Thread by @eriktorenberg

Collection of scattered quotes & ideas from Milton Friedman:

"The goal is to create a system where it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things instead of politically profitable for the right people to do the wrong things"

K-12:

You can subsidize a producer or you can subsidize a consumer.

In education. we subsidize a producer (school) over the students.

School vouchers would subsidize the students and create a real market where free schools would have incentive to serve everyone.

What would happen if we had school choice? School diversity, just like restaurants.

Some of them would concentrate on arts, others on sciences, others on vocational activities

schools of every variety appealing to every taste to serve every need, the best ones rising to the top

You'd think political coalitions would be bottom 51% vs. the top 49%, but that actually doesn't make much sense.

Those at the bottom economically tend to be less skillful politically, so the coalition ends up being upper middle class and lower middle class vs the top and bottom

What about 100% inheritance tax?

That encourages people to spend as much as possible, but what about future investment?

The amazing thing is is the extent to which the market system has encouraged people to work hard and sacrifice for their children.

Social Security is also sold as a program to benefit the poor.

But Social Security is a program which imposes unduly heavy taxes on lower income groups in the society to provide higher benefit to upper income groups in the society, because they live longer and get to enjoy it.

Great Depression was a failure of gov’t via monetary policy, not private business.

During 1929-1933, total quality of money declined by 1/3.

Why are gov’t so popular even when it doesn’t work?

Market has no press agents. Gov't has great many press agents.

The goal is to create a system where it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things instead of politically profitable for the right people to do the wrong things

Before 1914 mass immigration was easier — became difficult once we implemented the welfare state, can't afford it infinitely.

despite all the rhetoric about the minimum wage helping the poor, the unions were in favor of a higher minimum wage for a very different reason, because it would protect the members of their unions from competition from the lower and lesser skilled people.

In the first place, all of these programs involve some people spending other people's money for objectives that are determined by still a third group of people.

Nobody spend somebody else's money as carefully as the person who spends their own.

Someone once said, there are no problems in NYC that couldn't be solved if the city budget was twice what it is now.

City budget has tripled and many projects are worse. When gov't has more money, citizens have less to spend. Citizens spend $ more carefully than gov'ts do on avg

"Why is housing so bad in NYC? Bad governmental policy.

If you have eliminated the government from the housing market, and left that money in the hands of the people themselves, the housing situation in the US today would be far better than it is."

We are expected to conclude that the rich are responsible for the deprivation of the poor.

They are rich at the expense of the poor.

But the truth is that’s not what happens .

There has never been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than free markets.

Life is unfair.

There's nothing fair about one men being born blind and another man being born with sight.

There's nothing fair about one man being born of a wealthy parent and one of a poor parent.

There's nothing fair about Lebron being able to dunk and you can't.

Classic MF: "I am a liberal, I believe in freedom liberalism means of and belonging to freedom pertaining to freedom. Those people who now call themselves liberals have misappropriated the term because for them it simply means that they are liberal with other people's money."

We talk about market failures, but those happen occasionally. Whereas the same market failures (i.e negative externalities & principle-agent problems) are built into most gov't actions

Which makes the cure often worse than the disease.

Government protects its workers, just as trade unions protect their members, but both do it at someone else's expense.

When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers.

When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer.

But when when employees get higher wages through the competition of the free market, those higher wages are at nobody's expense, and are often at other's benefit. Bigger pie.

Invisible hand in economics: People intend to serve private interest but actually also serve public interests.

Invisible hand in politics: People intend to serve public interests but actually end up serving private interests.

"Mr Friedman what policies would lead to adequate housing for all the poor?

"Well, What we now consider inadequate, would have been considered a palace 150 years ago. Avg income of the poor is higher than avg income of all the people in USSR."

So you have to ask a very different kind of question:

What system will give the widest range of people the greatest opportunity to make the most out of themselves? In that system you'll have higher standards of housing for all.

"The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither.

The society that puts freedom before equality will end up w/ a great measure of both"

"There's no justification whatsoever for cutting down all the tall trees in order that there be no tree in the forest"

Of all the revolutions that have taken place in the world the American Revolution is unique in having given birth to a free society.

Neither the Russian, French, or Chinese revolutions did.