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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.

-Milton Friedman

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We Measure Poverty By

Milton Friedman

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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.

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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.

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.

A Minimum-wage Law Is, In Reality, A Law That Makes It Illegal For An Employer To Hire A Person With Limited Skills.

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.

To Really Understand Something You've Got To Reduce It To Its Principles.

Economists May Not Know Much. But We Know One Thing Very Well: How To Produce Surpluses And Shortages. Do You Want A Surplus? Have The Government Legislate A Minimum Price That Is Above The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail. That Is What We Have Done At One Time Or Another To Produce Surpluses Of Wheat, Of Sugar, Of Butter, Of Many Other Commodities. Do You Want A Shortage? Have The Government Legislate A Maximum Price That Is Below The Price That Would Otherwise Prevail.

If The Only Motive Was To Help People Who Could Not Afford Education, Advocates Of Government Involvement Would Have Simply Proposed Tuition Subsidies.

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.

I Am Convinced That The Minimum-wage Law Is The Most Anti-negro Law On Our Statute Books In Its Effect, Not Its Intent.

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.

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.

It Is A Mark Of How Far We Have Gone On The Road To Serfdom That Government Allocation And Rationing Of Oil Is The Automatic Response To The Oil Crisis.

George Stigler Was A Delightful Correspondent. In A Letter From London In 1948, After Remarking On The Inconvertibility Of The Pound And The Inedible, Still-rationed Food, He Concluded, "so Here I Am Losing Weight And Gaining Pounds.

I Think That Nothing Is So Important For Freedom As Recognizing In The Law Each Individual’s Natural Right To Property, And Giving Individuals A Sense That They Own Something That They’re Responsible For, That They Have Control Over, And That They Can Dispose Of.

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

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

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.

There Is No Logical Basis For The Prohibition Of Marijuana. $7.7 Billion Is A Lot Of Money, But That Is One Of The Lesser Evils. Our Failure To Successfully Enforce These Laws Is Responsible For The Deaths Of Thousands Of People In Colombia. I Haven't Even Included The Harm To Young People. It's Absolutely Disgraceful To Think Of Picking Up A 22-year-old For Smoking Pot. More Disgraceful Is The Denial Of Marijuana For Medical Purposes.

...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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

Consider Social Security. The Young Have Always Contributed To The Support Of The Old. Earlier, The Young Helped Their Own Parents Out Of A Sense Of Love And Duty. They Now Contribute To The Support Of Someone Else's Parents Out Of Compulsion And Fear. The Voluntary Transfers Strengthened The Bonds Of The Family; The Compulsory Transfers Weaken Those Bonds.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

Inflation Is Always And Everywhere A Monetary Phenomenon.

Monetary Policy

I'd Like To Promote Lots Of Things. I'd Like To Promote Elimination Of Drug Prohibition. I'd Like To Promote Parental Choice In Education Through Vouchers. Those Are Two Things I Think Are Very Urgent And Important. They're Both More Important Than The Harm Which Social Security Will Do.

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 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.

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?

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.

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.

How Do You Hold Down Government Spending?

Government Spending

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

What Would The People Who Sold Us Goods Do With The Money? They'd Get Dollars. What Would They Do With The Dollars? Eat Them?!

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

Market Efficiency

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

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

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.

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....

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

A Private Enterprise System Needs Some Measuring Rod, It Needs Something, It Needs Money To Make Its Transactions. You Can't Run A Big Complicated System Through Barter, Through Converting One Commodity Into Another. You Need A Monetary System To Operate. And The Instability In That Monetary System Is Devastating To The Performance Of The Economy.

How Can We Keep The Government We Create From Becoming A Frankenstein That Will Destroy The Very Freedom We Establish It To Protect? Freedom Is A Rare And Delicate Plant.

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!

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 Great Virtue Of Free Enterprise Is That It Forces Existing Businesses To Meet The Test Of The Market Continuously, To Produce Products That Meet Consumer Demands At Lowest Cost, Or Else Be Driven From The Market. It Is A Profit-and-loss System. Naturally, Existing Businesses Generally Prefer To Keep Out Competitors In Other Ways. That Is Why The Business Community, Despite Its Rhetoric, Has So Often Been A Major Enemy Of Truly Free Enterprise.

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.

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

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.

Indeed, A Major Source Of Objection To A Free Economy Is Precisely That It... Gives People What They Want Instead Of What A Particular Group Thinks They Ought To Want. Underlying Most Arguments Against The Free Market Is A Lack Of Belief In Freedom Itself.

The Power To Determine The Quantity Of Money... Is Too Important, Too Pervasive, To Be Exercised By A Few People, However Public-spirited, If There Is Any Feasible Alternative. There Is No Need For Such Arbitrary Power.

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.

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

By Encouraging Men To Spy And Report On One Another, By Making It In The Private Interest Of Large Numbers Of Citizens To Evade The Controls, And By Making Actions Illegal That Are In The Public Interest, The Controls Undermine Individual Morality.

Governments Never Learn. Only People Learn.

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.

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

Government Programs

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

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

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

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.

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.

