Quote

Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all.

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
Many
Spending
Long
Short
Cutting
Intrusion
Economy
Involve
Almost
Immediate
Term
Surely
Pain
Gain
Government
Gains

More quotes by Milton Friedman

Image
Rich people are the experimental ground for every new development. The nature of progress is that what begins as a luxury for the rich becomes a necessity for the poor as it's developed and passed on.
Milton Friedman
Image
The growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system.
Milton Friedman
Image
No major institution in the US has so poor a record of performance over so long a period as the Federal Reserve, yet so high a public reputation.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression.
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
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
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
Image
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman
Image
The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
Milton Friedman
Image
The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help.
Milton Friedman
Image
China's productive system draws upon the other East Asian countries to a great extent. The volume of trade is much larger than the net amount being exported from China. China needs substantial reserves to finance all that.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.
Milton Friedman
Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.
Milton Friedman
Image
And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?
Milton Friedman
Image
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
The price works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time.
Milton Friedman