Daily Inspiration Quote by Milton Friedman

It lands like an accusation disguised as a definition. By calling inflation "taxation without legislation", Milton Friedman isn’t just describing rising prices; he’s reframing them as a political act carried out offstage, beyond the accountability mechanisms that normally accompany a tax. The brilliance is the swap: inflation, typically treated as a technocratic phenomenon, becomes a democratic problem. Someone is taking purchasing power from you, and nobody had to vote.

The intent is twofold. First, it indicts governments (and central banks, by implication) for using monetary expansion to fund commitments they can’t or won’t pay for transparently. Second, it arms citizens with a moral vocabulary: if inflation is a tax, then it has winners and losers, and the losers are often those least able to hedge - wage earners, retirees on fixed incomes, anyone without assets that rise with prices.

The subtext is classic Friedman: skepticism of discretionary state power and a preference for rules over judgment. Taxes require debate, recorded votes, and political risk; inflation can feel like weather, even when it’s policy. That gap is the point. He’s warning that the state can bypass the legislature and still extract resources, not by a bill but by dilution.

Context matters: Friedman’s most influential years ran through the inflationary 1970s and the backlash that followed, when "money supply" moved from textbook to nightly news and policymakers were forced to choose between painful stabilization and the quiet convenience of letting prices climb. The line is memorable because it makes that choice sound less like economics and more like consent.