Milton Friedman? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Economic policies are typically promulgated and enacted with high purposes and goals, yet sometimes the results are inadvertently deleterious. A prominent economist once said: One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. These words have been credited to …
Tag Archives: Milton Friedman
Quote Origin: There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch — TANSTAAFL
Milton Friedman? Robert Heinlein? Robert G. Ingersoll? Michael Montague? Walter Morrow? John Madden? Harley L. Lutz? Pierre Dos Utt? Leonard P. Ayres? Jake Falstaff? Herman Fetzer? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Today many goods and services are available for free especially via the internet. However, the true cost is usually not zero. Subsidies, indirect costs, …
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Quote Origin: A Shortage of Sand in the Sahara
Milton Friedman? William F. Buckley Jr.? French Sage? Alfred E. Kahn? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The well-known economist Milton Friedman was often critical of governmental power. The following saying has been attributed to him: If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of …
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Quote Origin: If You Want Jobs Then Give These Workers Spoons Instead of Shovels
Milton Friedman? William Aberhart? Walter Augustus Wyckoff? Unemployed Worker? Businessman in China? UK Minister of Agriculture? Question for Quote Investigator:: In 2011 an editorial in the Wall Street Journal mentioned a quotation that apparently is well-known: The famous Milton Friedman line about government ordering people to dig with spoons to employ more people comes to …
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There Is Nothing So Disastrous As a Rational Investment Policy In an Irrational World
John Maynard Keynes? Milton Friedman? A. Gary Shilling? Albert J. Hettinger, Jr.? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Forbes magazine has a fascinating searchable database called “Thoughts On The Business of Life” that contains “more than 10,000 quotes.” The following saying interests me, but the database doesn’t appear to include citations so I am not sure if …