Business

Karl Marx did not abolish child labor or free the women from working in the coal mines in England—the steam engine and modern machinery did that. —Ronald Reagan. Speech to the First Conservative Political Action Conference, January 25, 1974. The government should not...

If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here, in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and...

Countries are not rich in proportion to their natural resources. If you took a map of the world, put on it all the natural resources in each country, and thought that would give you a guide to the wealth of each country, you’d get it wrong—because if you look at...

When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union—like public housing in the United States—look decrepit within a year or two of their construction, why...

Wherever possible, the proposal and development of infrastructure should be left to the market. Roads should be laid and bridges built by private consortiums that issue bonds and repay them by collecting tolls. Sewer systems should be built by the same developer who...

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism, wage rates have risen steadily—as an inevitable economic consequence of rising capital accumulation, technological progress, and industrial expansion … It was the economic self-interest of employers that led...

Capping wage increases, which governments resort to in times of high monetary inflation, does not control inflation. Monetary inflation is caused by the rapid expansion of the amount of money in circulation. Preventing people from protecting themselves from the...

The property which every man has in his own labor; as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable … To hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor...

Any attempts by the government to force businesses to employ those supposedly subject to discrimination is both patronizing and counterproductive—patronizing because it suggests that the group is incapable of obtaining a job on its own merits, or that their kind is so...

We believed that since jobs (in a free society) did not depend on government but upon satisfying customers, there was no point in setting targets for ‘full’ employment. Instead, government should create the right framework of sound money, low taxes, light regulation...

To judge whether a workman is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the law-giver lest they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is...

The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other’s wants … They who wish the destruction of that...

Time and again we were asked when plants and companies closed, “where will the new jobs come from?” As the months went by, we could point to the expansion of self-employment and to industrial successes in aerospace, chemicals and North Sea oil. Increasingly we could...

The less a government interferes, the less it tries to thwart market forces, and the less it tries to smooth out the peaks and troughs of economic cycles, the more economic stability there will be. Recessions in one industry will be matched by booms in another....

Every privilege given to a company or industry is an act of plunder against the rest of society. Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration and Mussolini’s fascist guilds both involved the government allying itself closely with industry in order to ‘reduce...

Where there is liberty, there are encouragements to labor, because people labor for themselves: and no one can take from them the acquisitions which they make by their labor. There will be the greatest numbers of people, because they find employment and protection;...

An economy will work best when it is built on a framework of clear and predictable rules on which individuals and companies can depend when making their own plans. —Margaret Thatcher. Speech to the Economic Club of New York, June 18, 1991. Economic cycles Economic...

The Government is completely discharged from a duty, in the attempting to perform which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the...

The protection and enforcement of contracts through courts of civil law is the most crucial need of a peaceful society; without such protection, no civilization could be developed or maintained. The higher or more complex a civilization, the longer the range of...

Does the market need protection from a dominant player? The question is often asked: What if a large, rich company kept buying out its smaller competitors or kept forcing them out of business by means of undercutting prices and selling at a loss—would it not be able...