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Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.

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
Government
Perfectly
Take
Combination
Make
Debt
Good
Spending
Taxes
Ink
Paper
Worthless
Politics
Imperfect
Political
Cover

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You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
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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
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Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
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There is not a line in 'The Wealth of Nations' that is not still applicable to this day.
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I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.
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A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion.
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I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books in its effect, not its intent.
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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.
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The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.
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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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. . 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.
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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.
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The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
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Making prohibition work is like making water run uphill it's against nature.
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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.
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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.
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Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else.
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There is only one social responsibility of business
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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.
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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.
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