Quote

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.

Milton Friedman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Drug
War
Role
True
View
Government
Protect
Look
Roles
Cartel
Looks
Views
Cartels
Economic
Purely
Literally
Point

More quotes by Milton Friedman

Image
You can only make money if you buy a product, whatever it is - maybe a currency, maybe wheat and maybe something else - at a relatively low price and sell it at a higher price than you buy it at. There's no other way to make money.
Milton Friedman
Image
Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.
Milton Friedman
Image
The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.
Milton Friedman
Image
Whenever you try to do good with someone else's money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else's money, unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is the threat of force: you have a policeman, tax collector, who comes and takes it from them.
Milton Friedman
Image
What works for Sweden wouldn't work for France or Germany or Italy. In a small state, you can reach outside for many of your activities. In a homogeneous culture, they are willing to pay higher taxes in order to achieve commonly held goals. But common goals are much harder to come by in larger, more heterogeneous populations.
Milton Friedman
Image
It doesn't worry me a bit that China and Japan hold so much US debt. In a way, it seems foolish for them to do it because they get lower returns than they might elsewhere. But that is their business.
Milton Friedman
Image
The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Statistics do not speak for themselves.
Milton Friedman
Image
A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
Milton Friedman
Image
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
Milton Friedman
Image
Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling.
Milton Friedman
Image
With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
Milton Friedman
Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
Milton Friedman
Image
The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.
Milton Friedman
Image
Saying it is one thing. Doing it is very different.
Milton Friedman