“I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent.”

—  Milton Friedman

Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 163

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent." by Milton Friedman?
Milton Friedman photo
Milton Friedman 158
American economist, statistician, and writer 1912–2006

Related quotes

Augustin-Jean Fresnel photo

“If nature has offered to produce the maximum effect with minimum causes, it is in all of its laws that it had to solve this major problem.”

Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788–1827) French engineer and physicist

in
Context: If one was sometimes led astray by trying to simplify the elements of a science, it is because one has established systems before putting together a fairly large number of facts. Some assumption, which would be very simple when one considers only a class of phenomena, requires many other assumptions if one wants to leave the narrow circle in which we had initially withdrawn. If nature has offered to produce the maximum effect with minimum causes, it is in all of its laws that it had to solve this major problem. It is without doubt difficult to discover the foundations of this wonderful economy, i. e. the simplest causes of phenomena considered from such a wide point of view. But if this general principle of the philosophy of physics does not lead immediately to the knowledge of truth, it can direct the efforts of the human spirit, by leading it away from theories which relate the phenomena to too many different causes, and by adopting preferably those based on the smallest number of assumptions, which show to be more fruitful in consequences.

John Eardley Wilmot photo

“The statute law is the will of the legislature in writing; the common law is nothing else but statutes worn out by time; all our law began by consent of the legislature, and whether it is now law by usage or writing, it is the same thing.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

2 Wils. 341.
Collins v. Blantern (1767)

Chris Rock photo

“I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

“There is a universal law; INTENT is the cause, your life is the effect.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 64

Gustav Radbruch photo

“To be sure, one value comes with every positive-law statute without reference to its content: Any statute is always better than no statute at all, since it at least creates legal certainty. But legal certainty is not the only value that law must effectuate, nor is it the decisive value. Alongside legal certainty, there are two other values: purposiveness and justice. In ranking these values, we assign to last place the purposiveness of the law in serving the public benefit.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law" (1946)

Martin Luther photo

“I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 89

Jefferson Davis photo

“We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him. Our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech (March 1861), as quoted in Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America https://books.google.com/books?id=KSd0SkDXtJQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (2002), by William C. Davis, New York: The Free Press, p. 137
1860s

Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“The most important effects of Christianity went out from it without the intention of the Church, or even against its will.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Elena Kagan photo

“Its fine if the law bans books because government won't really enforce it.”

Elena Kagan (1960) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Widely reported as having been said by Kagan during the Supreme Court oral argument in the Citizens United case in September, 2009; however, this quote does not appear in the actual transcript of the oral argument http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-205[Reargued].pdf.
Misattributed

Ronald Dworkin photo

“We live in and by the law. It makes us what we are: citizens and employees and doctors and spouses and people who own things. It is sword, shield, and menace: we insist on our wage, or refuse to pay our rent, or are forced to forfeit penalties, or are closed up in jail, all in the name of what our abstract and ethereal sovereign, the law, has decreed. And we argue about what it has decreed, even when the books that are supposed to record its commands and directions are silent; we act then as if law had muttered its doom, too low to be heard distinctly. We are subjects of law's empire, liegemen to its methods and ideals, bound in spirit while we debate what we must therefore do.”

Ronald Dworkin Law's Empire

Law's Empire (1986), Preface

Related topics