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If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Milton Friedman
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Milton Friedman
Age: 94 †
Born: 1912
Born: July 31
Died: 2006
Died: November 16
Economist
Essayist
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Milton Fridman
Desert
Shortage
Economics
Libertarianism
Liberty
Economist
Politics
Charge
Political
Federal
Government
Libertarian
Sahara
Years
Sand
Federalism
Socialism
Charging
More quotes by Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
The price works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
Milton Friedman
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Milton Friedman
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
Saying it is one thing. Doing it is very different.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure.
Milton Friedman
Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
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.
Milton Friedman
We had much freer trade in the 19th century. We have much less globalization now than we did then.
Milton Friedman