Quote

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

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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
Poor
Passed
Nature
Luxury
Every
Begins
People
Ground
Development
Progress
Experimental
Becomes
Necessity
Rich
Developed

More quotes by 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.
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To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.
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I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
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Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.
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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.
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Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold.
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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.
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The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure.
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Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich.
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The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago.
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[Trade licensing] almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to maintain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public. There is no way to avoid this result.
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Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised.
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In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.
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To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.
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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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The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights.
Milton Friedman
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Anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.
Milton Friedman
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If a country is an attractive place for foreigners to invest their funds, then that country will have a relatively high exchange rate. If it's an unattractive place, it will have a relatively low exchange rate. Those are the fundamentals that determine the exchange rate in a floating exchange rate system.
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When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union - like public housing in the United States - look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
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