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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

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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
People
Market
Voluntarily
Economy
Cooperate
Freedom
Preserving
Free
Partnership
Individual
Discovered
Together
Economics
Ever
Essential
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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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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.
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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.
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There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
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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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Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
Milton Friedman
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A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
Milton Friedman
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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
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Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today's disadvantaged to become tomorrow's privileged and, in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.
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One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
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A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
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And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?
Milton Friedman
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Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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They think that the cure to big government is to have bigger government... the only effective cure is to reduce the scope of government - get government out of the business.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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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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Speeches by businessmen on social responsibility...may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked.... There is one and only one social responsibility of business-to...engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
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You mustn't judge a politician by talk. You have to judge them by performance.
Milton Friedman