More Quotes by Milton Friedman
The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.
Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.
When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he does't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.
What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.
We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas.
Inflation is taxation without legislation.
Society doesn't have values. People have values.