From the original Free To Choose series Milton asks: “Who Protects the Consumer?”. Many government agencies have been created for this purpose, yet they do so by restricting freedom and stifling beneficial innovation, and eventually become agents for the groups they have been created to regulate.
Milton Friedman rightly noted, “The most anti-consumer measures on our statute books are restrictions on foreign trade.”
Pt 5
MCKENZIE: Milton, I don’t quite understand your position on this. Are you saying, though, that there’s no place for government to test consumer product safety at all?
FRIEDMAN: I am saying, lets separate issues. I am saying there is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products, the effect of which will be to harm themselves. There is, of course, a place __
MCKENZIE: But how do they know that effect?
FRIEDMAN: Well, for a moment I’m trying to separate the issues. There is a place for government to protect third parties. If we go to your automobile case __
CLAYBROOK: Well, how about children? Children don’t __ aren’t choosers.
FRIEDMAN: No, no.
CLAYBROOK: They don’t make choices because they ride in the cars.
FRIEDMAN: The parents make their choices. But let’s go __
O’REILLY: But if the industry has it there’s no choice.
FRIEDMAN: We can only take one issue at a time. We’re a little difficult to take them all at once. Let’s take one at a time. I say there is no place for government to require me to do something to protect myself.
(Applause)
FRIEDMAN: Now if government has information __
MCKENZIE: Has of obtains?
FRIEDMAN: __ for a moment, suppose it has information, then it should make that public and available. The next question is: are there circumstances under which it’s appropriate for government to collect information? There may be some such circumstances. They have to be considered one at a time. Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. But you see, I want to get back. Take your area Miss Claybrook, you are now involved on the airbag problem.
CLAYBROOK: That’s right.
FRIEDMAN: If I understand the situation, I don’t know anything about the technical aspects of it, but the airbag, in a car, is there to protect me as a driver. It doesn’t prevent me from having an accident, hurting somebody else because it’s only activated by an accident. All right then, why shouldn’t I make that decision? Who are you to tell me that I have to spend whatever it is, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred dollars on that airbag.
CLAYBROOK: Well we don’t tell you that. What we say is that when a car crashes into a brick wall at 30 miles an hour, the front seat occupants have to have automatic protection built into that car.
FRIEDMAN: Have to, why have to?
CLAYBROOK: And it’s a very __ it’s a very minimal __
FRIEDMAN: Why have to? I don’t care whether it’s an airbag or a seatbelt.
CLAYBROOK: The reason why __ well, there are two reasons why. One is that the sanctity of life is a fairly precious entity in this country.
FRIEDMAN: It’s more precious to me than it is to you. My life is more precious to me than to you.
MCKENZIE: Well, you know.
CLAYBROOK: Do you wear you seatbelt?
FRIEDMAN: Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.
CLAYBROOK: I see. Well then it couldn’t be too precious to you because if it were you’d wear it all the time.
FRIEDMAN: I beg you pardon.
CLAYBROOK: Yes.
FRIEDMAN: Other things are precious too.
CLAYBROOK: Yes. Okay, but wearing your seatbelt is a relatively simple thing to go into.
FRIEDMAN: But now my question is __ but I want an answer, a direct answer.
CLAYBROOK: But there is a very __ there’s a very basic reason why.
FRIEDMAN: Yes.
CLAYBROOK: And it’s because a person does not know when they buy a car what that car is gonna do when it performs in various and sundry different ways. That’s number one. Number two, there’s a basic minimum standard, it’s performance standard. It’s not a requirement that you have certain pieces of products in your cars, but it’s a basic performance standard built into your car that when you buy it no one’s going to have less than that. So that you don’t have people needlessly injured on the highway, the cost to society, the cost to the individuals, the trauma to their families and so on. You’re suggesting theoretically that it’s much better to let people go out and kill themselves even though they really don’t know that that’s what’s gonna happen to them when they have that crash.
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me. You’re evading the fundamental issue. If you have the information, give it to them. The question is not a question of giving them the information. The question is what is your right to force somebody to spend money to protect his own life, not anybody else, but only himself and the next question I’m gonna ask you: do you doubt for a moment that prohibiting alcohol would save far more lives on the highways than an airbag, seatbelts and everything else, and on what grounds are you opposed to prohibition on grounds of principle or only because you don’t think you can get it by the legislature?
CLAYBROOK: I’m opposed to prohibition because I don’t think it’s gonna work. That’s the reason I’m opposed to it.
FRIEDMAN: But suppose it would work? I want to get to the __ I want to get to the principle.
CLAYBROOK: Can I answer you __ sure.
FRIEDMAN: I want to __ suppose you could believe it would work. Suppose you could believe__
MCKENZIE: Prohibition?
FRIEDMAN: Prohibition could work. Would you be in favor of it?
CLAYBROOK: No. What I am in favor of is building products __ I am in favor of building products so that at least they service the public.
FRIEDMAN: I was fascinated by some of the initial comments. Everybody agrees that the old agencies are bad, but the new agencies that we haven’t had a chance ___
MCKENZIE: No. You’re trying to sweep them into your net. They didn’t agree to that. But anyway __ hole on to your point.
O’REILLY: When you talk about __ the basic principle is: give me the information. Let me choose for myself. If that’s the ultimate goal, why is it that in any hearings that you’ve every gone to and I beg anyone to find me an exception, whether it’s airbags or DES, saccharine, whatever, you never; you never have the victims of the injury who lost their arm because of a lawnmower, standing up and saying “thank God that you gave me the right to become incapacitated.” Never do you hear a victim thanking the government for backing off. Never do you hear the victim of an anti-competitive action thanking the Justice Department for not bring a suit.
MCKENZIE: Dr. Landau, I promised you could make an observation on that without going into great detail.
LANDAU: Now, when DES was used to preserve pregnancies in women 25 and 30 years ago, there was absolutely zero evidence that it would cause cancer in anybody, certainly not in the children of the women who were pregnant and for you to say that it is __
O’REILLY: Then you’re ignoring the 1941 studies that show just that.
LANDAU: There is no 1941 study. This happens to be my area of expertise, I’m an endocrinologist. There was nothing.
O’REILLY: Well, there are a lot __
MCKENZIE: Now let’s not go any further down that road.
CRANDALL: Let me ask you __ yeah, let me ask Miss O’Reilly a question. I don’t see __ if the problem in drugs is that there is a lack of competition, there are a number of drug companies in the United States __
O’REILLY: That’s one of them.
CRANDALL: __ and around the world; and a lack of innovation, how regulation, which is designed to keep products off the market, that is further restrict the supply of drugs is going to enhance either competition or innovation; as a matter of fact, everything that I have learned in economics would tell me that that is likely to reduce innovation and reduce competition. And one of the great benefits of drug regulation is that if I’m a pharmaceutical company with an old tried and true drug on the market, I really want the FDA to keep new drugs off the market. It will enhance the market value of that drug. I think that’s the lesson that you learn from government regulation, whether it’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulation of fuel economy standards, be it drugs, be it pollution controls, their effect is anti-competitive, it’s not pro-competitve at all.
FRIEDMAN: It I go on with Bob’s point for just a moment. He and I, I’m sure, and all economists would agree that the most effective way to stimulate competition would be to have complete free trade and eliminate tariffs. The most anti-consumer measures on our statute books are restrictions on foreign trade.
MCKENZIE: Milton __
FRIEDMAN: Has the Consumer Federation of America testified against tariffs?
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FRIEDMAN: In the first course in economics at the University of Chicago in 1932. We took the same course. It was Jacob Viner’s Economic Theory, and, as it happened, Jacob Viner seated his students alphabetically in order to be able to remember their names, and so Rose Director, which was her name, sat next to Milton Friedman. In addition, as Rose always says, she was the only girl in the class at the time.
LAMB: When did you decide to write books together, and how did you separate the responsibility?
FRIEDMAN: Well, that’s very hard to answer. We were married in 1938, six years after we first met, and then we had children. Rose did a wonderful job in really taking care of the house, raising children and being an inspiration to me. But she had a professional career before that. She had written some things and worked in research organizations before that. But it wasn’t until the kids were grown up and off to college that she was able, really, to spend the time working with me. Capitalism and Freedom was based on a series of lectures that I had given at a kind of summer school, and she took those lectures and reworked them into the book, so really she should have been a joint author on that as well.
LAMB: Janet and David?
FRIEDMAN: They’re my children.
LAMB: You dedicate Capitalism and Freedom to them. Where are they?
FRIEDMAN: Janet’s at Davis, Calif. She’s a lawyer, but her husband is a computer specialist who teaches at the Davis Branch of the University of California. My son David is now — well, he’s had a checkered career in the sense that he got a degree in physics, a Ph.D. in physics, but he’s become an economist. He never took a course in economics except over the dinner table.
LAMB: Where is he?
FRIEDMAN: He’s at the University of Chicago in the law school where he does research in law and economics.
LAMB: When did you win the Nobel Prize and for what?
FRIEDMAN: I won the Nobel Prize in 1976, and I won it for none of those things, but for Monetary History of the United States and an earlier book of mine called A Theory of the Consumption Function, which, I may say, are funny things. A Theory of the Consumption Function is, in my mind, the best thing I ever did as a piece of science. Monetary History is undoubtedly the most influential, and Free to Choose is the best selling, so they are not similarly characterized.
LAMB: I’m going to take it even a step lower, if you will. I want you to tell a little bit of the pencil story.
FRIEDMAN: Oh, sure. I’d be delighted to.
LAMB: Your picture on this book has you with a pencil in your hand.
FRIEDMAN: That didn’t originate with me. I got it from Leonard Read, who was the head of the Foundation for Economic Education. It’s used to tell how the market works, and it’s used to tell how people can work together without knowing one another, without being of the same religion or anything. The story starts like this: Leonard Read and I held up a lead pencil — so-called, one of these yellow pencils — and we said, “Nobody knows how to make a pencil. There’s not a single person in the world who knows how to make a pencil.” In order to make a pencil, you have to get wood for the outside. In order to get wood, you have to have logging; you have to have somebody who can manufacture saws. No single person knows how to do all that. What’s called lead inside isn’t lead. It’s graphite. It comes from some mines in Latin America. In order to be able to make a pencil, you’d have to be able to get the lead. The rubber at the tip isn’t really. Nowadays it isn’t even natural rubber, but at the time I was talking, it was natural rubber. It comes from Malaysia, although the rubber tree is not native to Malaysia but was imported into Malaysia by some English botanists. So in order to know how to make a pencil, you would have to be able to do all of these things. There are probably thousands of people who have cooperated together to make that pencil. Somehow or other, the people in South America who dug out the graphite cooperated with the people in Malaysia who tapped the rubber trees, cooperated with maybe the people in Oregon who cut down the trees. These thousands of people don’t know one another. They speak different languages. They come from different religions. They might hate one another if they saw them. What is it that enabled them to cooperate together? The answer is the existence of a market. The answer is the people in Latin America were led to dig out the graphite because somebody was willing to pay them. They didn’t have to know who was paying them; they didn’t have to know what it was going to be used for. All they had to know was somebody was going to pay them. Indeed, going back to Hayek, one of the most important articles he ever wrote — it doesn’t show up in the book — was about the way in which prices are an information mechanism, the role of prices in transmitting information. Let’s suppose there’s a great increase in the demand for graphite. How do people find out about that? Because the people who want more graphite offer a higher price for it. The price of graphite tends to go up. The people in Latin America don’t have to know anything about why the demand went up. Who is it who’s willing to pay the higher price? The price itself transmits the information that graphite is scarcer than it was and more in demand. If you go back to the pencil thing, what brought all these people together was an enormous complex structure of prices — the price of graphite, the price of lumber, the price of rubber, the wages paid to the laborer who did this and so on. It’s a marvelous example of how you can get a complex structure of cooperation and coordination which no individual planned. There was nobody who sat in a central office and sent an order out to Malaysia, “Produce one more thimble of rubber,” or sent a signal. It was the market that coordinated all of this without anybody having to know all of the people involved.
LAMB: How many times have you told that pencil story?
FRIEDMAN: Well, I really haven’t told it that many times. I told it in the TV program and then I told it in the book, but I think this is the third time.
LAMB: You’re living in San Francisco, where we are. What brought you here?
FRIEDMAN: When I reached the age of 65 — I was at that time living in Chicago and teaching in Chicago — I decided I had graded all the exam papers I was going to grade. My wife grew up in Portland, Ore., and she was in love with San Francisco. She tried to move us out here many times during our life together, but she never succeeded until I decided I was going to retire from active teaching. Fortunately, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University offered me the opportunity to be a fellow at Hoover so I could continue my research and writing without doing any teaching.
LAMB: Peter Robinson, who is a “Booknotes” that people will see at another time, said that he got an MBA from Stanford and never once did anybody bring up Adam Smith or Milton Friedman.
FRIEDMAN: I can believe that.
LAMB: Why would that be?
FRIEDMAN: Because you still have, although it’s not the same as it was in 1963 — there’s more tolerance for the kind of ideas I am in favor of. The general academic community is very much socialist in the sense in which Hayek speaks of the socialists. The general academic community, nowadays it’s labeled political correctness. The ideas of Adam Smith, the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, of Milton Friedman are not very congenial to those who believe that the way in which you get things done is by having government come in and do them.
LAMB: You said earlier that you’re an old man. Do you feel like an old man?
FRIEDMAN: Physically at the moment I do, but not intellectually.
LAMB: Why physically?
FRIEDMAN: I recently had an operation on my back, which had some side effects from which I’ve been very slow in recovering.
LAMB: How old are you now?
FRIEDMAN: I’m 82 years old.
LAMB: Other than this operation, do you think differently because you’re an older person?
FRIEDMAN: No, no.
LAMB: Do you have things you want to accomplish?
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. My wife and I are in the process of trying to write our memoirs.
LAMB: What in that process are you finding? Is it hard?
FRIEDMAN: Yes, because when you start digging back into your past, you find that you’ve forgotten so much and there’s so much to dig out.
LAMB: What’s the purpose of the memoir?
FRIEDMAN: Well, that’s hard to answer. The purpose of the memoirs is we have been very fortunate people. In fact, our tentative title for it is Two Lucky People. We’ve been very fortunate in our life. We’ve had a great deal of activity. We’ve spent a long time. We’ve been able to be at the center. For example, we spent years with the New Deal in Washington. I was involved in wartime research during the war. We’ve lived through and been associated with a lot that has gone on, and we believe that people have forgotten that story. We’re not mostly interested in telling about ourselves, but we want to tell about the world in which we grew up and the world which enabled us, both of whom came from families which by any standard of today would have been regarded as below the poverty level, but neither her family nor mine ever thought of themselves as poor. They weren’t poor. They didn’t have a very high level of income, but they weren’t poor. Unfortunately, the world is moving in a way in which that is no longer likely to be the case. We think maybe we have a story to tell that will be of interest to the public people at large.
LAMB: How are you going about it?
FRIEDMAN: By writing it.
LAMB: Separately, together? Do you dictate?
FRIEDMAN: No, no. In a word processor mostly. Sometimes by hand, but mostly in a word processor. But the way we’ve always done it. We each write parts of it, and then we share it and so on. I don’t believe the problem of collaboration is a very difficult one.
LAMB: How far away are you from completing it?
FRIEDMAN: We’re about halfway through.
LAMB: What size will it be when it’s finished?
FRIEDMAN: I don’t know. At the moment, it’s about their big, but how big it’ll be, I don’t know. We’re up into the 1950s.
LAMB: As you look around today and watch the world move, where are the influences in the society today? Do books influence? Newspapers? Television?
FRIEDMAN: I would say the television has a tremendous influence, but I think books also have an influence. It’s not easy to answer that question. That’s a very sophisticated and subtle question, and I don’t have an easy answer to it. I think experience plays an enormous role. The collapse of the Berlin Wall, for example, was undoubtedly the most influential action for the last hundred years because it put finis to an attitude. The general attitude had been that the future was the future of government, that the way in which you got good things done was by having government do it. I believe the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the exposure of what was happening in Russia, the contrast between East Germany and West Germany has been made a lesson; more recently, the experience of East Asia, of Hong Kong, of Singapore. Today people may not behave in accordance with their knowledge, but everybody knows that the way to develop and to improve the lot of people is through private markets, free enterprise and small government. We’re not practicing what we should be preaching. I’ve been saying that the former communist states are trying as hard as they can to go to where we were 50 years ago, whereas we’re trying as hard as we can to go to where they were 10 years ago.
LAMB: Why?
FRIEDMAN: Because of the inertia and the drive for power. It’s very hard to turn things around. The big problem with government, as Hayek points out, is that once you start doing something, you establish vested interests, and it’s extremely difficult to stop and turn that around. Look at our school system. How is it our school system is worse today than it was 50 years ago? Look at the welfare state. We’ve spent trillions of dollars without any success. But unsuccessful experiments in government — I’ve said if an experiment in private enterprise is unsuccessful, people lose money and they have to close it down. If an experiment in government is unsuccessful, it’s always expanded.
LAMB: What is it that government does that you like?
FRIEDMAN: I would like government to enforce law and order. I would like government to provide the rules, effectively, that guide our life, that determine what’s proper and to do very little other than that.
LAMB: What kind of a grade do you give to the American system of government today? How is it working?
FRIEDMAN: As it was in 1928 or as it is in 1994? It’s a great system. The fundamental system is great, but it hasn’t been working in the last 30 years.
LAMB: Why not?
FRIEDMAN: Because we’ve been departing from its fundamental principles. The founders of country believed in individual freedom, believed in leaving people be, letting them be alone to do whatever they wanted to do. But our government has been increasingly departing from those constitutional principles. You know, there’s a provision in the constitution that Congress shall not interfere with interstate commerce. That provision had some meaning at one time, but it has no meaning now at all. Our courts have ruled that anything you can think of is interstate commerce, and so the government exercises extensive control over things that it has no business interfering with.
LAMB: What do you think of the Federal Reserve Board today?
FRIEDMAN: I’ve long been in favor of abolishing it. There’s no institution in the United States that has such a high public standing and such a poor record of performance.
LAMB: What did Arthur Burns think of that?
FRIEDMAN: He didn’t like that very much, but, needless to say, I didn’t hesitate to say it to him. Look, the federal reserve system was established in 1914, started operation in 1914. It presided over a doubling of prices during World War I. It produced a major collapse in 1921. It had a good period from about 1922 to about 28. Then it undertook actions which led to a recession in 1929 and 30, and it converted that recession by its actions into the Great Depression. The major villain in the Great Depression was, in my opinion, unquestionably the federal reserve system. Since that time, it presided over a doubling of prices during World War II. It financed the inflation of the 1970s. On the whole, it has a very poor record. It’s done far more harm than good.
LAMB: What do you say to the people who say and write that it’s just a matter of time until it all comes tumbling down, meaning the tremendous debt we have in this country will catch up with us.
FRIEDMAN: The debt is not the problem. The debt is not the problem. You’ve got to compare a debt with the assets which correspond to it. It need not come tumbling down. Whether it comes tumbling down will depend on what we do. If we continue to expand the role of government, if we let government grow beyond limit, it will come tumbling down. But that isn’t going to happen. The attitudes of the American people have changed, and they’ve become aware of the fact that government is too big, too intrusive, too extensive, and I have a great deal of confidence in the American people that they’re going to see to it that doesn’t happen.
LAMB: But if you were sitting around with experts in a room and they said, “Let’s look at the future,” where are the problems? We listen every day on the radio and read in the newspapers that it’s just a matter of time.
