20 Milton Friedman Quotes on Policy

Milton Friedman quotes on policy

6. I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.

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

13. A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.

14. The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe (monetary) contractions of 1920-1, 1929-33, and 1937-8. No other 20 year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contractions. This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System... and that the severity of each of the major contractions - 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank... To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.

15. I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.

17. There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.

19. The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.

20. I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, 'How do you hold down government spending?' Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes.

24. If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

29. 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.

31. 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.

32. Governments never learn. Only people learn.

35. I am a limited-government libertarian.

39. The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

41. We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work.

42. What is not forbidden in Sweden, is obligatory.

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

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

48. Only a crisis, real 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 politically inevitable.

56. The Bank [of Canada] gave it a college try, it really did. It just doesn't work that way.