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The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the rule of the game and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

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
Needs
Courses
Capitalism
Forum
Course
Contrary
Forums
Existence
Essentials
Determining
Games
Market
Enforce
Free
Rule
Umpires
Doe
Rules
Interpret
Government
Decided
Eliminate
Need
Game
Essential
Umpire

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Anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.
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The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
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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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The facts never speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted in terms of some understanding of where they come from and what the relation between them is.
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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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Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
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There's no such thing as a free lunch.
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The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
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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.
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Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
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If you look at the balance sheet, the US is heavily in debt. If you look at the income account - the amount of interest the US pays abroad - it is almost exactly equal to the amount of interest that it receives from abroad. American assets held abroad are earning a higher rate of return than foreign assets held here.
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With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
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We measure poverty by what I believe is a very, very crude concept. We actually measure poverty by trying to get some kind of an estimate of the minimum expenditures on food that are required to maintain health, multiplying that number by three, and saying that's the level of poverty. And it's a very crude, inaccurate arrangement.
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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
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You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
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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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A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
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Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
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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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Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.
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