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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

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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
Law
Employer
Makes
Employers
Reality
Wage
Persons
Hire
Person
Minimum
Illegal
Limited
Skills

More quotes by Milton Friedman

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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.
Milton Friedman
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Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
Milton Friedman
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I am a limited-government libertarian.
Milton Friedman
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George Stigler was a delightful correspondent. In a letter from London in 1948, after remarking on the inconvertibility of the pound and the inedible, still-rationed food, he concluded, So here I am losing weight and gaining pounds.
Milton Friedman
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Money is a very powerful thing, which you hardly notice when it goes right, but which can create havoc when it goes wrong.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
Milton Friedman
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My interest in political philosophy was rather casual until I met Hayek.
Milton Friedman
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Richard Nixon was a very intelligent and able man. And he had the right ideas. But he did not have the adherence to principles that [Ronald] Reagan had. He did some very good things. We owe to Richard Nixon the volunteer army - he got rid of the draft. And that was a major increase in freedom.
Milton Friedman
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Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
Milton Friedman
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[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.
Milton Friedman
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The current oil crisis has not been produced by the oil companies. It is a result of governmental mismanagement exacerbated by the Mideast war.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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The Internet moves us closer to perfect information on markets. Individuals and companies alike can buy and sell across borders and jurisdictions wherever they find the best match of supply and demand.
Milton Friedman
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Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it.
Milton Friedman
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Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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On aging societies, there is no reason why a country that has a lot of old people can't be prosperous if, during their working lives, individuals provide for their retirement.
Milton Friedman
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The big issue is whether the United States will succeed in its venture of reshaping the Middle East. It is not clear to me that using military force is the way to do it. We should not have gone into Iraq. But we have.
Milton Friedman
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What's the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There's a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
Milton Friedman