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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.

-Milton Friedman

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It Is Most Attractive

Milton Friedman

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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.

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

Not All Schooling Is Education Nor All Education, Schooling.

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.

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

Every Economist Knows That Minimum Wages Either Do Nothing Or Cause Inflation And Unemployment. That's Not A Statement, It's A Definition.

When They So-called 'target The Interest Rate', What They're Doing Is Controlling The Money Supply Via The Interest Rate. The Interest Rate Is Only An Intermediary Instrument.

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?

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

My Interest In Political Philosophy Was Rather Casual Until I Met Hayek.

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.

When You Argue For Free Markets, You Are Arguing Against The Trend.

My Monetary Studies Have Led Me To The Conclusion That Central Banks Could Profitably Be Replaced By Computers Geared To Provide A Steady Rate Of Growth In The Quantity Of Money. Fortunately For Me Personally, And For A Select Group Of Fellow Economists, That Conclusion Has Had No Practical Impact… Else There Would Have Been No Central Bank Of Sweden To Have Established The Award [nobel Prize] I Am Honoured To Receive.

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.

Times Of Crisis

The Great Depression Was Not A Sign Of The Failure Of Monetary Policy Or A Result Of The Failure Of The Market System As Was Widely Interpreted. It Was Instead A Consequence Of A Very Serious Government Failure, In Particular A Failure In The Monetary Authorities To Do What They'd Initially Been Set Up To Do.

Great Depression

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.

We Economists Don't Know Much, But We Do Know How To Create A Shortage. If You Want To Create A Shortage Of Tomatoes, For Example, Just Pass A Law That Retailers Can't Sell Tomatoes For More Than Two Cents Per Pound. Instantly You'll Have A Tomato Shortage. It's The Same With Oil Or Gas.

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.

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.

The Euro Is Going To Be A Big Source Of Problems, Not A Source Of Help.

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

People Hired By Government Know Who Is Their Benefactor. People Who Lose Their Jobs Or Fail To Get Them Because Of The Government Program Do Not Know That That Is The Source Of Their Problem. The Good Effects Are Visible. The Bad Effects Are Invisible. The Good Effects Generate Votes. The Bad Effects Generate Discontent, Which Is As Likely To Be Directed At Private Business As At The Government.

Viewed As A Means To The End Of Political Freedom, Economic Arrangements Are Important Because Of Their Effect On The Concentration Or Dispersion Of Power. The Kind Of Economic Organization That Provides Economic Freedom Directly, Namely, Competitive Capitalism, Also Promotes Political Freedom Because It Separates Economic Power From Political Power And In This Way Enables The One To Offset The Other

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.

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

What Is Not Forbidden In Sweden, Is Obligatory.

Every Friend Of Freedom... Must Be As Revolted As I Am By The Prospect Of Turning The United States Into An Armed Camp, By The Vision Of Jails Filled With Casual Drug Users And Of An Army Of Enforcers Empowered To Invade The Liberty Of Citizens On Slight Evidence.

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

I Am A Limited-government Libertarian.

Limited Government

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.

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.'

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

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".

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

It Is True That A Competitive Market Is Not The Whole Of Society. A Great Deal Depends On The Qualities Of The Population And The Nation In How They Organize The Non-market Aspects Of Society.

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.

The Only Corporate Social Responsibility A Company Has Is To Maximize Its Profits.

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.

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.

To The Free Man, The Country Is The Collection Of Individuals Who Compose It, Not Something Over And Above Them.

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

Operating Systems

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.

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.

For Example, The Supporters Of Tariffs Treat It As Self-evident That The Creation Of Jobs Is A Desirable End, In And Of Itself, Regardless Of What The Persons Employed Do. That Is Clearly Wrong. If All We Want Are Jobs, We Can Create Any Number--for Example, Have People Dig Holes And Then Fill Them Up Again, Or Perform Other Useless Tasks. Work Is Sometimes Its Own Reward. Mostly, However, It Is The Price We Pay To Get The Things We Want. Our Real Objective Is Not Just Jobs But Productive Jobs--jobs That Will Mean More Goods And Services To Consume.

