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Significant Changes In The Growth Rate Of Money Supply, Even Small Ones, Impact The Financial Markets First. Then, They Impact Changes In The Real Economy, Usually In Six To Nine Months, But In A Range Of Three To 18 Months. Usually In About Two Years In The Us, They Correlate With Changes In The Rate Of Inflation Or Deflation." "the Leads Are Long And Variable, Though The More Inflation A Society Has Experienced, History Shows, The Shorter The Time Lead Will Be Between A Change In Money Supply Growth And The Subsequent Change In Inflation.

-Milton Friedman

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Significant Changes In The

Milton Friedman

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Significant Changes In The Growth Rate Of Money Supply, Even Small Ones, Impact The Financial Markets First. Then, They Impact Changes In The Real Economy, Usually In Six To Nine Months, But In A Range Of Three To 18 Months. Usually In About Two Years In The Us, They Correlate With Changes In The Rate Of Inflation Or Deflation." "the Leads Are Long And Variable, Though The More Inflation A Society Has Experienced, History Shows, The Shorter The Time Lead Will Be Between A Change In Money Supply Growth And The Subsequent Change In Inflation.

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Why Is It That Private Insurance Companies Are Not In Trouble Because People Are Getting Older? Aren't They Subject To The Same Demographics? The Difference Is That They've Accumulated A Fund, Not A Pay-in, Pay-out System.

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.

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

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.

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

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

If Freedom Led To Wider Inequality, I Would Prefer That To A World In Which I Got Artificial Equality At The Expense Of Freedom. My Objective, My God... Is Freedom Of Individuals To Pursue Their Own Values.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

To The Best Of My Knowledge, There Has Never Been A Monetary Union, Putting Out A Fiat Currency, Composed Of Independent States.

In A Free Society, It Is Hard For 'good' People To Do 'good', But That Is A Small Price To Pay For Making It Hard For 'evil' People To Do 'evil', Especially Since One Man's Good Is Another's Evil

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.

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.

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.

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

The Price Works So Well, So Efficiently, That We Are Not Aware Of It Most Of The Time.

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

You Could Not Possibly Maintain The Current Level Of Government Taxation Without The Taxes Being Hidden, And They Are Hidden In Two Very Different Ways. They Are Hidden Through Withholding, But They Are Also Hidden By Being Imposed On Business, Supposedly On Business, When Really, Of Course, Business Can't Pay Taxes, Only People Can Pay Taxes.

There Is Only One Social Responsibility Of Business

Social Responsibility

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.

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 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.

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.

Is It Really True That Political Self-interest Is Nobler Somehow Than Economic Self-interest?

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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.

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.

...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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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.

There Is No Good Way Of Measuring Poverty.

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

China Has Seen A Great Deal Of Economic Progress. It's Certainly Rather Of A Miracle. The Growing Role Of The Market In The Economy Will Force China To Open Up Its Political System Over Time And To Move Toward A More Democratic Society. So Taken As A Whole, The One Real Failure In This Whole Business Has Been Russia.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Undoubtedly Internet Has Reduced The Possibilities Of Taxation. Why Should I Buy Something Here If I Can Buy It From A Company In Japan Or England Or Brazil With A Lower Tax?

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

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.

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

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

What Is Not Forbidden In Sweden, Is Obligatory.

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 Internet Is The Most Effective Instrument We Have For Globalization.

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....

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

Drugs Are A Tragedy For Addicts. But Criminalizing Their Use Converts That Tragedy Into A Disaster For Society, For Users And Non-users Alike. Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Drugs Is A Replay Of Our Experience With The Prohibition Of Alcoholic Beverages.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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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.

World Trade Depends On Differences Among Countries, Not Similarities. Different Countries Are In Different Stages Of Development. It Is Appropriate For Them To Have Different Patterns, Different Policies For Ecology, Labor Standards, And So Forth.

The Combination Of Economic And Political Power In The Same Hands Is A Sure Recipe For Tyranny.

The Federal Reserve The Privately Owned U.s. Central Bank Definitely Caused The Great Depression By Contracting The Amount Of Currency In Circulation By One Third From 1929 To 1933.

