Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman, the recently deceased economist, was quite possibly the greatest economist of the past one hundred years. I've been doing some studying up on economics, and found a site full of excerpts and quotes from Dr. Friedman. I found a few both shocking and challenging. I'll share them with you below.

"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."

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

"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances."