Milton Friedman (1912–2006) was an American economist. The scholarly work of this University of Chicago professor and Nobel Economics laureate (1976) has had a profound impact on economies around the world. He was a strong advocate of the efficiency of the market and minimal government interference.
Born in New York City, and educated at Rutgers, Chicago, and Columbia, Friedman worked for the National Bureau of Economic Research 1937–45. During World War II, he served in the Tax Research Division of the U.S. Treasury, and then in the Statistical Research Group of Columbia’s Division of War Research. He became a professor of economics at Chicago in 1945 and remained there until 1983.
Friedman is much respected for his academic work as an economist, particularly on his examination of the role of governments in controlling the amount of money in circulation. As a policy consultant to President Ronald Reagan 1981–89, he advocated free-market forces produce balanced economic growth.
Friedman’s notable works include Capitalism and Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose (1980)—the latter co-authored with his wife, the economist Rose Friedman.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Milton Friedman
What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Capitalism, Greed
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.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Responsibility
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Power
Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
—Milton Friedman
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-union-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Business
The great virtue of free enterprise is that it forces existing businesses to meet the test of the market continuously, to produce products that meet consumer demands at lowest cost, or else be driven from the market. It is a profit-and-loss system. Naturally, existing businesses generally prefer to keep out competitors in other ways. That is why the business community, despite its rhetoric, has so often been a major enemy of truly free enterprise.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Business
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Government
A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Freedom
Inflation is taxation without legislation.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Money
The economic race should not be arranged so everyone arrives at the finish line at the same time but so that everyone starts at the starting line at the same time.
—Milton Friedman
The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power—we must have a dispersion of power.
—Milton Friedman
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Work
Never try to walk across a river just because it has an average depth of four feet.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Risk
So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.
—Milton Friedman
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Bureaucracy
Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else’s parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Welfare
If even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and drug rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to users could be dramatic.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Drugs
The society that puts equality before freedom will wind up with neither. but the society that puts freedom before equality will wind up with a great measure of both.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Welfare
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Capitalism
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Power
If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Welfare
There was a time when we the U.S. had completely unrestricted immigration, when anybody could come to these shores and the motto on the Statue of Liberty had some real meaning. This was a country of hope and of promise for immigrants and their children, and as many as a million immigrants a year came in 1906 and ’07 and ’08. By 1914, roughly a third of the population was foreign-born or the immediate descendants of foreign-born…The fact that year after year hundreds of thousands of people left the countries of Europe to come to this country was persuasive evidence that they were coming to improve their lot, not to worsen it.
—Milton Friedman
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Taxes
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Government
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
—Milton Friedman
Topics: Government
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