Quote

It doesn't worry me a bit that China and Japan hold so much US debt. In a way, it seems foolish for them to do it because they get lower returns than they might elsewhere. But that is their business.

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
Doesn
Foolish
Seems
Debt
Might
China
Much
Return
Way
Hold
Returns
Bits
Elsewhere
Worry
Lower
Business
Japan

More quotes by Milton Friedman

Image
Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling.
Milton Friedman
Image
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
Milton Friedman
Image
Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.
Milton Friedman
Image
Statistics do not speak for themselves.
Milton Friedman
Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
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
The future of private enterprise capitalism is also the future of a free society. There is no possibility of having a politically free society unless the major part of its economic resources are operated under a capitalistic private enterprise system.
Milton Friedman
Image
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Milton Friedman
Image
The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
My interest in political philosophy was rather casual until I met Hayek.
Milton Friedman
Image
There is only one social responsibility of business
Milton Friedman
Image
[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.
Milton Friedman
Image
To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
Milton Friedman
Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police 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