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Milton Friedman on Rent control and housing

Rent control is certainly one example in which I will challenge you to find from the professional economists from the left to the right, I will challenge you to find anybody who will defend rent control from a technical economic point of view.
The Open Mind
Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
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  1. On the other hand, if I say, regardless of the consequences, it is morally wrong for a government official to force me to rent a piece of property to you for less than the price at which I would voluntarily rent it, at that point, I am now speaking as a man with values and philosophy. That is to say, you have both principle and expediency involved. The economist talks to the expediency. The philosopher, the ethicist, the human being, talks to the principle.
    The Open Mind
    Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
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  2. Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, set forth a hypothesis that was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a great man!
    The Romance of Economics
    Interview, 2006, Interview by Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal; reprinted in Hoover Digest 2006 No. 4
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  3. Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages.
    Blaming the Obstetrician
    Column, 1979, Newsweek (June 4, 1979); reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, June 7, 1979, pp. 14007 to 14008, introduced by Representative G. William Whitehurst of Virginia, who describes it as “an article by Milton Friedman, which appeared in the June 4, 1979, issue of Newsweek”, Congressional Record, June 7, 1979, pp. 14007 to 14008
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