefited. The People Who Came Benefited. Because Nobody Would Come Unless He, Or His Family, Thought He Would Do Better Here Than He Would Elsewhere. And, The New Immigrants Provided Additional Resources, Provided Additional Possibilities For The People Already Here. So Everybody Can Mutually Benefit.

The Broader And More Influential Organisations Of Businessmen Have Acted To Undermine The Basic Foundation Of The Free Market System They Purport To Represent And Defend.

Hong Kong Is The Bellwether. If The Chinese Stick To Their Agreement To Let Hong Kong Go Its Own Path, Then China Will Also Go That Way. If They Don't, That Is A Very Bad Sign. I'm Optimistic.

I Am Myself Persuaded, On The Basis Of Extensive Study Of The Historical Evidence, That... The Severity Of Each Of The Contractions - 1920-21, 1929-33, And 1937-38 - Is Directly Attributable To Acts Of Commission And Omission By The Reserve Authorities And Would Not Have Occurred Under Earlier Monetary And Banking Arrangements.

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.

So The Question Is, Do Corporate Executives, Provided They Stay Within The Law, Have Responsibilities In Their Business Activities Other Than To Make As Much Money For Their Stockholders As Possible? And My Answer To That Is, No They Do Not.

Money Is A Very Powerful Thing, Which You Hardly Notice When It Goes Right, But Which Can Create Havoc When It Goes Wrong.

I Do Not Believe That The Solution To Our Problem Is Simply To Elect The Right People. The Important Thing Is To Establish A Political Climate Of Opinion Which Will Make It Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing. Unless It Is Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing, The Right People Will Not Do The Right Thing Either, Or It They Try, They Will Shortly Be Out Of Office.

The Great Depression In The United States Was Caused - I Won't Say Caused, Was Enormously Intensified And Made Far Worse Than It Would Have Been By Bad Monetary Policy.

Great Depression

I Say Thank God For Government Waste. If Government Is Doing Bad Things, It's Only The Waste That Prevents The Harm From Being Greater.

The Current Oil Crisis Has Not Been Produced By The Oil Companies. It Is A Result Of Governmental Mismanagement Exacerbated By The Mideast War.

A Society That Puts Equality — In The Sense Of Equality Of Outcome — Ahead Of Freedom Will End Up With Neither Equality Nor Freedom. The Use Of Force To Achieve Equality Will Destroy Freedom, And The Force, Introduced For Good Purposes, Will End Up In The Hands Of People Who Use It To Promote Their Own Interests.

The Collapse Of Communism In Essence Added Tens And Tens Of Millions Of People To The World Labor Supply, And The People Who Were Added Had Previously Been Getting Very Low Income, But They Were Not Unskilled. Many Of Them Were Fairly Well Educated.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon In The Sense That It Is And Can Be Produced Only By A More Rapid Increase In The Quantity Of Money Than In Output.

...theories Should Be Judged By Their Ability To Predict Events Rather Than By The Realism Of Their Assumptions.

I Am Favor Of Cutting Taxes Under Any Circumstances And For Any Excuse, For Any Reason, Whenever It's Possible.

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.

There Is No Place For Government To Prohibit Consumers From Buying Products The Effect Of Which Will Be To Harm Themselves.

The Same Thing Will Happen In China That Happened In Chile. Political Freedom Will Ultimately Break Out Of Its Shackles. Tiananmen Square Was Only The First Episode. It Is Headed For A Series Of Tiananmen Squares. It Cannot Continue To Develop Privately And At The Same Time Maintain Its Authoritarian Character Politically. It Is Headed For A Clash. Sooner Or Later, One Or The Other Will Give.

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.

Keynes Was A Great Economist. In Every Discipline, Progress Comes From People Who Make Hypotheses, Most Of Which Turn Out To Be Wrong, But All Of Which Ultimately Point To The Right Answer. Now Keynes, In 'the General Theory Of Employment, Interest And Money,' Set Forth A Hypothesis Which Was A Beautiful One, And It Really Altered The Shape Of Economics. But It Turned Out That It Was A Wrong Hypothesis. That Doesn't Mean That He Wasn't A Great Man!

Is There Some Society You Know Of That Doesn't Run On Greed? You Think Russia Doesn't Run On Greed? You Think China Doesn't Run On Greed? What Is Greed?