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.

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.

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

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

Now Here's Somebody Who Wants To Smoke A Marijuana Cigarette. If He's Caught, He Goes To Jail. Now Is That Moral? Is That Proper? I Think It's Absolutely Disgraceful That Our Government, Supposed To Be Our Government, Should Be In The Position Of Converting People Who Are Not Harming Others Into Criminals, Of Destroying Their Lives, Putting Them In Jail. That's The Issue To Me. The Economic Issue Comes In Only For Explaining Why It Has Those Effects. But The Economic Reasons Are Not The Reasons.

Universities Exist To Transmit Knowledge And Understanding Of Ideas And Values To Students Not To Provide Entertainment For Spectators Or Employment For Athletes.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Believe The Role That People Like Myself Have Played In The Transformation Of Public Opinion Has Been By Persistently Presenting A Different Point Of View, A Point Of View Which Stresses The Importance Of Private Markets, Of Individual Freedom, And The Distorting Effect Of Governmental Policy.

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.

One Of The Great Mistakes Is To Judge Policies And Programs By Their Intentions Rather Than Their Results.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Government Is A Way By Which Every Individual Believes He Can Live At The Expense Of Everybody Else.

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.

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 High Rate Of Unemployment Among Teenagers, And Especially Black Teenagers, Is Both A Scandal And A Serious Source Of Social Unrest. Yet It Is Largely A Result Of Minimum Wage Laws. We Regard The Minimum Wage Law As One Of The Most, If Not The Most, Anti-black Laws On The Statute Books.

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

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.

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.

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.

You Never Have Real Changes Unless You Have A Time Of Crisis.

Times Of Crisis

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.

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.

Political Freedom Means The Absence Of Coercion Of A Man By His Fellow Men.

He Moves Fastest Who Moves Alone.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

There's Nothing That Does So Much Harm As Good Intentions.

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.

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.

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.

If You Put The Federal Government In Charge Of The Sahara Desert, In 5 Years There'd Be A Shortage Of Sand.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

If You Spend Your Own Money On Yourself, You Care How Much You Spend And How Well You Spend It. If You Spend Your Own Money On Someone Else, You Care How Much You Spend, But You Don't Care How Well It Is Spent. If You Spend Someone Else's Money On Yourself, You Don't Care How Much You Spend, But You Do Care How Well It Is Spent. And Finally, If You Spend Someone Else's Money On Someone Else, You Don't Care How Much You Spend, And You Don't Care How Well It Is Spent. That Is Government.

Doing Good With Other People's Money Has Two Basic Flaws. In The First Place, You Never Spend Anybody Else's Money As Carefully As You Spend Your Own. So A Large Fraction Of That Money Is Inevitably Wasted. In The Second Place, And Equally Important, You Cannot Do Good With Other People's Money Unless You First Get The Money Away From Them. So That Force - Sending A Policeman To Take The Money From Somebody's Pocket - Is Fundamentally At The Basis Of The Philosophy Of The Welfare State.

Theories Can Be Based On Any Assumptions, However Bizarre.

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?

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

One Of The Reasons That I Am In Favor Of Less Government Is Because When You Have More Government, Industrialists Take It Over.

We Have A System That Increasingly Taxes Work And Subsidizes Nonwork.

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. And That's Close To 40 Percent Of Our National Income.

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.

The Power To Do Good Is Also The Power To Do Harm.

You Can Travel From One End Of The Industrialized World To The Other And Almost The Only People You Will Find Engaging In Backbreaking Toil Are People Who Are Doing It For Sport. To Find People Whose Day's Toil Has Not Been Lightened By Mechanical Invention, You Must Go To The Non-capitalist World.

Positive Economics Is In Principle Independent Of Any Particular Ethical Position Or Normative Judgment...in Short, Positive Economics Is Or Can Be An "objective" Science.

