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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.

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
Efficient
Ghost
Organization
Chance
Free
Form
Reason
Much
Markets

More quotes by Milton Friedman

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What does it mean to say that government might have a responsibility? Government can't have a responsibility any more than the business can. The only entities which can have responsibilities are people.
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The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.
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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.
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I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books in its effect, not its intent.
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Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
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[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.
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So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free-enterprise system.
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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.
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The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B, without A knowing B or B knowing A.
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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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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.
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The argument for collectivism is simple free market is not.
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Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
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If instead of looking at income, you look at levels of consumption, if anything that's become more equal. The fraction of families that have a dishwasher, that have a sewing machine, that have a television set. In respect to consumption, it's very hard to avoid the view that people have been getting more equal rather than more unequal.
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When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn't that exactly what's been happening with drugs?
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Our emphasis here is based not only on the growing seriousness of drug-related crimes, but also on the belief that relieving our police and our courts from having to fight losing battles against drug use will enable their energies and facilities to be devoted more fully to combating other forms of crime.
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I think in some ways it would make more sense to have as a poverty level a relative concept and say, the level of poverty is that level of income or that level of consumption below which 10 percent of the people now are.
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Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
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The history of mankind is the history of money losing value.
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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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