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More Quotes by Milton Friedman
The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
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.
Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters' own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
