The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.

If the quantity of labour realized in commodities, regulate their exchangeable value, every increase of the quantity of labour must augment the value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as every diminution must lower it.

The value of a yellow metal (gold), originally chosen as money because it tickled the fancy of savages, is clearly a chancy and irrelevant thing on which to base the value of our money and the stability of our industrial system.

Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Competition is like experimentation in science, a discovery process, and it must rely on the self interest of producers, it must allow them to use their knowledge for their purposes, because nobody else possesses the information

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

Few policies are more calculated to destroy the existing basis of a free society than the debauching of its currency. And few tasks, if any, are more important to the champion of freedom than creation of a sound monetary system.

Only the closest collaborators of the Fuehrer know how difficult is the burden of this responsibility; how sorrowful are the hours during which decisions must be made which bear upon the well being and the fate of all of Germany

Models used to describe and predict inflation commonly distinguish between changes in food and energy prices - which enter into total inflation - and movements in the prices of other goods and services - that is, core inflation.

There is an unearthly, mystical element in Friedman's thought. The mere existence of a stock of money somehow promotes expenditure. But insofar as he offers an intelligible theory, it is made up of elements borrowed from Keynes.

I don't think if we had been able to make that choice rationally, we would have said that's what we want to do. We would have said: "Can't we save the banks and solve our health care problems?" The answer is yes. You could have.

What's going to happen is that there will be a definite consensus that Europe is not working. The diagnosis will be to shed the currency and keep the rest, or that Europe is not working and a broader rejection - like in the U.K.

China-led globalization in some ways worries me because they are not concerned about human rights, labor rights. They probably aren't even really concerned about competitive marketplaces. So in some ways, they're like Mr. Trump.

For the president of the United States, reputation does matter. The reputation of the United States does matter. We are dealing with countries all over the world. They want to know if your word is good. Trump's word is not good.

The difference between me and people like Murray Rothbard is that, though I want to know what my ideal is, I think I also have to be willing to discuss changes that are less than ideal so long as they point me in that direction.

Modern economics is a set of formal models and equations purporting to fully determine human behaviour, at least in the economic realm. And there is no way that uncertainty can be compressed into determinate mathematical models.

Celebrity has become a burden. There are more demands on your time. People think it is glamorous to fly places. But it is not - even if you travel business class and stay in wonderful hotels, you end 10,000 miles away from home.

I'm especially baffled by the idea of taking insurance against a U.S. default. If America defaults, we're talking about a chaotic world - Mad Max, more or less - in which case, who imagines that insurance claims will be honored?

To continue on the road we Americans have traveled for the past century is ultimately to deliver ourselves completely into the hands of an unlimited government. We can have a free society or a welfare state. We cannot have both.

I do think that the standard media is controlled by the conventional wisdom about global warming. We've come to believe - from reading a lot of articles and talking to a lot of scientists - that there's another side to be heard.

Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships.

We are... living in a free society without the faith that built that society - and without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it... We still have the cathedral of freedom but how long will it last without the faith?

We've gone through rounds of tax cutting and rounds of tax increases in modern U.S. history. We haven't really had a big igniting of a trade war belligerence since the Depression era, and that's not an era that we want to repeat.

There are two very different types of artists: those I call Old Masters, who work by trial and error and tend to improve with age, and conceptual people, or Young Geniuses, who generally do their best work early in their careers.

Only the closest collaborators of the Fuehrer know how difficult is the burden of this responsibility; how sorrowful are the hours during which decisions must be made which bear upon the well being and the fate of all of Germany.

At the federal level, the fiscal stimulus of 2008 and 2009 supported economic output, but the effects of that stimulus faded; by 2011, federal fiscal policy actions became a drag on output growth when the recovery was still weak.

The Fed should not be responding to the ups and downs of the markets, and it is certainly not our policy to do so. But when there are significant financial developments, it's incumbent on us to ask ourselves what is causing them.

What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing sensual pleasure and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable nutritional requirement.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

It's very hard to persuade a young person who has seen the Great Recession, who has seen all the problems with inequality, to tell them inequality is not important and that markets are always efficient. They'd think you're crazy.

Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals.

A long time ago, I watched President Reagan repeat a few simple points about the benefits for everyone of lower taxes, light regulations, and limited government. Successful policies are sold by repetition, not unrelated tangents.

I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.

Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

Those who controlled private capital largely walked away from the US economy for the entire 1930s, refusing to pump in enough new investment even to replace the machinery and goods-in-process that were consumed during the decade.

All organizations are hierarchical. At each level people serve under those above them. An organization is therefore a structured institution. If it is not structured, it is a mob. Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things.

The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.

When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.

In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.

I don't keep it secret that I live with my partner Gio. I'm very proud of my gayness. But there is lots I wouldn't want the press to write about me... it is a matter of regret that being gay is the most interesting thing about me.

Crossrail is a prime example of infrastructure. It is a rather deadly word, but I think it is exciting stuff, the civil engineering which makes Britain tick - the bridges, tunnels, power and water networks, which bind us together.

I think race is very important. I think generally speaking, we've to face the general problem, which is that we are seeing more children coming out of families which simply don't give them adequate resources for their development.

Improving the quality of our lives should be the ultimate target of public policies. But public policies can only deliver best fruit if they are based on reliable tools to measure the improvement they seek to produce in our lives.

Interesting statistic: In every economic recovery until 1982, working people captured more than 80 percent of the value of the recovery. Since 1982, the top 10 percent has captured 90 percent of the value of the economic recovery.

Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today's disadvantaged to become tomorrow's privileged and, in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.

[I]n America, at least, we have a pretty good record for behaving in a fiscally responsible fashion, with one exception - namely, the fiscal irresponsibility that prevails when, and only when, hard-line conservatives are in power.

If each year slightly less capital is invested in industry, the time will eventually come when the amount of equipment per laborer and, in consequence, the productivity and the wages of labor are less than they otherwise would be.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading. So I made an economic decision, and it turned out the best judgment I ever made in my life.

What you do by having an income tax rate reduction across the board, you really provide great incentives for people to work, produce, and increase output. So I would support a carbon tax in replacement for a progressive income tax.

When Texans suffered from the collapse of the oil market in the 1980s, they could rely on the fiscal union to help them. When Texas boomed with rising oil prices in the 2000s, it contributed to the union to help harder hit regions.

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