110+ Milton Friedman Quotes On Capitalism, Inflation And Government

Milton Friedman was an American economist who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1976. He was known for his support of free market capitalism and is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. He was also a key figure in the development of the Chicago school of economics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Milton Friedman on capitalism, inflation, government.

Top 10 Milton Friedman Quotes

1. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
2. If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
3. A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
4. The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.
5. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
6. I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
7. The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
8. Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
9. The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
10. Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

Milton Friedman Image Quotes

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. — Milton Friedman

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. — Milton Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. — Milton Friedman

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state. — Milton Friedman

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation. — Milton Friedman

One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Short Quotes

• You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.
• One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.
• The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
• Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
• You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.
• Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
• Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse - for both the addict and the rest of us.
• The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
• If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.
• The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.

Milton Friedman Quotes About Capitalism

There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game. — Milton Friedman

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

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. — Milton Friedman

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on. — Milton Friedman

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. — Milton Friedman

I am a libertarian with a small "l" and a Republican with a capital "R". And I am a Republican with a capital "R" on grounds of expediency, not on principle. — Milton Friedman

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

The future of private enterprise capitalism is also the future of a free society. There is no possibility of having a politically free society unless the major part of its economic resources are operated under a capitalistic private enterprise system. — Milton Friedman

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. — Milton Friedman

What kind of society isn't structured on greed? — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Inflation

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation. — Milton Friedman

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. — Milton Friedman

Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is made by or stopped by the central bank. — Milton Friedman

No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money. — Milton Friedman

If you continue to use monetary policy to attempt to promote full employment the result would be that you would have higher inflation, and that you would not have lower unemployment. — Milton Friedman

Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition. — Milton Friedman

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. — Milton Friedman

[U]nemployment is ... a side effect of the cure for inflation. — Milton Friedman

Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression. — Milton Friedman

There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money - money tempted to inflate - put out by politically independent entities. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Government

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government. — Milton Friedman

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government. — Milton Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. — Milton Friedman

Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. — Milton Friedman

In the current world, with the skills needed, dropouts [like no secondary education] are condemned to being members of the underclass. In my view, this is a fault of the American school system, which is a government monopoly. — Milton Friedman

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. — Milton Friedman

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. — Milton Friedman

Governments never learn. Only people learn. — Milton Friedman

When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn't that exactly what's been happening with drugs? — Milton Friedman

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Freedom

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman

Making prohibition work is like making water run uphill; it's against nature. — Milton Friedman

Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. — Milton Friedman

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. — Milton Friedman

You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business. — Milton Friedman

Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself ... Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. — Milton Friedman

The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom. — Milton Friedman

A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion. — Milton Friedman

The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up. — Milton Friedman

Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Government Spending

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. ... because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. — Milton Friedman

Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist. — Milton Friedman

The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending. — Milton Friedman

Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all. — Milton Friedman

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. — Milton Friedman

How do you hold down government spending? — Milton Friedman

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income. — Milton Friedman

[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends. — Milton Friedman

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Greed

My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there are unused resources ... people having skills which are not being used. — Milton Friedman

Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? — 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

Milton Friedman Quotes About Education

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

In the 1960s, The National Education Association changed its character. The NEA changed into a union. And from that point on you can see deterioration in the quality of schooling in the United States. — Milton Friedman

The growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system. — Milton Friedman

I'd like to promote lots of things. I'd like to promote elimination of drug prohibition. I'd like to promote parental choice in education through vouchers. Those are two things I think are very urgent and important. They're both more important than the harm which Social Security will do. — Milton Friedman

The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago. — Milton Friedman

Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society. — Milton Friedman

Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling. — Milton Friedman

The collapse of communism in essence added tens and tens of millions of people to the world labor supply, and the people who were added had previously been getting very low income, but they were not unskilled. Many of them were fairly well educated. — Milton Friedman

In the US, the problem is primary and secondary education. We've had such an increase in inequality because a quarter of American kids don't finish high school! — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Free Market

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit. — Milton Friedman

The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend. — Milton Friedman

In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment. — Milton Friedman

The argument for the free market is a complicated and sophisticated one and depends on demonstration of secondary effects. I have confidence market efficiency will win out. — Milton Friedman

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. — Milton Friedman

The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed. — Milton Friedman

When you argue for free markets, you are arguing against the trend. — Milton Friedman

The argument for collectivism is simple; free market is not. — Milton Friedman

The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization. — Milton Friedman

I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Socialism

The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. — Milton Friedman

There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. — Milton Friedman

Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have not learned the tune. — Milton Friedman

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books. — Milton Friedman

There is only one social responsibility of business — Milton Friedman

I have long been a critic of Social Security, basically because I believe that it is not the business of government to tell people what fraction of their incomes they should devote to providing for their own or someone else's old age. — Milton Friedman

Americans know very little about social statistics, but I am not sure that it's important that Americans know about social statistics. — Milton Friedman

Socialism, in the traditional sense, meant government ownership and operation of the means of production. Outside of North Korea and a couple of other spots, no one in the world today would define socialism that way. That will never come back. — Milton Friedman

Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About People

If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment. — Milton Friedman

The benefits of a tariff are visible. Union workers can see they are "protected". The harm which a tariff does is invisible. It's spread widely. There are people that don't have jobs because of tariffs but they don't know it. — Milton Friedman

Why is it that private insurance companies are not in trouble because people are getting older? Aren't they subject to the same demographics? The difference is that they've accumulated a fund, not a pay-in, pay-out system. — Milton Friedman

We do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis. — Milton Friedman

I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. — Milton Friedman

When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people. — Milton Friedman

You can travel from one end of the industrialized world to the other and almost the only people you will find engaging in backbreaking toil are people who are doing it for sport. To find people whose day's toil has not been lightened by mechanical invention, you must go to the non-capitalist world. — Milton Friedman

The Founding Fathers envisioned a federal government that trusts its people with their money and freedom, outlining this limited, non-intrusive federal government in...the Constitution, leaving the other powers to people...or to the states. — Milton Friedman

As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state. — Milton Friedman

The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Free

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state. — Milton Friedman

A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. — Milton Friedman

With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves. — Milton Friedman

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. — Milton Friedman

The word 'free' is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with 'freedom.' The word 'fair' is not used in either of our founding documents. — Milton Friedman

Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it's only in the general interest and in no one's special interest. — Milton Friedman

In a free society, it is hard for 'good' people to do 'good', but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for 'evil' people to do 'evil', especially since one man's good is another's evil — Milton Friedman

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. — Milton Friedman

Every person shall be free to do good ' at his own expense. — Milton Friedman

I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About Market

One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative. — Milton Friedman

The stock market and economy are two different things. — Milton Friedman

The Internet moves us closer to "perfect information" on markets. Individuals and companies alike can buy and sell across borders and jurisdictions wherever they find the best match of supply and demand. — Milton Friedman

Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above. — Milton Friedman

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

It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society. — Milton Friedman

I believe the role that people like myself have played in the transformation of public opinion has been by persistently presenting a different point of view, a point of view which stresses the importance of private markets, of individual freedom, and the distorting effect of governmental policy. — Milton Friedman

The invisible hand in politics operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Quotes About System

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. — Milton Friedman

There's no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn't exist. — Milton Friedman

I think it's a scandal what has been happening in the school system so far as lower income classes. The dropout rates, the illiteracy rate, you know literacy in the United States was a lot higher in 1890 than it is now. — Milton Friedman

The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure. — Milton Friedman

The Great Depression in the United States, far from being a sign of the inherent instability of the private enterprise system, is a testament to how much harm can be done by mistakes on the part of a few men when they wield vast power over the monetary system of the country. — Milton Friedman

The long-range sloution to high unemployment is to increase the incentive for ordinary people to save, invest, work, and employ others. We make it costly for employers to employ people; we subsidize people not to go to work We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. — Milton Friedman

I believe that the monetary stability is an absolutely critical element in the satisfactory operation of a system. — Milton Friedman

In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work. — Milton Friedman

The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor people have been. — Milton Friedman

A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed. — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman Famous Quotes And Sayings

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. — Milton Friedman

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. — Milton Friedman

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. — Milton Friedman

And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? — Milton Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. — Milton Friedman

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state. — 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. — Milton Friedman

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. — Milton Friedman

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation. — Milton Friedman

Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn't really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and doesn't just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can't really afford to eliminate it - not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend. — Milton Friedman

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. — Milton Friedman

With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority. — Milton Friedman

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. — Milton Friedman

What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman

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. — Milton Friedman

What works for Sweden wouldn't work for France or Germany or Italy. In a small state, you can reach outside for many of your activities. In a homogeneous culture, they are willing to pay higher taxes in order to achieve commonly held goals. But "common goals" are much harder to come by in larger, more heterogeneous populations. — Milton Friedman

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. — Milton Friedman

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

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

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. — Milton Friedman

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace. — Milton Friedman

I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there's something wrong, pass a law and do something about it. — Milton Friedman

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes. — Milton Friedman

You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes. — Milton Friedman

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

Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it. — Milton Friedman

The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes. — Milton Friedman

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions. — Milton Friedman

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. — Milton Friedman

Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive. — Milton Friedman

Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay — Milton Friedman

Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order? — Milton Friedman

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? — Milton Friedman

Pick at random any three letters from the alphabet, put them in any order, and you will have an acronym designating a federal agency we can do without. — Milton Friedman

. . I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. — Milton Friedman

The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933. — Milton Friedman

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. — Milton Friedman

Life Lessons by Milton Friedman

1. Milton Friedman taught us that free markets are key to economic prosperity and that government intervention should be limited to protecting individuals from harm and providing public goods.
2. He also emphasized the importance of personal responsibility and individual liberty, showing us that these values are essential to a healthy society.
3. Finally, he taught us that economic freedom is a fundamental right and that economic progress is best achieved through free-market capitalism.