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

I Would Say That In This World, The Greatest Source Of Inequality Has Been Special Privileges Granted By Government.

Economics Has Become Increasingly An Arcane Branch Of Mathematics Rather Than Dealing With Real Economic Problems.

Americans Know Very Little About Social Statistics, But I Am Not Sure That It's Important That Americans Know About Social Statistics.

Rapid Increases In The Quantity Of Money Produce Inflation. Sharp Decreases Produce Depression.

The Fall Of The Berlin Wall Did More For The Progress Of Freedom Than All Of The Books Written By Myself Or Friedrich Hayek Or Others.

Why Have We Had Such A Decline In Moral Climate? I Submit To You That A Major Factor Has Been A Change In The Philosophy Which Has Been Dominant, A Change From Belief In Individual Responsibility To Belief In Social Responsibility. If You Adopt The View That A Man Is Not Responsible For His Own Behavior, That Somehow Society Is Responsible, Why Should He Seek To Make His Behavior Good?

What's The Difference? How Can People Be So Inconsistent? Why Is It That Free Immigration Was A Good Thing Before 1914 And Free Immigration Is A Bad Thing Today? Well, There Is A Sense In Which That Answer Is Right. There's A Sense In Which Free Immigration, In The Same Sense As We Had It Before 1914 Is Not Possible Today. Why Not?

The Major Basis For My Opposition To Marijuana Prohibition Has Not Been How Badly It's Worked, The Fact That It's Produced Much More Harm Than Good - It Has Been Primarily A Moral Reason: I Don't Think The State Has Any More Right To Tell Me What To Put Into My Mouth Than It Has To Tell Me What Can Come Out Of My Mouth.

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.

I Can Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else. And If I Spend Somebody Else's Money On Somebody Else, I'm Not Concerned About How Much It Is, And I'm Not Concerned About What I Get. And That's Government.

If Capitalism Worked As The Socialists Think An Economic System Ought To Work, And Provided A Constant Equality Of Living Conditions For All, Regardless Of Whether A Man Was Able Or Not, Resourceful Or Not, Diligent Or Not, Thrifty Or Not, If Capitalism Put No Premiums On Resourcefulness And Effort And Not Penalty On Idleness Or Vice, It Would Produce Only An Equality Of Destitution.

Since The 1930s The Technique Of Buying Votes With The Voters' Own Money Has Been Expanded To An Extent Undreamed Of By Earlier Politicians.

That's An Interesting Paradox To Think About. Make It Legal And It's No Good. Why? Because As Long As It's Illegal The People Who Come In Do Not Qualify For Welfare, They Don't Qualify For Social Security, They Don't Qualify For The Other Myriad Of Benefits That We Pour Out From Our Left Pocket To Our Right Pocket. So Long As They Don't Qualify They Migrate To Jobs. They Take Jobs That Most Residents Of This Country Are Unwilling To Take. They Provide Employers With The Kind Of Workers That They Cannot Get. They're Hard Workers, They're Good Workers, And They Are Clearly Better Off.

If We Have System In Which Government Is In A Position To Give Large Favor - It's Human Nature To Try To Get This Favor - Whether Those People Are Large Enterprises, Or Whether They're Small Businesses Like Farmers, Or Whether They're Representatives Of Any Other Special Group. The Only Way To Prevent That Is To Force Them To Engage In Competition One With The Other.

We Measure Poverty By What I Believe Is A Very, Very Crude Concept. We Actually Measure Poverty By Trying To Get Some Kind Of An Estimate Of The Minimum Expenditures On Food That Are Required To Maintain Health, Multiplying That Number By Three, And Saying That's The Level Of Poverty. And It's A Very Crude, Inaccurate Arrangement.

Japan Has Introduced Fiscal Stimulus Five Times In The Past Seven Or Eight Years And Each Time It's Been A Failure And That's Not A Surprise. Fiscal Stimulus Is Not Stimulating In And Of Itself.

People Who Intend Only To Seek Their Own Benefit Are “led By An Invisible Hand To Serve A Public Interest Which Was No Part Of” Their Intention. I Say That There Is A Reverse Invisible Hand: People Who Intend To Serve Only The Public Interest Are Led By An Invisible Hand To Serve Private Interests Which Was No Part Of Their Intention.

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