FRIEDMAN: I think that’s wrong. Fundamentally, what’s been happening is that in the period I talked about from 1928 to now, we have been starving the successful part of our society, namely, the free private enterprise system, and we have been feeding the failure. Government controls over 50 percent of the output of the country, but thank God government is not efficient. Most of that is wasted.
LAMB: Another one of our “Booknotes” guests in this series is John Kenneth Galbraith. If you put the two of you in a room together, which one’s the happiest with what’s happened over the last 50 years?
FRIEDMAN: Ken would be much happier than I would be.
LAMB: Why would he be?
FRIEDMAN: Because he’s a socialist.
LAMB: Why do you think he’s happier and why do you think his side’s been more successful?
FRIEDMAN: Because the story they tell is a very simple story, easy to sell. If there’s something bad, it must be an evil person who’s done it. If you want something done, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to have government step in and do it. The story Hayek and I want to tell is a much more sophisticated and complicated story, that somehow or other there exists this subtle system in which, without any individual trying to control it, there is a system under which people in seeking to promote their own interests will also promote the well-being of the country — Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Now, that’s a very sophisticated story. It’s hard to understand how you can get a complex interrelated system without anybody controlling it. Moreover, the benefits from government tend to be concentrated; the costs tend to be disbursed. To each farmer, the subsidy he gets from the government means a great deal. To each of a much larger number of consumers, it costs very little. Consequently, those who feed at the trough of government tend to be politically much more powerful than those who provide it with the wherewithal.
LAMB: During your lifetime, who are the leaders you think have been the most loyal to their beliefs and have done the best job?
FRIEDMAN: I would certainly put Ronald Reagan high on that list.
LAMB: What do you say to David Frum’s thesis? Have you read Dead Right?
FRIEDMAN: Yes. He’s quite right. I agree with it.
LAMB: That conservatives basically buy off now . . .
FRIEDMAN: I’m not a conservative. I never have been a conservative. Hayek was not a conservative. The book that follows this one in Hayek’s list was The Constitution of Liberty, a great book, and he has an appendix to it entitled “Why I Am not a Conservative.” We are radicals. We want to get to the root of things. We are liberals in the true meaning of that term — of and concerned with freedom. We are not liberals in the current distorted sense of the term — people who are liberal with other people’s money.
LAMB: You write about Thomas Jefferson. What was he?
FRIEDMAN: I would certainly put him very high on the list. He was a great man. There’s no question about that, and he was certainly a believer in freedom. He was not a conservative.
LAMB: Would he have been a liberal?
FRIEDMAN: Yes, in my sense, not in the corrupted sense of today.
LAMB: But what’s confusing as you watch today’s people who embrace him, you have the Jefferson-Jackson dinners every year for the Democratic Party, and Lincoln is embraced by both sides. What was he?
FRIEDMAN: He’s much more difficult to characterize because his role in our history had to do with the Civil War, and that’s not something to be characterized in terms of socialist or liberal or conservative.
LAMB: Is Thomas Jefferson a Democrat as we know the Democratic Party today?
FRIEDMAN: No, he would not.
LAMB: What would he be today?
FRIEDMAN: He would be a libertarian.
LAMB: A member of the Libertarian Party?
FRIEDMAN: Not necessarily. See, I’m a libertarian in philosophy, but, as I say, I’m a libertarian with a small “l” and a Republican with a capital “r.”
LAMB: You supported and were close to Barry Goldwater.
FRIEDMAN: Yes, I was.
LAMB: What was he?
FRIEDMAN: A libertarian in philosophy, not in party.
LAMB: What is Bill Clinton?
FRIEDMAN: Oh, he’s a socialist.
LAMB: Defined as being what?
FRIEDMAN: As somebody who believes that the way to achieve good things is to have government do it. You can’t think of a more socialist program than the health care program that he tried to get us to adopt.
LAMB: You said earlier in the discussion when we were talking about Rutgers that the worst way to go is to take care of the bottom up. Explain that.
FRIEDMAN: Not to take care of them in the sense of giving them a minimum income, but to believe that the progress of society is going to come from the bottom.
LAMB: So how do you take care of someone who is in the lower third?
FRIEDMAN: In my book Capitalism and Freedom I propose something called a negative income tax, of getting rid of all of the welfare programs we now have, but replace them by essentially a minimum income.
LAMB: But you also say that’s not going to happen very quickly.
FRIEDMAN: Well, we’re moving toward that. The earned income credit is in that line.
LAMB: What will that do?
FRIEDMAN: What we’re not going to move toward, the place we’re wrong is with all of the special welfare programs we have — food stamps, aid to families with dependent children. There are probably a hundred such programs, and what I’ve argued is that we ought to replace that whole ragbag of programs with a single negative income tax.
LAMB: In your lifetime, have you ever had a theory that proved to be wrong? Do you ever go back and say, “I was wrong”?
FRIEDMAN: Oh, yes, sure.
LAMB: What was it?
FRIEDMAN: During World War II when I was at the Treasury, I was essentially a Keynesian, as I believed that the way to control inflation was by controlling government spending. I paid very little attention to money. Only after World War II when I started to work in the field of money did I come to a different conclusion. Now, I believe Keynes was a great man. He was a great economist, but I think his theory is wrong.
LAMB: And his theory, basically stated, is?
FRIEDMAN: Basically stated, the fundamental element of it, is that what matters is spending and what matters in particular is government spending and that government must play a major role in guiding the society. He was a liberal in the 19th century sense, but he was also an elitist, and he believed that there was a group of able public-spirited intellectuals who should be given charge of society.
LAMB: When people look at Milton Friedman 25 years from now — you’ll probably still be here . . .
FRIEDMAN: I won’t be here.
LAMB: What do you want them to remember? Do you want them to remember you as a writer, as a teacher, as a philosopher, as an economist?
FRIEDMAN: Again, I want them to remember me as an economist.
LAMB: And what principle do you want them to remember the most?
FRIEDMAN: That’s hard to say because there are quite a number. I mentioned The Theory of the Consumption Function, which is a very technical book but which yet, I believe, has had a good deal of influence within the discipline of economics. But I really don’t know how to answer that question. I think that people 25 years from now will have to answer it, not me.
LAMB: Milton Friedman has been our guest, and he wrote the introduction of this 50th anniversary edition of F. A. Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom, and he has a few books of his own. We thank you very much for joining us.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 578) (Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 3-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
Friedman on Reagan Uploaded by YAFTV on Aug 19, 2009 Nobel Laureate Dr. Milton Friedman discusses the principles of Ronald Reagan during this talk for students at Young America’s Foundation’s 25th annual National Conservative Student Conference _______________ Passing the Balanced Budget Amendment would be what the founding fathers would have wanted. Look at what my […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
Bob Chitester Discusses Milton Friedman and ‘Free to Choose’ Published on Jul 30, 2012 by LibertarianismDotOrg “There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.” That is how former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan […]
published Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 Chattanooga Times Free Press Milton Friedman at 100 Milton Friedman Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press. enlarge photo One hundred years ago today, the most powerful defender of economic liberty in American history was born in Brooklyn to poor Jewish immigrants. Though he stood barely five […]
FREE TO CHOOSE “Who protects the worker?” Video and Transcript Part 3 of 7 In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and […]
BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Dr. Milton Friedman, why did you choose or why did they ask you to write the introduction to the F. A. Hayek Road to Freedom 50th anniversary . . .
FRIEDMAN: Road to Serfdom.
LAMB: Yes, that’s your title on your book. Why did you do it?
FRIEDMAN: The reason they asked me was very clear, because Hayek and I had been associated for a very long time, in particular in an organization called the Mont Pelerin Society that he founded. The charter meeting was in 1947 in Switzerland. Hans Morgenthau, who was a professor at the University of Chicago when I was there, a political scientist, when I came back from the meeting, he asked me where I had been, and I told him that I had been to a meeting that had been called by Hayek to try to bring together the believers in a free, open society and enable them to have some interchange, one with another. He said, “Oh, a meeting of the veterans of the wars of the 19th century!” I thought that was a wonderful description of the Mont Pelerin Society. Well, Hayek and I worked together in the Mont Pelerin Society and we were fostering essentially the same set of ideas. His Road to Serfdom book, the one you have there, which was published 50 years ago, was really an amazing event when it came out. It’s very hard to remember now what the attitude was in 1944-45. Throughout the Western world, the movement was toward centralization, planning, government control. That movement had started already before World War II. It started, really with the Fabian Society back in the late 19th century-George Bernard Shaw, the Webbs and so on. But the war itself and the fact that in war you do have to have an enormous amount of government control greatly strengthened the idea that after the war what you needed was to have a rational, planned, organized, centralized society and that you had to get rid of the wastes of competition. That was the atmosphere. Those of us who didn’t agree believed in what we would call a liberal society, a free society — 19th century liberalism. There were quite a number of us in the United States and in Britain, but in the rest of the world they were very isolated, indeed. Hayek’s idea was to bring them together and enable them to get comfort and encouragement from one another without having to look around to see who was trying to stab them in the back, which was the situation in their home countries.
LAMB: The New York Times put on the op-ed page your introduction to this edition. Do you know why they did that? What got their attention?
FRIEDMAN: I can’t answer that. You’d have to ask the people at the New York Times. On the whole, they have in the past not been very favorable to these ideas — quite the contrary — but they’ve been changing. About two or three years ago, they published — they’ve turned many an op-ed piece from me, which I subsequently published in the Wall Street Journal or somewhere else. But a couple of years ago, they did publish an op-ed piece from me about the situation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in which my thesis was a very simple one. Everybody agrees, as a result of the experience in the West, that socialism has been a failure. Everybody agrees that capitalism has been a success, that wherever you have had an improvement in the conditions of the ordinary people over any lengthy time, it’s been in a capitalist society, and yet everybody is extending socialism. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were no summits in Washington about how we cut down government. The lesson from the fall of the Berlin Wall was that we have too extensive a government and we ought to cut it down. Everybody agrees, but yet wherever you go, we have to extend socialism. The summit in Washington was about how you enable government to get more revenue in order for government to be more important, which is exactly the opposite. So socialism guides our behavior in strict contrast to what we believe to be the facts of the world.
