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Milton Friedman Quotes

Browse 11 quotes about Milton Friedman.

Milton Friedman Quotes

“Arnold Harberger, Milton Friedman & Co. Inc., your modest proposal of partial equilibrium for the general good is not without its own internal contradictions. Moreover, you cannot take complete credit for this program of equilibriation. Although you and your colleagues and disciples at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago may have dedicated two decades to the design of the program and the technical training of its executors, it took the approach of another major economic and political crisis of capitalism, analogous to that of the 1930's, to mobilize the political support and the military force to instal a government prepared to put your program of equilibration and your equilibrating experts to work in Chile - and you, Milton Friedman, are still waiting to put your part of the same program, complete with Brazilian style indexing, into practice at home for the glory and benefit of the bourgeoisie in the USA, whom you so faithfully serve as paid executors and executioners.”

CapitalismBourgeoisieChileNeoliberalismMilton FriedmanArnold HarbergerChicago BoysCrisis Of Capitalism
Book:Economic Genocide in Chile: Monetarism Versus Humanity
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“Smith’s concept of the mercantile system evolved—completely out of context—into the modern concept of mercantilism: a simplistic, blanket economic term used to characterize early modern economic thinkers as proponents of an interventionist, taxing, subsidizing, and warring state whose goal was to simply hoard gold. In 1931, the Swedish economic historian Eli Heckscher, in his monumental study Mercantilism, juxtaposed Colbert’s “mercantile” economics with a pure, laissez-faire system, which he felt Smith embodied, that allowed for individual and commercial freedoms without state intervention. A powerful and simplistic binary continued thereafter, one that informs our own vision of the free market today. We can see it still in Friedman’s work.”

Adam SmithMilton FriedmanEli Heckscher
Book:Free Market: The History of an Idea
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“Today, Adam Smith is famous as the father of capitalism and an advocate of a central tenet of free market thought: that greed is supposedly good and it drives markets. This was an idea pushed by neoliberal economists, inspired by Friedrich Hayeck and Milton Friedman, who had no knowledge of the history of moral philosophy, or of Scotland. What they missed is that no gentleman of his time could ever espouse greed, least of all a professor of moral philosophy. Indeed, Adam Smith recognized greed as an economic driver, and saw it as necessary, but also realized that it was a problem for society. His work was not an espousal of greed, but rather a response to it. His work was an attempt to find a way to reign in commercial greed to support the agrarian order, which he believed to be inherently more productive than business.”

GreedNeoliberalismMoral PhilosophyAdam SmithFriedrich HayekMilton Friedman
Book:Adam Smith: The Kirkcaldy Papers
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“Ultimately, the most powerful way to rebalance the interests of private owners and the common good is by shifting the focus towards taxes on wealth - that is, asking those who have accummulated substantial assets down the years (or with inherited wealth, down the centuries) to make a fairer contribution. The case is indisputable: since 2008, average earnings have hardly risen, while the amount of wealth held by the better-off has sky-rocketed. Clearly paying for shocks such as the 2008 crash or the Covid-19 pandemic should not fall solely on those dependent on their immediate income. A Land Value Tax could also play an important role: a policy that would be difficult to evade, and would tackle the vast windfall profits that come from the development of land. It's an idea that has long enjoyed support from all sides of the political spectrum, including Winston Churchill, as well as from economists as divergent as Milton Friedman, Adam Smith and J.K. Galbraith. Given its elegant simplicity and essential fairness, the fact that it has not been introduced in England is a case-book example of the landowners' ability to block reform.”

Adam SmithWealth AccumulationWinston ChurchillLand OwnershipMilton FriedmanTaxation PolicyJ K GalbraithLand Value Taxation
Book:Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story
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“People tell ya to grow up… be a man… But what does that mean exactly? Doesn’t it mean to do the right thing… act forthrightly. Well… I think we need to give people money… UBI… Negative tax… whatever the hell you call it. And then parents say, hey, stay out of Politics, WE’RE NOT FROM AROUND HERE… Fine. Where are we from? Belarus? Okay. Well we’re from Belarus, why couldn’t we get UBI in Belarus? Parents say shut up, the President’s a dictator. Oh? Well, call me an idealist, but seems to me like you’re just looking for shit to complain about and run from your problems. A word of advice to potential immigrants. Stay away from this shit hole. These American schools tend to pump out sluts, alcoholics, and non-binary homeless philosophers.”

PhilosophyPoliticsImmigrationHypocritesNonbinaryUniversal Basic IncomeMoral DecayJordan B PetersonMilton Friedman
Author:Dmitry Dyatlov
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“This points to a nagging and important question about free-market ideologues: Are they ‘true believers’, driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment, as is often asserted, or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered greed while still invoking an altruistic motive?”

EconomicsFree Market IdeologyMilton FriedmanShock DoctrineChicago School Economics
Author:Naomi Klein
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“Around the same time that Goldwater lost his bid for the presidency, the TV evangelicals Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell joined the libertarian, far-right wing of the Republican Party. They called for free markets and cited Hayek and Friedman to protest government bureaucrats, while also issuing daily denunciations of rock music, homosexuals, abortion, civil rights, and pornography. Hard-right evangelicals were among the most influential leaders of the new free-market movement. The Republican Party became an ideological mix of the mainline northeastern establishment, American Baptist puritanism, racism and bigotry, and a Friedmanesque and American Southwest individualist libertarianism and permissiveness—all held together by a near-religious reverence for the multinational conglomerate firm and the sanctity of capital-holding shareholders.”

Friedrich HayekMilton FriedmanPat RobertsonJerry FalwellBarry Goldwater
Book:Free Market: The History of an Idea
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“Like the monetarist Milton Friedman, Keynes looked to price stability as a way to shore up classical economic thinking. For the most part, he believed, laissez-faire economics worked. Supply and demand did bring society to a prosperous equilibrium. They just needed a few pieces of basic economic architecture to work: property rights, the rule of law, and price stability. But unlike Friedman, Keynes had arrived at monetarism as a creative way to expand the power of the state to fight the uncertainties and anxieties of postwar life.”

LawEconomicsPropertyMilton FriedmanJohn Maynard KeynesPrice SystemMonetarism
Book:The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money AND Essays In Persuasion
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