Milton Friedman in the Wall Street Journal Milton Friedman in the Wall Street Journal

Emily Parker and Joseph Rago compiled these quotes of Milton Friedman from the WSJ: Milton Friedman in the Wall Street Journal. One of my favorites here is:

To summarize, deficits are bad--but not because they necessarily raise interest rates. They are bad because they encourage political irresponsibility. They enable our representatives in Washington to buy votes at our expense without having to vote explicitly for taxes to finance the largesse. The result is a bigger government and a poorer nation. That is why I favor a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget and limit taxation.

I constantly hear from liberals how we should raise taxes to support the war in Iraq. But what I always suspect is that they really want to just raise taxes. And, of course, they totally ignore any income effects of cutting taxes, instead relying on static analysis that studiously ignores these effects.