Great Depression

Federal Reserve

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Statistics Do Not Speak For Themselves.

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.

Theories Can Be Based On Any Assumptions, However Bizarre.

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

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.

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

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

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

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.

Governments Never Learn. Only People Learn.

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

I'm Not In Favor Of No Government. You Do Need A Government. But By Doing So Many Things That The Government Has No Business Doing, It Cannot Do Those Things Which It Alone Can Do Well. There's No Other Institution In My Opinion That Can Provide Us With Protection Of Our Life And Liberty. However, The Government Performs That Basic Function Poorly Today, Precisely Because It Is Devoting Too Much Of Its Efforts And Spending Too Much Of Our Income On Things Which Are Harmful. So I Have No Doubt That That's The Major Single Problem We Face.

In Response To A Suggestion That Total Free Trade Would End In Cheaper Foreign Products Flooding The Market And Causing Unemployment.

You Know There Are Very Few Marxists Left In The World... They're All In American Universities.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Concentrated Power Is Not Rendered Harmless By The Good Intentions Of Those Who Create It.

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

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

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

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.

Spending By Government Currently Amounts To About 45 Percent Of National Income. By That Test, Government Owns 45 Percent Of The Means Of Production That Produce The National Income. The U.s. Is Now 45 Percent Socialist.

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

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 Lesson For Asia Is; If You Have A Central Bank, Have A Floating Exchange Rate; If You Want To Have A Fixed Exchange Rate, Abolish Your Central Bank And Adopt A Currency Board Instead. Either Extreme; A Fixed Exchange Rate Through A Currency Board, But No Central Bank, Or A Central Bank Plus Truly Floating Exchange Rates; Either Of Those Is A Tenable Arrangement. But A Pegged Exchange Rate With A Central Bank Is A Recipe For Trouble.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Inflation Is Taxation Without Legislation.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

The Only Reason Free Markets Have A Ghost Of A Chance Is That They Are So Much More Efficient Than Any Other Form Of Organization.

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

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

Unfortunately, Unanimity Is Not Always Feasible.

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 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.

If The Government Is To Try And Ban Private Consumption Of Alcohol And Tobacco, It Must Surely Ban Such Activities As Hang-gliding, Skiing, Rock-climbing And So On. Where Should It Stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey? Insofar As The Government Has Information Not Generally Available About The Merits Or Demerits Of The Items We Ingest Or The Activities We Engage In, Let It Give Us The Information. But Let It Leave Us Free To Choose What Chances We Want To Take With Our Own Lives.

The Strongest Argument For Free Enterprise Is That It Prevents Anybody From Having Too Much Power. Whether That Person Is A Government Official, A Trade Union Official, Or A Business Executive. If Forces Them To Put Up Or Shut Up. They Either Have To Deliver The Goods, Produce Something That People Are Willing To Pay For, Are Willing To Buy, Or Else They Have To Go Into A Different Business.

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.

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

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.

The Difference Between Me And People Like Murray Rothbard Is That, Though I Want To Know What My Ideal Is, I Think I Also Have To Be Willing To Discuss Changes That Are Less Than Ideal So Long As They Point Me In That Direction.

The Only Relevant Test Of The Validity Of A Hypothesis Is Comparison Of Prediction With Experience.

Pick At Random Any Three Letters From The Alphabet, Put Them In Any Order, And You Will Have An Acronym Designating A Federal Agency We Can Do Without.

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

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.

. . . It Is Worth Discussing Radical Changes, Not In The Expectation That They Will Be Adopted Promptly But For Two Other Reasons. One Is To Construct An Ideal Goal, So That Incremental Changes Can Be Judged By Whether They Move The Institutional Structure Toward Or Away From That Ideal. The Other Reason Is Very Different. It Is So That If A Crisis Requiring Or Facilitating Radical Change Does Arise, Alternatives Will Be Available That Have Been Carefully Developed And Fully Explored.

Corruption Is Government Intrusion Into Market Efficiencies In The Form Of Regulations.

Market Efficiency

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.

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. And The Thing That I Will Really Be Proud Of Is If Some Of The Work I Have Done Is Still Cited In The Text Books Long After I Am Gone.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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