LAMB: Let me ask you a little bit more about Friedrich Hayek. Who was he?
FRIEDMAN: Fritz Hayek was an economist. He was born in Vienna. He started his professional career in Vienna. In the late 1920s, some people in Britain at the London School of Economics were very greatly impressed with the book he had written and with the work he had done, and they invited him to come to the London School. At a relatively young age, he became a professor at the London School of Economics. He spent the 30s and most of the 40s there. Early in the 1950s, he left London and came to the University of Chicago where he was a professor for about 10 years, and then he went back to Germany. He essentially retired to the University of Freiberg in Germany.
LAMB: How long has he been dead?
FRIEDMAN: He’s been dead about two years now, I think. He lived to be 90, and he has an enormous list of books and articles and so on he has published. The Road to Serfdom, the one we’re showing here, was a sort of manifesto and a call to arms to prevent the accumulation of a totalitarian state. One of the interesting things about that book is whom it’s dedicated to. It’s dedicated “to the socialists of all parties,” because the thesis of the book is that socialism is paving the way toward totalitarianism and that Socialist Russia, at the time, is not different from Nazi Germany. Indeed, it was national socialism — that’s where “nazi” comes from. This was a kind of manifesto and had a very unexpected effect. It was turned down by several publishers in the United States before the University of Chicago published it, and both in Britain and the United States, it created something of a sensation. It was a best-seller. The Reader’s Digest published a condensation of it and distributed 600,000 copies. You had a big argument raising about people who were damning it as reactionary against all the good things of the world and people who were praising it and showing what the real status was. It’s a book well worth reading by anybody because there’s a very subtle analysis of why it is that well-meaning people who intend only to improve the lot of their fellows tend to favor courses of action which have exactly the opposite effect. I think from my point of view the most interesting chapter in that book is one labeled “Why the Worst Get on Top.” It’s, in a way, another example of the famous statement of Lord Acton that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
LAMB: Lord Acton’s quoted several times in the book.
FRIEDMAN: Oh, sure. Lord Acton was a great defender of a free society. The way the worst rise to the top is that if you’re given power and you have to exercise it, you are driven by that necessity to do things that many people really would object to doing. Only those people who are willing to behave in a public capacity differently than they would behave in their private capacity are ever going to make it to the top.
LAMB: Who was Lord Acton? G: Lord Acton was an English Catholic who was a great historian. He was a professor at Oxford. He had a named professorship, which I’ve forgotten. He wrote A History of Liberty, which was very famous and very important. He also was very much involved — this has nothing to do with this, really — in the dispute within the Catholic church about the infallibility of the pope. What do they call it when they call one of these . . .
LAMB: Encyclical?
FRIEDMAN: It’s a meeting which establishes a policy.
LAMB: Like Vatican II?
FRIEDMAN: Right. One of those in the end of the 19th century was the one at which they declared the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope, and he fought very hard against that because he was a believer in liberty and freedom and tolerance and did not believe that you should declare any man to be infallible.
LAMB: Why is it that so many conservatives today will cite you but also cite Hayek?
FRIEDMAN: Because, as I said in that introduction, over the years I’ve gone around and asked people who had shifted from a belief in central government and socialism and what today goes by the name of liberalism what led them to shift, what led them to an understanding that that was a wrong road. Over and over again, the answer has been The Road to Serfdom.
LAMB: You wrote an introduction in 1971?
FRIEDMAN: I wrote an introduction to a German edition 25 years ago. It was the 25th anniversary. My introduction here is primarily the same one. It’s just as applicable now as it was then. The really troublesome thing is what I mentioned earlier. Everybody is persuaded that socialism is a failure, and yet in practice we keep moving down the socialist road. When Hayek’s book was published in 1944 — or let’s take not 44, but take 46 or 50 just after the end of the war — government was much smaller in the United States than it is today. If I remember the numbers, government spending at all levels, for federal, state and local, was about 25 percent of the national income. Today it’s 45 percent. That doesn’t allow for the effect, not of spending, but of regulations — the Clean Air Act, the Aid to Disabilities Act and so on — so that, in fact, we are more than half socialist today; that is, more than half of the total output of the country is being distributed in a way that is determined by the government. That’s the regulations. We pride ourselves on being a free society and having a great deal of liberty. We do, compared to many countries of the world. But just consider the limitations on our freedom. You can’t choose what profession to go into. You can’t become a lawyer just because you want to become a lawyer. You have to get approval from the government. You have to get a license. That’s true for beauticians; it’s true for plumbers. It’s true in New York City and most big cities for taxicab drivers. There are enormous limitations on what we can do, and this goes much beyond the direct economic sphere. Consider the question of freedom of speech. During the 1950s, 60s and 70s when there was a big problem of inflation, the government was making a big push about selling savings bonds. They were a gyp. The amount you paid for the savings bond you would never get back in purchasing power. If you held a savings bond for 25 years, at the end of the time when you turned it in, not only was the purchasing power because of inflation less than it had been, but to add insult to injury, you had to pay a tax on the so-called income from it. At the same time, leading bankers would join in advertisements in the newspapers telling everybody to buy savings bonds. I went around and asked bank presidents that I knew why they did that. I asked them first, “Do you buy savings bonds for yourself?” “Oh, no.” “Is it a good investment?” “No.” “Why do you tell the public it is?” “Because the Treasury wouldn’t like it if we didn’t.” They’re not free to speak. I know from experience — I happen to be opposed to tenure in universities. But the only academics who are free to speak that way are people who have permanent tenure and on the verge of retirement. If you look at it from that point of view, there are enormous restrictions on what we can do and say, all imposed by the government. That doesn’t count the loss of freedom from the fact that they take money away from hard-working, productive people who are producing this national income and give it to people who are out of work, who are on welfare, or in prisons for that matter. It doesn’t include the corruption in our personal property rights that arises through the attempt to prohibit drugs, which has led to tremendous invasions on our liberty. You can have a drug enforcement person come to your door and knock on you because some unknown person has said you’re dealing with drugs. There are many absolutely heartbreaking cases of innocent people whose rights have been violated in this way, whose property has been taken away and who have been unable to regain it. I’m a very old man, and I was graduated from high school in 1928. That’s a long time ago. Now, if you look at the situation in 1928, we were much poorer in terms of physical goods. We didn’t have microwave, we didn’t have washing machines — you can go down the line. There’s no question that we’re enormously wealthier today in that sense and enormously have a higher standard of living from that point of view. On the other hand, we were safer, more secure, freer in 1928 than we are now. As of that time, government was spending something like 10 to 15 percent of the national income; the private sector, 85 to 90. Today, government controls over half the national income and private enterprise controls only the rest. Where have all these good things come from? Can you name any of those additions to our well-being that have come from government? It wasn’t government that produced the microwave. It wasn’t government that produced the improved automobiles. It wasn’t government that produced computers that led to the information age. On the other hand, consider our problems. Our major problems are not economic. Our major problems are social. Our major problems are the underclass in the center cities, the development of crime so that today we’re much less safe than we were when I graduated high school. We have much less feeling of security, much less optimism about what the future’s going to be like, and all of the problems have been produced but government. Consider the schools. The quality of schooling I got in a public high school in 1928 was almost surely a great deal higher than you can get in any but a small number of schools now. You have the dropouts, you have the decline in scores on SAT and the like. Why? Because education is the most socialized industry in the United States. Ninety percent of our kids are in public schools, ten percent in private, and education is a completely centralized, socialized system, and it behaves just the way every other socialized system does. It produces a low-quality output, benefits a small number of people — currently mostly those who are associated with the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers — and does a great deal of harm to a lot of people.
LAMB: Let me ask you about your own beginning. Where were you born?
FRIEDMAN: I was born in Brooklyn, but I had sense enough to move out when I was 13 months old.
LAMB: What did your parents do then?
FRIEDMAN: My parents moved to Rahway, N.J., and they were small-scale businessmen who never had an income and by today’s standard would have exceeded the poverty standard. They moved to Rahway, N.J., where they at first had a small textile factory, and then that wasn’t very successful and so they opened a small retail store and that was the source of their income.
LAMB: What influence did they have on what you decided to do for college?
FRIEDMAN: Very little, except for the fact that they encouraged me to want to go to college. As it happened, my father died before I had graduated from high school. I had three sisters and myself. I was the youngest, and I was the only one of the four who went to college.
LAMB: Where did you go?
FRIEDMAN: Rutgers University.
LAMB: A state school.
FRIEDMAN: No, at that time it was not. Rutgers is a very old institution that was established before the Revolution by the Dutch Reform Church, and at the time I went to it, it was really entirely a private school. Only subsequently was it converted into one of the mega state universities.
LAMB: What did you study?
FRIEDMAN: Hold on. However, I was able to go to it because of an action of the state. The state of New Jersey at that time offered scholarships on a competitive basis. Had a series of exams, and the people who succeeded in those exams and who could demonstrate financial need received free tuition at Rutgers. It was because of that that I was able to go to Rutgers. Now, the tragedy. At the time, that was a very valuable thing. The tragedy is that the state of New Jersey in their new incarnation now has a similar program, but the qualification for getting a scholarship is below average academic quality. It’s a program to raise the lesser qualified. It typifies what’s happened in our society. Instead of emphasizing strengthening the opportunities open to the able, we have tended increasingly to shift into a state of victims in which the emphasis is on raising the people at the bottom. Now, no social progress has ever come from the bottom up. It’s always come from the top small number pulling up the society as a whole and raising it.
LAMB: When did you first get into economics?
FRIEDMAN: I went to Rutgers and I did a joint major at the time in economics and mathematics.
LAMB: Why did you pick it? Do you remember?
FRIEDMAN: No. I liked mathematics and I was good at mathematics and I wanted to be able to earn an income. I may say, I worked my way through school, of course. I earned my own income. I wanted to be able to earn an income. As an innocent youth, the only way I knew that you could use mathematics to earn an income was in actuarial work for insurance companies, and so that was my initial objective. How I got into economics, I don’t know, but somehow or other I did get into economics. Now, by the time I graduated in 1932, the situation was very different. We were in the midst of the worst depression we’ve ever had. The major problems of the country were economic, and it’s natural that I would have been interested. As it happened, I was very lucky. When I graduated in 32, I was able to get the offer of two tuition scholarships, one from Brown University in applied mathematics and one from University of Chicago in economics, and it’s easy to know why I took the economics at that time.
LAMB: How many books have you written?
FRIEDMAN: Oh, I don’t know, 15.
LAMB: The best seller?
FRIEDMAN: The best seller is undoubtedly Free To Choose, which was written by myself and my wife. It was based on the TV program of the same title. It was a 10-part TV program that was shown in 1980 on PBS. In reverse of the usual procedure, the TV program wasn’t based on the book; the book was based on the TV program, because I insisted that I was not going to talk to a written script for the TV program but I was just going to talk. Then from the transcript of the TV program, we developed the book. It’s undoubtedly the best seller, although the other you have there, Capitalism and Freedom — again, this is a very interesting contrast. That back was published in 1963. At the time it was published, it was so out of favor, so much outside the intellectual atmosphere of the time that it was not reviewed in any major paper or magazine, other than the Economist in London. It was not reviewed by the New York Times, by the then Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek. None of them reviewed it, and yet over the subsequent 30 years, it has sold something like a half a million copies.
LAMB: The tie you have on . . .
FRIEDMAN: That’s Adam Smith’s tie.
LAMB: Adam Smith comes up in all your books.
FRIEDMAN: Oh, of course. Adam Smith was the founder of modern economics.
LAMB: When did he live?
FRIEDMAN: In the 18th century. Adam Smith’s great book The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independence.
LAMB: When did you first read it?
FRIEDMAN: In college as an undergraduate.
LAMB: Is he the guy who’s most important in your education?
FRIEDMAN: Well, that’s very hard to say. He certainly had a major influence on all of us, but after all, I think the influence when you get an education comes from people who are living people, not from books. Books influence you. There’s no doubt about it. They make a great difference. But the person who is probably most important in my education — there are several. One is Arthur Burns, who was subsequently chairman of the Federal Reserve System and so on. He was at Rutgers, and he taught me as an undergraduate and he was really my mentor for a large part of my professional career. I owe a great deal to Arthur. But then I went to the University of Chicago and there was a group of teachers at the University of Chicago — Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, Henry Simons — who played a major influence in shaping my views and attitudes.
LAMB: When did you think you had enough independent thought to start writing books like Free to Choose and Capitalism and Freedom?
FRIEDMAN: That was very late. Up until that point, prior to that, my writings were scientific. See, these books give a misleading impression of my publications. Most of my publications are technical, scientific, economic publications, which really do not have any great interest to the public at large. That’s a best-seller, Free to Choose, but there’s no question that the most influential book I’ve written is not Free to Choose, but a book that sold probably one-twentieth as many, 5 percent as many copies, namely A Monetary History of the United States, which I wrote jointly with Anna Schwartz. So I really had a fairly large body of technical economic literature before I started writing on public policy.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over […]
Open letter to President Obama (Part 578) (Emailed to White House on 6-10-13.) President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 3-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
Friedman on Reagan Uploaded by YAFTV on Aug 19, 2009 Nobel Laureate Dr. Milton Friedman discusses the principles of Ronald Reagan during this talk for students at Young America’s Foundation’s 25th annual National Conservative Student Conference _______________ Passing the Balanced Budget Amendment would be what the founding fathers would have wanted. Look at what my […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “The Anatomy of a Crisis” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created […]
Bob Chitester Discusses Milton Friedman and ‘Free to Choose’ Published on Jul 30, 2012 by LibertarianismDotOrg “There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.” That is how former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan […]
published Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 Chattanooga Times Free Press Milton Friedman at 100 Milton Friedman Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press. enlarge photo One hundred years ago today, the most powerful defender of economic liberty in American history was born in Brooklyn to poor Jewish immigrants. Though he stood barely five […]
FREE TO CHOOSE “Who protects the worker?” Video and Transcript Part 3 of 7 In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and […]
In 1980 I read the book FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton Friedman and it really enlightened me a tremendous amount. I suggest checking out these episodes and transcripts of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?” and “Created Equal” and From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market. In this episode “The Tyranny of Controls” Milton Friedman shows how government planning and detailed control of economic activity lessens productive innovation and consumer choice.
In this first episode Milton Friedman asserts, “Adam Smith’s flash of genius was to see how prices that emerged in the market, the prices of goods, the wages of labor, the cost of transport, could coordinate the activities of millions of independent people, strangers to one another, without anybody telling them what to do. His key idea was that self-interest could produce an orderly society benefiting everybody. It was as though there were an invisible hand at work. The invisible hand is a phrase that was introduced by Adam Smith in his great book, The Wealth of Nations, in which he talked about the way in which individuals, who intended only to pursue their own interests, were led by an invisible hand to promote the public welfare which was no part of their intention. He was talking about the economic market. About the market in which people buy and sell. He was pointing out that in order for a butcher or a baker or a candlestick maker to make an income, he had to produce something that somebody wanted to buy. Therefore, in the process of promoting his own interests and looking to his own profit, he ended up serving the interests of his customers.”
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.2 (1/7) – The Tyranny of Control
Last week in this film series the distinguished economist Milton Friedman took us to Hong Kong to see a free market system in which he had a great deal of confidence and faith. This week he takes us traveling again to India, Japan and to Europe to see what happens in his view when governments think they can plan and control the economic activities of their peoples.
FREE TO CHOOSE 2: “Tyranny of Control” (Milton Friedman)Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman
Posted on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 3:02:09 PM by Choose Ye This Day
FREE TO CHOOSE: Tyranny of Control
Friedman: It is harvest time and Japanese farmers gather their crops for the rice market in Kyoto. Of course, they will try to get as much for it as possible and the buyer’s will try to buy it as cheaply as possible. That is how markets are supposed to work. That is what Adam Smith, the Scotsman who turned economics into a modern science, observed 200 years ago. He observed something else too.
Adam Smith: In every country it is always and must be in the interest of the great body of people to buy whatever they want of those who set it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it. Nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, confounded common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of people.
Friedman: Adam Smith’s flash of genius was to see how prices that emerged in the market, the prices of goods, the wages of labor, the cost of transport, could coordinate the activities of millions of independent people, strangers to one another, without anybody telling them what to do.
His key idea was that self-interest could produce an orderly society benefiting everybody. It was as though there were an invisible hand at work.
The invisible hand is a phrase that was introduced by Adam Smith in his great book, The Wealth of Nations, in which he talked about the way in which individuals, who intended only to pursue their own interests, were led by an invisible hand to promote the public welfare which was no part of their intention. He was talking about the economic market. About the market in which people buy and sell. He was pointing out that in order for a butcher or a baker or a candlestick maker to make an income, he had to produce something that somebody wanted to buy. Therefore, in the process of promoting his own interests and looking to his own profit, he ended up serving the interests of his customers.
When Adam Smith published The Wealth Of Nations, Britain was still a largely rural and placid place. But the Industrial Revolution was already getting started and standards of life were beginning to rise. One obstacle was that trade with other nations was still tightly controlled. Merchants in the home market had persuaded the government of the day to impose heavy duties and taxes on all foreign imports in order to insure themselves a protected market.
One of the results was to turn Britain into a nation of lawbreakers. Smuggling was a national past time: brandy, wines, tobacco, anything with a heavy customs duty on it. For years, the revenue men fought a losing battle along the shores and inlets of the British Isles.
In 1846, after years of argument and partial success, the followers of Adam Smith finally persuaded the British Parliament to remove all duties on goods imported from abroad. Britain embarked on complete free trade, giving a further push to the rising standard of life.
What happened in Britain as a consequence of releasing the tremendous force of self-interest, had the unintended effect of benefiting millions of people all over the world, and by 1851 the evidence was proudly on show at the great Crystal Palace Exhibition.
Free trade enabled Britain to become the work place of the world. But was it all an accident? I don’t think it was. Consider what happened in 1868 on the other side of the world in Japan. For the preceding 300 years, the Japanese had lived in almost complete isolation. They had discouraged visitors from other nations, especially from the West. The result was that by the standards of the West, Japan was backward. It was a feudal society with lords and serfs and woe betide anyone who tried to change the order of things. Women were third class citizens.
In 1868, a new generation of rulers decided that the time had come for Japan to make contact with the outside world. And with the arrival of the first foreign traders from the West, things began to change. The Japanese followed the British trading pattern because Britain was a leading nation of the world. So free trade came to Japan. Japan became a magnet for other people’s ideas and developments.
One of the first traditional industries to feel the effects was weaving. From Europe, the Japanese imported the jacquard method __ a way of programming a loom to control the accuracy of the weave, and so the standardized output. Workers did well in the new atmosphere and so did their employers. The adoption of mass production techniques meant that workers were able to move out of the traditional industries and into the new industries, which all added to the trade boom. None of us can help being effected by the intellectual atmosphere that we breathe. In the middle of the 19th century, when Japan ended her self-imposed isolation and entered the modern age, it never occurred to her leaders to follow any other course than that of free enterprise and free markets. That was the intellectual atmosphere of the time, created by Britain’s success in applying the principles of Adam Smith.
