Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [141-160] of 579 Economics quotesEconomics QuotesEconomics Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.~ Milton Friedman If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.~ Milton Friedman The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... 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.~ 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 Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.~ Milton Friedman 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 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 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. ... Roosevelt's policies were very destructive. Roosevelt's policies made the depression longer and worse than it otherwise would have been.~ Milton Friedman [T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.~ Milton Friedman [U]nemployment is ... a side effect of the cure for inflation.~ Milton Friedman Why be thrifty when your old age and health care are provided for, no matter how profligate you act in your youth? Why be prudent when the state insures your bank deposits, replaces your flooded-out house, buys all the wheat you can grow? ... Why be diligent when half of your earnings are taken from you and given to the idle?~ David Frum To expose a 4.2 Trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business.~ Buckminster Fuller Real wealth can only increase.~ R. Buckminster Fuller One Blue Dog Democratic House Member reminded me earlier this month of the saying that 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' He wondered if his fellow Members weren't more in need of advice from psychiatrists than from economists at this point.~ John Fund Always remember the difference between economic power and political power: You can refuse to hire someone's services or buy his products in the private sector and go somewhere else instead. In the public sector, though, if you refuse to accept a politician's or bureaucrat's product or services you go to jail. Ultimately, after all, all regulations are observed and all taxes are paid at gunpoint. I believe those few who can't even see that have been short-sighted sheep, and I suggest they learn how to think conceptually, develop consistency and grasp principles soon.~ Rick Gaber [The task is to] covertly lower the standard of living, the whole social structure, of America so that we can be merged with all other nations.~ Rowan Gaither The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.~ John Kenneth Galbraith The Federal Reserve System is treated by nearly all economists with reverence. On no matter is their instruction of the young in the subtlety and benignity of established institutions more admiring-or, in broad effect, more successful. Corporations are flawed by an instinct for monopoly. Trade unions interfere with the market, urge trade restrictions, resist new technology and thus obstruct progress, and they can fall victim to extortionists and racketeers. The regulatory agencies of the government are notably imperfect instruments of economic guidance. The Federal Reserve System is not totally above criticism. It makes many mistakes but these are always interesting errors of judgment. they are examined not critically but respectfully to discover why men of insight went wrong. That for such error anyone should be sacked or even seriously rebuked is, for economists, nearly unthinkable. This approval goes back to the origins and can be highly negligent of circumstance. The most widely read account of the genesis of the System tells glowingly of its birth in the closing weeks of 1913 when the Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Wilson.~ John Kenneth Galbraith The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.~ John Kenneth Galbraith The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.~ John Kenneth Galbraith Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print