Milton Friedman Quotes

A military draft is undesirable and unnecessary. We can and should man our armed forces with volunteers—as the United States has traditionally done except in major wars.

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. 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.

In the past century a myth has grown up that free market capitalism — equality of opportunity as we have interpreted that term — increases such inequalities, that it is a system under which the rich exploit the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before. Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor wider, nowhere are the rich richer and the poor poorer, than in those societies that do not permit the free market to operate. That is true of feudal societies like medieval Europe, India before independence, and much of modern South America, where inherited status determines position. It is equally true of centrally planned societies, like Russia or China or India since independence, where access to government determines position. It is true even where central planning was introduced, as in all three of these countries, in the name of equality.

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.

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.

President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”… Neither half of that statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. “What your country can do for you” implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward. “What you can do for your country” assumes that the government is the master, the citizen the servant.

The key need in policy-setting is to reverse the growth of government!

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.

President Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you —ask what you can do for your country.’… Neither half of that statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. ‘What your country can do for you’ implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward. ‘What you can do for your country’ assumes that the government is the master, the citizen the servant.

From the founding of the Republic to 1929, spending by governments at all levels, federal, state, and local, never exceeded 12 percent of the national income except in time of major war, and two-thirds of that was state and local spending. Federal spending typically amounted to 3 percent or less of the national income. Since 1933 government spending has never been less than 20 percent of national income and is now over 40 percent, and two-thirds of that is spending by the federal government. True, much of the period since the end of World War II has been a period of cold or hot war. However, since 1946 nondefense spending alone has never been less than 16 percent of the national income and is now roughly one-third the national income. Federal government spending alone is more than one-quarter of the national income in total, and more than a fifth for nondefense purposes alone. By this measure the role of the federal government in the economy has multiplied roughly tenfold in the past half-century.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening — one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism.

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

The elementary fact is that ‘business’ does not and cannot pay taxes. Only people can pay taxes. Corporate officials may sign the check, but the money that they forward to Internal Revenue comes from the corporation’s employees, customers, or stockholders.

a private enterprise is a failure, it closes down — unless it can get a government subsidy to keep it going; if a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. I challenge you to find exceptions.