In 1948, when India achieved independence, her leaders had all been trained in Great Britain. They had sat at the feet of Harold Laski and his associates at the London School of Economics, or of their counterparts at Oxford and Cambridge. It never occurred to them to follow any other course than that of central planning and government control. That was the intellectual atmosphere of the time. The intellectual seed took root. As it grew, it needed to be honored, even worshiped.
Every year on the anniversary of Gandhi’s birth, people all over India do just that __ in homage to the great Mahatma, they sit and spin using methods handed down through the centuries.
_________________
___________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]
_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
From the original Free To Choose series Milton asks: “Who Protects the Consumer?”. Many government agencies have been created for this purpose, yet they do so by restricting freedom and stifling beneficial innovation, and eventually become agents for the groups they have been created to regulate.
Milton Friedman correctly noted, “It’s time all of us stopped being fooled by those well-meaning bureaucrats who claim to protect us because they say we can’t protect ourselves.”
Pt 4
Nowadays, there are Corvair fan clubs throughout the country. Corvair’s have become collector items. Consumers have given their verdict on Ralph Nader and the government regulations. As Abraham Lincoln said, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. It’s time all of us stopped being fooled by those well-meaning bureaucrats who claim to protect us because they say we can’t protect ourselves. The men and women who have fostered this movement have been sincere. They believe that we as consumers are not able to protect ourselves. That we need the help of a wise and effervescent government. But as so often happens the results have been very different from the intentions. Not only have our pockets been picked of billions of dollars, but also we are left less well protected than we were before.
DISCUSSION
Participants: Robert McKenzie, Moderator; Milton Friedman; Kathleen O’Reilly, Consumer Federation of America; Richard Landau, Professor of Medicine, University of Chicago; Joan Claybrook, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Robert Crandall, Brookings Institute
MCKENZIE: Now back at the University of Chicago the consumerists, themselves, get their chance to argue their case.
O’REILLY: I agree with Mr. Friedman with respect to those agencies which have had the major purpose of economically propping up a certain industry which is why consumer advocates like myself advocate the elimination of the ICC, the CAB, the Maritime Commission. But when you’re talking about consumer protection in the marketplace and when you’re talking about government watchdog in competition, consumers need and as every poll is showing, they’re demanding more and more protection. And to give just two examples of how information is simply not enough to protect the consumer, five years ago I could not have bought a child’s crib in this country that would have had the slats sufficiently close together that I did not have to worry about the child strangling. Not until the government and the Consumer Product Safety Commission stepped in did consumers then have the choice to buy that type of a crib, strangulation’s down 50 percent. And in 1975, if I had wanted to lease a Xerox machine, I could not have done it. And not until the Federal Trade Commission antitrust stepped in and forced competition into that marketplace did I have that choice and in one year the price went from 14,000 dollars to 5,000 dollars. Those are dollars back in our pocketbooks to say nothing of minimized emotional trauma.
MCKENZIE: Well, before we ask Milton Friedman to come back on that, lets establish the viewpoint of our other participants and experts. Dr. Richard Landau, what’s your reaction?
LANDAU: Well I think the cost is certainly outrageously large and the benefits are trivial if any. I think that perhaps Milton overstates it slightly to make his point, but basically I would have to agree with it in the area that I know best, which is the regulation of new drug development.
MCKENZIE: And Joan Claybrook.
CLAYBROOK: Well in the auto safety field we’ve saved about 55,000 lives and millions of injuries because of auto safety regulations since the mid_1960s. I might also comment that the cost of auto crashes each year, the American public is 48 billion dollars a year, fairly substantial when you compare it to other things, much less, again, the human trauma.
MCKENZIE: Bob Crandall.
CRANDALL: Well I think it’s impossible to disagree with Milton Friedman on the effects of economic rate regulation of the sort that the railroads and the trucking industry have been through. The intent of that legislation was, of course, to protect the railroad and to protect the trucks, and the same thing is true for maritime regulation. What sustains regulation is sort of a populist theory that somehow through government we will redistribute wealth from people who own business firms to consumers. In fact it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way in economic regulation and there’s very little evidence that it works that way in any kind of regulation. As to whether we get any value from health and safety regulation, I think much of it is too new to know.
MCKENZIE: Well now that’s the area I want to start with because remember that was the first part of his argument. The whole idea of consumer product safety action by the state. Now, is that so far working? Very close to your interest I know. What’s your reaction, Kathleen O’Reilly?
O’REILLY: Well in product safety in the state of that, the lawnmower industry had said for twenty years they could not design a safe lawnmower. Only when the Consumer Product Safety Commission forced them with the new standard suddenly their creative genius was overnight. They came up with net whips that were made out of plastic and they came up with very innovative forces. Which is why __ where that government presence actually triggered innovation that otherwise would have been left uncovered.
FRIEDMAN: It’s very easy to see the good results. The bad result it’s very much harder to see. You haven’t mentioned the products that aren’t there because the extra cost imposed by Consumer Product Safety Commission have prevented them from existing. You haven’t mentioned the case of the triss (phonetic) problem on the flammable garments. Here you had a clear case where the __ regulation of the CPSC essentially had the effect of requiring all manufacturers of children’s sleepwear to impregnate them with triss.
O’REILLY: Oh, but that’s not true at all.
FRIEDMAN: Three years __ five years later the regulation required that garments to be nonflammable and as it happened, triss was the most readily available chemical which could do it.
MCKENZIE: Kathleen O’Reilly.
O’REILLY: It’s absolutely not true.
FRIEDMAN: But let me finish the story first. Because the second half of the story is the important part of it. It turned out that triss was a carcinogen. And five years later or three years later, I’m not sure the exact time, the same agency had to prohibit the use of those sleepwear garments forcing them to be disposed of at great cost to everybody concerned.
O’REILLY: All right, lets look at the real interesting history here. In 1968, when Congress passed the Flammable Fabric Act, they did not tell the CPSC what chemicals would comply with that and what would not. And so initially when industry said, “we’re going to use triss,” the Consumer Product Safety Commission, from their initial tests, were disturbed by it and had announced informally to industry that they were not going to allow triss to be used. Industry balked and said, “we’re gonna to take you to court because the Act only says it has to be flame retardant.” You, the government, cannot tell us how to comply. And it was the industry that forced the hand of CPSC away. And they don’t even deny that now.
FRIEDMAN: I’m not trying to defend the industry. Go slowly. I am not pro-industry. I am pro-consumer. I’m like you. I’m not pro-industry. and, of course, industry will do a lot of bad things. The whole question at issue is what mechanism is more effective in protecting the interests of the consumers, the disbursed, widespread forces of the market. Take the case of the flammable fabrics, suppose you had not had the requirements.
MCKENZIE: But you believe it was right to test them, don’t you? For a government agency to test it?
FRIEDMAN: No, not at all.
MCKENZIE: No, no.
FRIEDMAN: There are private consumer testing agencies. There’s the Consumers Research. There’s Consumers Union. You speak about a widespread demand for more protection, those agencies have never __ those organizations __
CLAYBROOK: Oh, of course, they have all these publications on cars __
FRIEDMAN: Of course.
CLAYBROOK:__ but what they do is they test the brakes and steering. They never crash test them and the most important thing to know about a car when you buy it is if the car crashes are you going to be killed unnecessarily?
FRIEDMAN: The reason they __
CLAYBROOK: You can’t even get that information.
FRIEDMAN: But the reason they don’t test __
CLAYBROOK: It’s too expensive, that’s the reason why.
FRIEDMAN: Of course. Anyway it is too expensive for them because the number of consumers who are willing to buy their service and take it is very, very small.
CLAYBROOK: That is not why. The reason why is because it’s enormously expensive.
FRIEDMAN: Of course, but if they had a large enough number of customers, if there were enough customers, enough consumers who wanted the __
CLAYBROOK: Yes, but that’s a chicken and egg situation which is ridiculous.
FRIEDMAN: It’s not a chicken and egg situation. The whole situation __
CLAYBROOK: If you believe that technological information is important for consumer to have, which is that basis ad the thesis of your argument, surely that you would say that one of the things that society does as it groups together to provide basic services to the public; police, traffic services, all sorts of basic kinds of things, the mail service and the fire service and all the rest of it. Why is that they shouldn’t even do testing of technological subjects which the public has no way of knowing?
MCKENZIE: Before you reply, I want one or two others in on this, Bob Crandall.
CRANDALL: It seems to me that Professor Friedman could give a little bit on this ground. Certainly in the dissemination of information there’s a free rider problem. And one of the problems is that while you and I might value the results from a Consumer Union rather highly, we don’t have to pay for it. We can look over the shoulder of someone else, borrow the magazine from the library and so forth. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the government should not at all be in the business of generating information though I am concerned about exactly the same forces, this evil industry that Miss O’Reilly talks about, having its influence on how this information is prepared. I don’t see how we guard ourselves against that.
FRIEDMAN: We don’t
CRANDALL: But it seems to me that there is a case to be made that the market does not supply enough information.
FRIEDMAN: It may not. But the market supplies a great deal and there is also a free rider problem in the negative sense on government provision of information because people who have no use for that information are required to pay for it.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]
_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Milton Friedman’s best point made in the following debate is this statement:
“The crucial issue is whether governmental measures which have the effect of favoring union organization of giving them privileges and immunities that are not accorded to other organizations in the society, benefit the society as a whole, or harm the society as a whole. The proposition I tried to make in this film was that the source of the prosperity of this country was freedom of enterprise, freedom of employers to hire, of workers to work for whom they wanted to; and insofar as unions have played a role, they have protected some workers at the expense of others, and have retarded the prosperity of this country. I think that Lynn Williams’ statements to the contrary cannot be supported by any empirical or other evidence that he has, understandably, I’m not blaming him for this, he would be faithless to his job if he did not believe sincerely in what he’s saying. I’m not questioning his sincerity, but sincerity is a much overrated virtue in our society. The plain fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever that either unions or minimum wages have made positive contributions to the prosperity of this country. Some unions have, of course, some unions have done great harm. It’s not an open and shut picture in which you can make a sweeping statement. But on the whole, the growth of this country… The sweeping statement I make is that the prosperity of this country derives primarily from freedom of enterprise and freedom to hire, to employ, to work, and not from restrictive measures imposed by trade unions.”
