American - Economist | July 31, 1912 - November 16, 2006
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
GreatDepressionGovernmentEconomy
Inflation is taxation without legislation.
FinanceWithoutLegislationInflation
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
MoneyLunchFreeFree LunchThing
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
FreePlaceImportantSingleMarket
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
PoliticsGovernmentDesertSandYou
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.
GoodFreedomGovernmentLossHelp
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.
GovernmentThreeProtectMilitary
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.
FreedomPeopleFreeWantGroup
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
ScienceArchitectureGovernmentNever
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
WorkTaxesSystemIncreasingly
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
GoodPoliticsGovernmentWorthless
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.
OrganizationCapitalismGreedProblem
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