More Quotes by Milton Friedman
A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.
The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
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.
When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union - like public housing in the United States - look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