Pt 7
FRIEDMAN: Sure.
L. WILLIAMS: This is only to say, surely __
FRIEDMAN: Everybody can benefit.
L. WILLIAMS: This is only to say that a busy economy, one in which there’s investment and development and so on is an economy that’s a good economy for working people and for everyone else. I think we say that in the AFL-CIO. at least once a month, all the time. There’s nothing in which __ there’s nothing in which we’re more interested than having a busy, functioning economy. The question is how to bring that about. I do suggest and I think __ I think can be defended as long as we want to discuss it, that the prosperity we have in America today that the labor movements have made an enormous __ the labor movement has made an enormous contribution to that and in the absence of the labor movement and in the absence of minimum wage this would not be as prosperous a country as it is.
MCKENZIE: Now hold it there __ hold it there, Lynn. I want to get a reaction to that. He stated the case for what unions have achieved. Could we go around, first of all, do you accept any part of that?
W. WILLIAMS: No, it’s preposterous, you know, as I suggested before. I mean, if we, you know, if minimum wages could make people richer __
MCKENZIE: Unions we’re talking about now.
W. WILLIAMS: Well, if unions could make people richer __
MCKENZIE: Yeah.
W. WILLIAMS: __ all you have to do is tell people in Bangladesh why don’t you unionize and demand a higher wage. You could be rich like the United States.
L. WILLIAMS: We’re telling everyone in the world.
W. WILLIAMS: It’s productivity.
L. WILLIAMS: We told them in Japan it works.
MCKENZIE: Lynn __
W. WILLIAMS: The workers have higher wages in our country because they’re more productive. That’s how you get higher wages. And this just plain __ I mean, it’s nonsense.
BRADY: And why are they more productive?
W. WILLIAMS: Because they have capital __
BRADY: Enormous capital investment.
(Several people talking at once.)
BRADY: And the higher wages are paid and the higher the capital intents of industry.
L. WILLIAMS: And because there are consumers to buy the stuff who have wages which enable them to go into the marketplace and buy something.
BRADY: Without the capital investment they wouldn’t have the wage and it would be no way of paying them without the capital investment.
L. WILLIAMS: If all those workers weren’t making any money there wouldn’t be much prosperity__
BRADY: There would be no way of paying it without the capital investment.
MCKENZIE: Ernest Green, what’s the reply, your reply?
GREEN: I stand by my initial statement, that it is a prerequisite of the democratic society to have trade unions, organizations aligned, workers to band together in their mutual interests, and __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Are you saying voluntary associations?
GREEN: And if that, if that group __ I’m saying that trade unions like A. Philip Randolph’s sleeping car porters, the Pullman car company would have never, on its own, given those workers who worked very hard and were very productive people, well educated, any increase in their wages had it not been for the intervention of Randolph.
FRIEDMAN: The crucial issue is whether governmental measures which have the effect of favoring union organization of giving them privileges and immunities that are not accorded to other organizations in the society, benefit the society as a whole, or harm the society as a whole. The proposition I tried to make in this film was that the source of the prosperity of this country was freedom of enterprise, freedom of employers to hire, of workers to work for whom they wanted to; and insofar as unions have played a role, they have protected some workers at the expense of others, and have retarded the prosperity of this country. I think that Lynn Williams’ statements to the contrary cannot be supported by any empirical or other evidence that he has, understandably, I’m not blaming him for this, he would be faithless to his job if he did not believe sincerely in what he’s saying. I’m not questioning his sincerity, but sincerity is a much overrated virtue in our society. The plain fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever that either unions or minimum wages have made positive contributions to the prosperity of this country. Some unions have, of course, some unions have done great harm. It’s not an open and shut picture in which you can make a sweeping statement. But on the whole, the growth of this country __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: I’d like for you to make a sweeping statement.
FRIEDMAN: I do. The sweeping statement I make is that the prosperity of this country derives primarily from freedom of enterprise and freedom to hire, to employ, to work, and not from restrictive measures imposed by trade unions.
MCKENZIE: Everybody briefly now. Ernest __
GREEN: And I would say that the intervention of the strong Federal Government, who those employers hire, the kinds of protection, the wage standards, health conditions, are the requirement of this government to protect these people. Because the history of it has shown that hasn’t occurred; and in your case in Spartanburg, South Carolina, again, I argue that the only reason that they can come back now and attract firms from Switzerland and Germany is because, one that we had a strong government that provided protection for all of its citizens which didn’t occur fifteen years ago.
MCKENZIE: Bill Brady.
BRADY: Economic freedom, in my opinion, should not be abridged. I think that these two gentlemen are advocating that it be abridged. They’re advocating a retention of the minimum wage; they’re advocating, I think, Lynn Williams is advocating the retention of the Davis Bacon Act. They do not, it seems to me, believe that freedoms are interdependent and indivisible. There are freedoms __ there is economic freedom; there is press freedom; there is freedom of assembly; there’s religious freedom; and you are advocating to me a great abridgement of economic freedom and when you do that you injure the other freedoms that we have. And if you do it enough, as we are doing in this country today, if you do it enough we are in danger of losing all of our other freedoms.
MCKENZIE: Now we leave this very spirited discussion, and I hope you’ll join us again for the next episode of Free to Choose.
___________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
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Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
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I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
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_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
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From the original Free To Choose series Milton asks: “Who Protects the Consumer?”. Many government agencies have been created for this purpose, yet they do so by restricting freedom and stifling beneficial innovation, and eventually become agents for the groups they have been created to regulate.
Milton Friedman noted, “The men and women who have fostered this movement… believe that we as consumers are not able to protect ourselves… But as so often happens the results have been very different from the intentions. Not only have our pockets been picked of billions of dollars, but also we are left less well protected than we were before.”
Part 3
Friedman: The implications for the patients are that therapeutic decisions that used to be the preserve of the doctor and the patient are increasingly becoming made at a national level by committees of experts. And these committees and the agencies for whom they are acting, FDA, are highly skewed to avoid risks. So there is a tendency for us to have drugs that are safer but not to have those that are effective. Now, I’ve heard some remarkable statement from these advisory committees in considering drugs. One has seen the statement, there are not enough patients with the disease of this severity to warrant marketing this drug for general use. Now that’s fine if what you are trying to do is to minimize drug toxicity for the whole population. But if you happen to be one of these “not enough patients” and you have a disease that’s of high severity or a disease that’s very rare than that’s just tough luck on you.
For ten years Mrs. Esther Usdane suffered from severe asthma. The medication she received had serious side effects. Her condition was getting worse. But the drug her doctor preferred is prohibited by the FDA. So, twice a year Mrs. Usdane had to set out on a journey.
Mrs. Usdane: I had been very sick. I had been in and out of the hospital several times and they couldn’t seem to find a way to control the asthma and I had to change my lifestyle once I was out even for a short time, mainly because the cortisone derivatives were softening the bones and causing a puffiness of the face and other changes in my body. The doctors were pretty anxious to get me off the cortisone derivative.
Friedman: The drug her doctor wanted her to have had been available for use for five years in Canada. Once across the boarder of Niagara Falls, Mrs. Usdane could make use of the prescription that she obtained from a Canadian doctor. All she had to do was go to any pharmacy. There she could buy the drug that was totally prohibited in her own country. The drug worked immediately.
Mrs. Usdane: This one made such a difference in my life both because of the shortness of breath being resolved and also because now we don’t have to worry so much about the softening of the bones. Fortunately, once I got that medicine, very quickly, everything sort of reverted back to a much more the normal lifestyle and I’m very grateful that I was able to find relief.
Friedman: It was easy for Mrs. Usdane to get around the FDA regulations because she happens to live near the Canadian boarder. Not everyone is so lucky. It’s no accident that despite the best of intentions, the Food and Drug Administration operates so as to discourage the development and prevent the marketing of new and potentially useful drugs. Put yourself in the position of a bureaucrat who works over there. Suppose you approve a drug that turns out to be dangerous, a thalidomide. Your name is going to be on the front page of every newspaper. You will be in deep disgrace. On the other hand, what if you make the mistake of failing to approve a drug that could have saved thousands of lives. Who will know? The people whose lives might have been saved will not be around. Their relatives are unlikely to know that there was something that could have saved their lives. A few doctors, a few research workers, they will be disgruntled, they will know. You or I, if we were in the position of that bureaucrat, we’d behave exactly the same way. Our own interests would demand that we take any chance, whatsoever, almost, of refusing to approve a good drug in order to be sure that we never approve a bad one.
Drug companies can no longer afford to develop new drugs in the United States for patients with rare diseases. Increasing, they must rely on drugs with high volume sales. Four drug firms have already gone out of business and the number of new drugs introduced is going down.
Where will it all lead? We simply haven’t learned from experience. Remember Prohibition? In a burst of moral righteousness at the end of the first world war, when many young men were oversees, the non-drinkers imposed on all of us prohibition of alcohol. They did it for our own good. And there is no doubt that alcohol is a dangerous substance. Unquestionably, more lives are lost each year through alcohol and also the smoking of cigarettes than through all the dangerous substances the FDA controls. But where did it lead?
