Milton Friedman Quotes About Economy

Quotes about: Economy

• Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.

  Milton Friedman

  Motivation, Military, Loss

• You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.

  Milton Friedman

  America, World, Economic

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Thinking, People, Giving

  Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman (2002). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.15, University of Chicago Press

• The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

  Milton Friedman

  Freedom, Business, Party

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Mean

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Freedom, People, Together

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Thinking, Giving, People

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Depression, Government, Unemployment

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.38, University of Chicago Press

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Mistake, Trying, Bankers

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, Limits, Economy

  Milton Friedman, William Richard Allen (1983). “Bright promises, dismal performance: an economist's protest”, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Pain, Cutting, 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

  Milton Friedman

  Mean, Organization, Political

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.9, University of Chicago Press

• A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head.

  Milton Friedman

  Politics, Economy, Theory

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Freedom, Government, Opening Up

• Germany cannot get out of the euro. What it has to do, therefore, is make the economy more flexible - to eliminate the restrictions on prices, on wages and on employment; in short, the regulations that keep 10 percent of the German workforce unemployed.

  Milton Friedman

  Germany, Employment, Wages

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

• Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, May, Economy

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, Needs, Complicated

  Source: www.pbs.org

• 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

  Real, Years, Significant Change

• The stock market and economy are two different things.

  Milton Friedman

  Two, Different, Economy

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Real, Moving, Taken

  Source: www.npr.org

• 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.

  Milton Friedman

  Here I Am, Weight, Letters

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