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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

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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
Independent
Judgment
Short
Normative
Positive
Objective
Position
Ethical
Principles
Objectives
Particular
Economics
Science
Principle

More quotes by Milton Friedman

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If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Milton Friedman
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How did we make the transition from using wood to using coal, from using coal to using oil, from using oil to using natural gas? How in God's name did we make that transition without a Federal Energy Agency?
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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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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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Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.
Milton Friedman
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If China don't free up the political side, its economic growth will come to an end - while it is still at a very low level.
Milton Friedman
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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.
Milton Friedman
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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
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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.
Milton Friedman
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Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.
Milton Friedman
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A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion.
Milton Friedman
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A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head.
Milton Friedman
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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
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The facts never speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted in terms of some understanding of where they come from and what the relation between them is.
Milton Friedman
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Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.
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. 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
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The argument for collectivism is simple free market is not.
Milton Friedman
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Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
Milton Friedman
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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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To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.
Milton Friedman