Personal Freedom Has Grown Greatly Within China, And That Will Provoke Ever More Points Of Conflict Between The Individual And State.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

If You Pay People Not To Work And Tax Them When They Do, Don't Be Surprised If You Get Unemployment.

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.

There Is Only One Social Responsibility Of Business

Social Responsibility

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

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

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Ecological Crisis

Nothing Is So Permanent As A Temporary Government Program.

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

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 Great Depression In The United States, Far From Being A Sign Of The Inherent Instability Of The Private Enterprise System, Is A Testament To How Much Harm Can Be Done By Mistakes On The Part Of A Few Men When They Wield Vast Power Over The Monetary System Of The Country.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

But On The Other Hand, If You Come Under Circumstances Where Each Person Is Entitled To A Pro-rata Share Of The Pot, To Take An Extreme Example, Or Even To A Low Level Of The Pie, Than The Effect Of That Situation Is That Free Immigration, Would Mean A Reduction Of Everybody To The Same, Uniform Level. Of Course, I'm Exaggerating, It Wouldn't Go Quite That Far, But It Would Go In That Direction. And It Is That Perception, That Leads People To Adopt What At First Seems Like Inconsistent Values.

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.

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 Facts Never Speak For Themselves. They Have To Be Interpreted In Terms Of Some Understanding Of Where They Come From And What The Relation Between Them Is.

The Free Market Is Not Only A More Efficient Decision Maker Than Even The Wisest Central Planning Body, But Even More Important, The Free Market Keeps Economic Power Widely Dispersed.

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

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

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.

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.

China's Productive System Draws Upon The Other East Asian Countries To A Great Extent. The Volume Of Trade Is Much Larger Than The Net Amount Being Exported From China. China Needs Substantial Reserves To Finance All That.

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.

The Important Issue Is Not How Much Inequality There Is But How Much Opportunity There Is For Individuals To Get Out Of The Bottom Classes And Into The Top. If There Is Enough Movement Upward, People Will Accept The Efficiency Of The Markets. If You Have Opportunity, There Is A Great Tolerance For Inequality. That Has Been The Saving Grace Of The American System.

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.

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

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

What Kind Of Society Isn't Structured On Greed?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

So Long As Large Sums Of Money Are Involved - And They Are Bound To Be If Drugs Are Illegal - It Is Literally Impossible To Stop The Traffic, Or Even To Make A Serious Reduction In Its Scope.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 Mustn't Judge A Politician By Talk. You Have To Judge Them By Performance.

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 Government Doesn't Have Any Money. The Only Power It Has Is To Take From Some And Give To Others.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I Am A Libertarian With A Small "l" And A Republican With A Capital "r". And I Am A Republican With A Capital "r" On Grounds Of Expediency, Not On Principle.

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.

Society Doesn't Have Values. People Have Values.

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.

The Long-range Sloution To High Unemployment Is To Increase The Incentive For Ordinary People To Save, Invest, Work, And Employ Others. We Make It Costly For Employers To Employ People; We Subsidize People Not To Go To Work We Have A System That Increasingly Taxes Work And Subsidizes Nonwork.

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.

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

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

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.

When Something Goes Wrong, The Natural Tendency Is To Say, "by God, We Need To Pass A Law And Do Something."

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

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 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.

Had Drugs Been Decriminalized, Crack Would Never Have Been Invented And There Would Today Be Fewer Addicts... The Ghettos Would Not Be Drug-and-crime-infested No-man's Lands... Colombia, Bolivia And Peru Would Not Be Suffering From Narco-terror, And We Would Not Be Distorting Our Foreign Policy Because Of It.

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 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

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

What Is Not Forbidden In Sweden, Is Obligatory.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

So That The Record Of History Is Absolutely Crystal Clear That There Is No Alternative Way, So Far Discovered, Of Improving The Lot Of The Ordinary People That Can Hold A Candle To The Productive Activities That Are Unleashed By A Free-enterprise System.

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.

"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 Depression, Which Started In 1929 Was Rather Mild From 1929 To 1930. And, Indeed, In My Opinion Would Have Been Over In 1931 At The Latest Had It Not Been That The Federal Reserve Followed A Policy Which Led To Bank Failures, Widespread Bank Failures, And Led To A Reduction In The Quantity Of Money.

Federal Reserve

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.

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

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.

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.

Humility Is The Distinguishing Virtue Of The Believer In Freedom; Arrogance, Of The Paternalist.

There Is No Good Way Of Measuring Poverty.

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.

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

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.

Germany Has A Very Able And Productive Workforce. It Has High-quality Products That Are Valued All Over The World. It Has Every Opportunity To Be A Productive, Growing State. It Just Has To Give Its Entrepreneurs A Chance. It Has To Let Them Make Money, Hire And Fire, And Act Like Entrepreneurs.

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

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.

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 One Thing That’s Missing, But That Will Soon Be Developed, Is A Reliable E-cash, A Method Whereby On The Internet You Can Transfer Funds From A To B, Without A Knowing B Or B Knowing A.

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

I Am A Limited-government Libertarian.

Limited Government

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

The Stock Market And Economy Are Two Different Things.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

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