Talk:Milton Friedman

Latest comment: 8 years ago by CononOfSamos in topic Broken Link ( removed from External Links Section )

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Milton Friedman page.


Hello, I am really interested in Friedman's macroeconomic views. I would like to know whether there are any current studies, experiments or predictive models comparing or parralleling Friedman's theories to what is happening in the current Chinese and European Union economies? Thanks to all who respond.

—This unsigned comment is by 204.117.11.100 (talkcontribs) .

Corporate social responsibility edit

The quotation, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits", listed in the Wikiquote article as unsourced, is actually the title of a New York Times Magazine article by Friedman from September, 1970. Here is a link to the full text: http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html

I suggest someone moves the quotation from the unsourced section.

—This unsigned comment is by 84.16.171.200 (talkcontribs) .
I have now added two sourced quotes from this article and removed the phrase from the unsourced section. ~ Kalki 19:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Corruption edit

We should probably move the quote "Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations" from "Unsourced" to "Misattributed". Unless someone can come up with the source for that quote, it looks like it is an imaginary quote written for a monologue in the movie "Syriana". I can't find it anywhere else and, importantly, it doesn't match up with any of Friedman's other quotes about corruption or regulation.

Unsourced edit

These should be provided with sources before being moved back into the article.
  • Is it really true that political self-interest is somehow nobler than economic self-interest?
  • I am a limited-government libertarian.
  • Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
  • We don't have a desperate need to grow. We have a desperate desire to grow.
  • We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work.
  • What is not forbidden in Sweden, is obligatory.
  • What would the people who sold us goods do with the money? They'd get dollars. What would they do with the dollars? Eat them?!
    • In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment.
  • If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment.
  • Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich.
  • 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.
  • The stock market and economy are two different things.
  • If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.
  • There is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.

The quote "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." is found in "Tyranny of the Status Quo," 1984, p. 115.

  • So long as large sums of money are involved — and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal — it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.
  • There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes.

I've located the source for Friedman's quote: "Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." It's from his book "Free To Choose" (1980). Will add back to main page. I guess that means it can also be removed from the list above. 93.125.232.127 18:01, 12 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

Broken Link ( removed from External Links Section ) edit

I have removed the following link : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6813529239937418232&q=milton+friedman A video presentation of Friedman on freedom and the government -- from the External Links Section : produces a 404 error when clicked on. Documenting this change here in case someone may know of a new +/or alternative location for this video presentation. CononOfSamos (talk) 19:26, 10 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

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