Anything That Government Can Do, Private Enterprise Can Do For Half The Cost.

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.

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

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.

If China Don't Free Up The Political Side, Its Economic Growth Will Come To An End - While It Is Still At A Very Low Level.

Legalizing Drugs Would Simultaneously Reduce The Amount Of Crime And Raise The Quality Of Law Enforcement. Can You Conceive Of Any Other Measure That Would Accomplish So Much To Promote Law And Order?

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.

...only Physicians Are Likely To Be Regarded As Competent To Judge The Qualifications Of Potential Physicians, So Licensing Boards In The Various States...are Typically Composed..of Physicians,...members Of The Ama. The Boards, Or The State Legislatures...give The Ama The Power To Influence The Number Of Persons Admitted To Practice (by) Lengthy Training,...(and) The List Of 'approved' Schools And Hospitals (which) Is Generally Identical With The List Issued By The Council On Medical Education And Hospitals Of The Ama.

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.

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.

You Cannot Be Sure That You Are Right Unless You Understand The Arguments Against Your Views Better Than Your Opponents Do.

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

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?

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.

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.

I Start ... From A Belief In Individual Freedom And That Derives Fundamentally From A Belief In The Limitations Of Our Knowledge, From A Belief ... That Nobody Can Be Sure That What He Believes Is Right, Is Really Right ... I'm An Imperfect Human Being Who Cannot Be Certain Of Anything, So What Position ... Involved The Least Intolerance On My Part? ... The Most Attractive Position ... Is Putting Individual Freedom First.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

With Some Notable Exceptions, Businessmen Favor Free Enterprise In General But Are Opposed To It When It Comes To Themselves.

The Free Man Will Ask Neither What His Country Can Do For Him Nor What He Can Do For His Country. He Will Ask Rather 'what Can I And My Compatriots Do Through Government' To Help Us Discharge Our Individual Responsibilities, To Achieve Our Several Goals And Purposes, And Above All, To Protect Our Freedom?

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 Fed Was Largely Responsible For Converting What Might Have Been A Garden-variety Recession, Although Perhaps A Fairly Severe One, Into A Major Catastrophe. Instead Of Using Its Powers To Offset The Depression, It Presided Over A Decline In The Quantity Of Money By One-third From 1929 To 1933 ... Far From The Depression Being A Failure Of The Free-enterprise System, It Was A Tragic Failure Of Government.

It All Would Have Been Much Better If Individuals Saved For Their Own Old Age.

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.

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.

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

Everywhere, And At All Times, Economic Progress Has Meant Far More To The Poor Than To The Rich.

Look, For Example, At The Obvious, Immediate, Practical Example Of Illegal Mexican Immigration. Now, That Mexican Immigration, Over The Border, Is A Good Thing. It's A Good Thing For The Illegal Immigrants. It's A Good Thing For The United States. It's A Good Thing For The Citizens Of The Country. But, It's Only Good So Long As Its Illegal....

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

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

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.

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.

It's A Moral Problem That The Government Is Making Into Criminals People, Who May Be Doing Something You And I Don't Approve Of, But Who Are Doing Something That Hurts Nobody Else.

For One Thing, There Are Many "inventions" That Are Not Patentable. The "inventor" Of The Supermarket, For Example, Conferred Great Benefits On His Fellowmen For Which He Could Not Charge Them. Insofar As The Same Kind Of Ability Is Required For The One Kind Of Invention As For The Other, The Existence Of Patents Tends To Divert Activity To Patentable Inventions.

The Only Way That Has Ever Been Discovered To Have A Lot Of People Cooperate Together Voluntarily Is Through The Free Market. And That's Why It's So Essential To Preserving Individual Freedom.

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.

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.

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.

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

What Central Banks Can Control Is A Base And One Way They Can Control The Base Is Via Manipulating A Particular Interest Rate, Such As A Federal Funds Rate, The Overnight Rate At Which Banks Lend To One Another. But They Use That Control To Control What Happens To The Quantity Of Money. There Is No Disagreement.

Political Leaders In Capitalist Countries Who Cheer The Collapse Of Socialism In Other Countries Continue To Favor Socialist Solutions In Their Own. They Know The Words, But They Have Not Learned The Tune.

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.

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

. . 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.

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.

Inflation Is Taxation Without Legislation.

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.

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.

Inflation Is The One Form Of Taxation That Can Be Imposed Without Legislation.

The Stock Market Crashed In October 1929. But That Was Not The Cause Of What Caused The Great Depression. It Was, In My Opinion, A Very Minor Element Of It. What Happened Was That From 1929 To 1933 You Had A Major Contraction Which, In My Opinion, Was Caused Primarily By The Failure Of The Federal Reserve System, To Follow The Course Of Action For Which It Was Set Up. It Was Set Up To Prevent Exactly What Happened From 1929 To 1933. But Instead Of Preventing It, They Facilitated It.

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

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.

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

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

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 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.

The Euro Is Good For Europe. But Only If There Is Flexibility All Around.

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.

I Know Of No Example In Time Or Place Of A Society That Has Been Marked By A Large Measure Of Political Freedom, And That Has Not Also Used Something Comparable To A Free Market To Organize The Bulk Of Economic Activity.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Case Against A Fully Independent Central Bank Is Strong Indeed.

There Is No Person, No Theorist So Reckless As He Who Says That The Facts Speak For Themselves.

If The Us Government Spends 40 Percent Of The Nation's Income, As It Does Through Either Borrowing Or Taxes, That Income Is Not Available For People To Spend. The Deficit Is An Indirect Method Of Taxation. Of Course, Politicians Prefer To Borrow Instead Of Tax Because Then Someone Down The Road Has To Deal With The Consequences.

Plato Assumes Somehow That Government Is A Way In Which You Put Unselfish And Ungreedy Men In Charge Of Selfish And Greedy Men. But Government Is An Institution Whereby The People Who Have The Greatest Drive To Get Power Over Their Fellow Men, Get In A Position Of Controlling Them. Look At The Record Of Government. Where Are These Philosopher Kings That Plato Supposedly Was Trying To Develop?

The Way You Solve Things Is By Making It Politically Profitable For The Wrong People To Do The Right Thing.

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.

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.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

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.

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.

"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.

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

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.

What You Have As A Result Of Past Policies Is That German Entrepreneurs Go Outside Of Germany For Many Of Their Activities. They Are Investing Abroad Instead Of At Home Because There Isn't The Openness, Fluidity And Opportunity They Find Outside Their Borders.

Political Freedom Means The Absence Of Coercion Of A Man By His Fellow Men. The Fundamental Threat To Freedom Is Power To Coerce, Be It In The Hands Of A Monarch, A Dictator, An Oligarchy, Or A Momentary Majority. The Preservation Of Freedom Requires The Elimination Of Such Concentration Of Power To The Fullest Possible Extent And The Dispersal And Distribution Of Whatever Power Cannot Be Eliminated — A System Of Checks And Balances.

Higher Taxes Never Reduce The Deficit. Governments Spend Whatever They Take In And Then Whatever They Can Get Away With.

I Think A Major Reason Why Intellectuals Tend To Move Towards Collectivism Is That The Collectivist Answer Is A Simple One. If There's Something Wrong, Pass A Law And Do Something About It.

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

You Had A Flood Of Immigrants, Millions Of Them, Coming To This Country. What Brought Them Here? It Was The Hope For A Better Life For Them And Their Children. And, In The Main, They Succeeded. It Is Hard To Find Any Century In History, In Which So Large A Number Of People Experience So Great An Improvement In The Conditions Of Their Life, In The Opportunities Open To Them, As In The Period Of The 19th And Early 20th Century.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Great Advances Of Civilization, Whether In Architecture Or Painting, In Science Or Literature, In Industry Or Agriculture, Have Never Come From Centralized Government.

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.

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.

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!

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