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Milton Friedman on Schools and vouchers

So far, twenty-two people have received the Nobel award in economics. Not one of them has been female—so, to judge only from the past, the most important thing to do if you want to be a Nobel laureate is to be male. I hasten to add that the absence of females is not, I believe, attributable to male chauvinist bias on the part of the Swedish Nobel Committee. I believe that the economics profession as a whole would have been nearly unanimous that, during the period in question, only one female candidate met the relevant standards—the English economist Joan Robinson, who has since died. The failure of the Nobel Committee to award her a prize may well have reflected bias but not sex bias.
Lives of the laureates
Lecture, 1985, Lives of the Laureates: Seven Nobel Economists, ed. William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (MIT Press, 1986), p. 77
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Milton Friedman, “Lives of the laureates” (Lives of the Laureates: Seven Nobel Economists, ed. William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (MIT Press, 1986), 1985), p. 77. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/so-far-twenty-two-people-received-nobel-award-1985

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He also said

  1. Social Security, as we call it, is a combination of two separate programs, neither of which would have a chance of being enacted on its own. One program is a program of a flat-rate tax on wages up to a maximum: a regressive tax imposed at one of the worst places in the economic structure, where it introduces a gap between what the worker receives and what it costs the employer. You cannot conceive of that tax being enacted by itself as part of a financing program. The second component is a system of payments of subsidies, which, again, I cannot believe could have been enacted by itself. It is a system in which the amount a person receives depends on a whole variety of circumstances, some of which may be relevant and some of which may not be relevant to what you would like to have a subsidy program do. But you would never enact a subsidy program in which the largest subsidies go to the people who have earned the highest incomes. Yet when you tie the two together you have a sacred cow. I have always said it is one of the greatest marketing miracles of this century.

    Context. From an August 1998 interview in Barron’s, reprinted in the Hoover Digest as “Mr. Market.” Asked whether the United States should privatize Social Security as Chile had done.

    Mr. Market
    Interview, 1998, Interview in Barron’s, August 24, 1998 (the questioner is identified only as Epstein); reprinted in Hoover Digest 1999 No. 1
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  2. Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages.

    Context. From a June 1979 Newsweek column, written during the second oil-shock gasoline lines, arguing that the shortage was caused by federal price controls on crude oil and petroleum products in force since August 1971.

    Blaming the Obstetrician
    Column, 1979, Newsweek (June 4, 1979); reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, pp. 14007 to 14008, introduced by Representative G. William Whitehurst of Virginia. The running head reads June 7, 1979, which is the issue; the entry’s own dateline reads Wednesday, June 6, 1979, which is when he spoke., Congressional Record, June 7, 1979, p. 14008
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  3. Well, I have always argued that you will not solve problems by electing the right man to the White House. Certainly not by electing the wrong man. … The only way you will ever solve problems, in my opinion, and move in the direction we want to move is by making it in the political interest of the wrong people to do the right thing.

    Context. Asked by Heffner how he evaluates President Carter. This is a recorded statement of the idea behind the widely circulated line about making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things, whose own source this archive has not verified.

    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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