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Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it's only in the general interest and in no one's special interest.

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
Special
Interest
Free
Feasible
Politically
Complete
Trade
General

More quotes by Milton Friedman

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I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government.
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What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.
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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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You mustn't judge a politician by talk. You have to judge them by performance.
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Inflation is taxation without legislation.
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I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.
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There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
Milton Friedman
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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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And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?
Milton Friedman
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The problem is that, in a world of floating exchange rates, as Italy was before the euro, if one country is subjected to a shock which requires it to cut wages, it cannot do so with a modern kind of control and regulation system. It is much easier to do it by letting the exchange rate change. Only one price has to change, instead of many.
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The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that.
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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
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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.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman
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In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.
Milton Friedman
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Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich.
Milton Friedman
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No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money.
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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To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.
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My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there are unused resources ... people having skills which are not being used.
Milton Friedman