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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

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
Belief
Arguments
Freedom
Libertarian
Free
Economics
Capitalism
Lack
Market
Argument
Underlying
Liberty
Libertarianism

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Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.
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The invisible hand in politics operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market.
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History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
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Statistics do not speak for themselves.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It all would have been much better if individuals saved for their own old age.
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I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
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[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.
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And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
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To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them... He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
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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.
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Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
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