Milton Friedman Quotes
There is likely to be a lag between the need for action and government ["an individual's" or "a team's"] recognition of the need; a further lag between recognition of the need for action and the taking of action; and a still further lag between the action and its effects
Friedman, Milton. Essays in Positive Economics. University of Chicago Press, 1953, p. 315.
See {626594} for Polk’s negative view of delegation of any authority or responsibility.
Diem appointed his relatives and cronies to his cabinet and other key political positions, and allowed the legislature to meet infrequently thereby having his family control the country.
The mayor had asked his health commissioner what the city could do most to improve the health of its citizens, to which the health commissioner—like amost all public health experts—responded “Cut down the smoking.” Without checking with any other politicians or advisors, Bloomberg just began his now famous campaign for a smake free city. He was criticized, castigated, and sued by local bars and restaurants and national tobacco business. But New York became the first Smoke Free city and others all started emulating New York. This saved more lives than all the rest of the public health programs taken together.
Generally businessmen who are successful do not make good government officials, They are free to make their decisions as best they can. They are not skilled at getting buy in before deciding and having to change if there are some important objectors like Congress or the White House. Rarely does anyone low down in the system sabotage the decision with leaks to the press. The leakers are almost always other high level appointees or elected officials who didn’t like the decision or are miffed that they have not been consulted. Businessmen are used to subordinates following their instructions / orders. They have no experience or skills developed to cope with the realities of democratic government where the higher up you are the more people feel they have a right to tell you what to do and obstruct you if you do not concur.
Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler and others, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations. Several students and young professors who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Thomas Sowell and Robert Lucas Jr.
