Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.
The only real cure for poverty is production.
New taxes are so unpopular that most ‘social’ handout schemes are originally enacted without enough increased taxation to pay for them. The result is chronic government deficits, paid for by the issuance of additional paper money.
Diluting the money supply with paper is the moral equivalent of diluting the milk supply with water.
The sad fact is that today most of the heads of big businesses in America have become so confused or intimidated that, so far from carrying the free market to argument to the enemy, they fail to defend themselves adequately even when attacked.
The army of relief and other subsidy recipients will continue to grow, and the solvency of the government will become increasingly un tenable, as long as part of the population can vote to force the other part to support it.
There is a profound contrast between the effects of foreign aid and of voluntary private investment: foreign aid goes from government to government. It is therefore almost inevitably statist and socialistic.
In order that one industry might grow or come into existence, a hundred other industries would have to shrink.
More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else-or from themselves. Increased handouts to selected groups mean merely increased taxes, or increased deficits and increased inflation.
A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production much.
A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.
From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation.
The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice.
To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.
Mere inflation-that is, the mere issuance of more money, with the consequence of higher wages and prices-may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not.
Everywhere the means is erected into the end, and the end itself is forgotten.
What is put into the hands of B cannot be put into the hands of A.
Government can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else.
If precious metals had been abundant, they would not have been precious.
For every alleged benefit that the politicians confer upon us, they must necessarily deprive us of something else.