Thursday, May 3, 2012

Four Milton Friedman Quotes That Say An Awful Lot …

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” ~ Milton Friedman

“Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.” ~ Milton Friedman

"The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the
middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to
prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?" ~ Milton Friedman

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