This place is today a legitimate business. It’s the oldest bar in Chicago. But during Prohibition days it was a speakeasy. Al Capone, Buggs Moran, and many of the other gangsters of the day sat around this very bar planning the exploits that made them so notorious; murder, extortion, highjacking, bootlegging. Who were the customers who came here? They were people who regarded themselves as respectable individuals, who would never had approved of the activities that Al Capone and Moran were engaged in. They wanted a drink but in order to have a drink they had to break the law. Prohibition didn’t stop drinking, but it did convert a lot of otherwise law obedient citizens into law breakers. Fortunately, we’re a very long way from that today with the Prohibition on cyclamate and DDT. But make no mistake about it, there is already something of a gray market in drugs that are prohibited by the FDA. Many a conscientious physicians fees himself in a dilemma caught between what he regards as the welfare of his patient and strict obedience to the law. If we continue down this path, there is no doubt where it will end. After all, if it is appropriate for the government to protect us from using dangerous guns and bicycles for logic calls for prohibiting still more dangerous activities such as hand gliding, motorcycling, skiing. If the government is to protect us from ingesting dangerous substances, the logic calls for prohibiting alcohol and tobacco. Even the people who administered the regulatory agencies are appalled at this prospect and withdrawal from it. As for the rest of us, we want no part of it. Let the government give us information but let us decide for ourselves what chances we want to take with our own lives.
As you can see all sorts of silly things happen when government starts to regulate our lives. Setting up agencies to tell us what we can buy, what we can’t buy, what we can do.
Remember, we started out this program with a Corvair and on the bill that was castigated by Ralph Nader as unsafe at any speed. The reaction to his crusade led to the establishment of a whole series of agencies designed to protect us from ourselves. Well, some ten years later, one of the agencies that was set up in response to that, now finally got around to testing the Corvair that started the whole thing off. What do you suppose they found? They spent a year and a half comparing the performance of the Corvair with the performance of other comparable vehicles and they concluded and I quote “The 1960_63 Corvair compared favorably with the other contemporary vehicles used in the test.”
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]
I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]
_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
The best point made in this part of the debate in this episode of “Free to Choose” was made by the economist Walter Williams when he stated:
“Yes. Okay, well, at least form the standpoint of teenagers, particularly minority teenagers, the minimum wage law has acted to destroy a number of employment opportunities. For example, back in 1948, the black youth between 16 and 18 had an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent and white youth was 10.4 percent or 10.2 percent. The labor force participation rates of blacks was considerably higher than that of whites. And with each increase in the minimum wage law, we had the dramatic reversal that we have now. And so the minimum wage law has the effect of saying that if you cannot produce $2.90 worth of goods an hour, you don’t deserve a job….The point is, is that, I think that both these gentlemen, we all should recognize is that unions in the United States support the minimum wage. They are the major supporters. They spend millions and millions of dollars in lobbying for the minimum wage law. They do it out of the name of concern and being in the interest of people. Now, in South Africa the unions are far more honest. That is those white racist unions over there they say we support minimum wages and equal pay for equal work so as to protect white jobs. That is to protect white jobs__”
Pt 6
MCKENZIE: Let’s raise the question, which certainly is dealt with in the film: have minimum wages __ which is a form of government intervention __ served the interests of the poor and indeed of the working class generally? Now I know you’ve spent a good deal of time looking at this __
W. WILLIAMS: Yes. Okay, well, at least form the standpoint of teenagers, particularly minority teenagers, the minimum wage law has acted to destroy a number of employment opportunities. For example, back in 1948, the black youth between 16 and 18 had an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent and white youth was 10.4 percent or 10.2 percent. The labor force participation rates of blacks was considerably higher than that of whites. And with each increase in the minimum wage law, we had the dramatic reversal that we have now. And so the minimum wage law has the effect of saying that if you cannot produce $2.90 worth of goods an hour, you don’t deserve a job.
GREEN: I don’t think __ you can’t look just at the minimum wages __
W. WILLIAMS: But __
GREEN: __ you’ve got to look at the relocation of firms. You’ve got to __ you’ve got to look at the movement of people. You’ve __ I mean you can’t __ you can’t do that.
W. WILLIAMS: Well, can’t we just __ well you look at the relocation of firms. A lot of people try to say a lot of jobs move out to the suburbs. Well, you find black an white unemployment ratios the same in the suburbs as you find in the cities. So it’s __ I mean, it’s the minimum wages.
L. WILLIAMS: Yes, but taking one element __ you’re taking one element out of a long historic development and you start comparing 1920 __
GREEN: Even if you hold constant __ if you hold constant __
(Several people talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: Lynn is next, Lynn and then Ernest Green. Come on now.
GREEN: I understand the law of educational achievement.
MCKENZIE: Lynn and then Ernest Green.
GREEN: You get a differential between black and white unemployment rates __
MCKENZIE: I’ll bang the gavel. Come on. Lynn.
L. WILLIAMS: Well you’re taking __ you’re taking one element, years ago in a situation that’s entirely different that we’re in today and drawing some conclusions__
W. WILLIAMS: Minimum wage. That’s what’s different.
L. WILLIAMS: No, no. There are many other things that are different. The enormous movement of black people in this country between 1948 and now. You can’t just wipe that out. And you can’t say that’s __
W. WILLIAMS: White people move too.
L. WILLIAMS: __ you certainly can’t say that’s the minimum wage. But you know __
MCKENZIE: Wait now. I want this case made. Has the minimum wage served the interests of the working people in this country?
L. WILLIAMS: I don’t think there’s any question __ I don’t think there’s any question that the working people of this country would be much worse off than they are today, the youth of this country would be much worse off than they are today if we didn’t have minimum wage.
MCKENZIE: All right, now, Bill Brady. You __ come on.
BRADY: No, it’s I __
MCKENZIE: On minimum wages __ good idea or not? You’re an industrialist.
BRADY: No. It’s a bad idea. It is patently one of the, one of the worst things that can __ that we can do to our youth. We prevent them from __
GREEN: Bill, how many kids do you have?
BRADY: __ we prevent __what’s that?
GREEN: How many kids do you have?
BRADY: I have two.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: It’s not important how many kids you have.
GREEN: But it is. Minimum wage doesn’t affect his industry. His wages are far above the minimum wage.
FRIEDMAN: Minimum wage doesn’t affect a single one of his members.
(Several people talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Milton has the floor.
L. WILLIAMS: We have not gone to support minimum wage legislation in this country __
MCKENZIE: Gentlemen, hold it a moment.
L. WILLIAMS: __ simply to look after our own interests in something as you describe.
MCKENZIE: Hold it a moment.
(Several people talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: Hold it a moment now. Milton __
L. WILLIAMS: Of course we have not. We are a people’s organization __
MCKENZIE: Lynn __ the Chairman has said the floor is Milton’s.
FRIEDMAN: I was saying that there is not a single one, I suspect, of the members of your union who is affected by the minimum wage. They are much higher.
L. WILLIAMS: As a matter of fact that is a deduction.
FRIEDMAN: You say that you are a public service organization.
L. WILLIAMS: I say we’re a people’s organization.
FRIEDMAN: You’re an organization of your workers. And if you aren’t representing the interests of your workers they ought to fire you.
L. WILLIAMS: And we’re out __
FRIEDMAN: If you tell us that you are going against the interests of your workers and you are simultaneously saying to your workers __ I’m not doing what you hired me for.
L. WILLIAMS: Oh, come on. This is, this is pure sophistry. I’m not __
FRIEDMAN: It’s not sophistry in the slightest.
L. WILLIAMS: __ I am not talking __
FRIEDMAN: I’m just trying to __
L. WILLIAMS: I am not talking about representing the interests of our workers. Our union represents a lot of people.
FRIEDMAN: Right. Right. It does.
L. WILLIAMS: And some of the people are the ones that you’re probably aware of, the people who work in big steel mills __
FRIEDMAN: That’s right.
L. WILLIAMS: __ and all the rest of that.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
L. WILLIAMS: But we also go out and organize workers all the time and win certification votes despite Bill Brady’s comment about that and many of the workers we organize are workers who are affected by minimum wage. And the result of our organizing them is that we’re able to bring them above the minimum wage.
MCKENZIE: Yes.
W. WILLIAMS: The point is, is that, I think that both these gentlemen, we all should recognize is that unions in the United States support the minimum wage. They are the major supporters. They spend millions and millions of dollars in lobbying for the minimum wage law. They do it out of the name of concern and being in the interest of people. Now, in South Africa the unions are far more honest. That is those white racist unions over there they say we support minimum wages and equal pay for equal work so as to protect white jobs. That is to protect white jobs__
L. WILLIAMS: Are you implying __
W. WILLIAMS: __ from low price competition.
L. WILLIAMS: Are you now implying, wait, that we’re white racists?
W. WILLIAMS: No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it doesn’t make any difference about the intent. The effects are __ the effects are __
GREEN: Walter, the Urban League supports minimum wage the __ Ben Hooks at NAACP supports minimum wage.
MCKENZIE: The floor belongs to Ernest.
W. WILLIAMS: They have very good reasons to support minimum wage.
GREEN: Why?
W. WILLIAMS: Their group that they represent __
GREEN: Why __
W. WILLIAMS: They represent middle class blacks.
GREEN: No, no, no.
W. WILLIAMS: They don’t represent the poor blacks on the streets.
GREEN: The membership of the NAACP probably has as many __
W. WILLIAMS: And they’re owned by them. They’re owned by the AFL-CIO.
L. WILLIAMS: They aren’t owned by the AFL-CIO.
MCKENZIE: Order. Order.
L. WILLIAMS: That is a conservative’s view __
MCKENZIE: Order. Order.
L. WILLIAMS: That is a conservative’s view __
(Several people talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: Order! I’m going to __ I’m going to __ I’m going to __ I’m going to turn to Milton now. Are you saying, then, that you would advocate the repeal of minimum wage legislation?
FRIEDMAN: Of course.
MCKENZIE: You would.
FRIEDMAN: Of course I would.
MCKENZIE: Bill Brady, Bill Brady.
BRADY: I should like to ask Ernest and Lynn why they want to restrict a minimum price to labor. Why don’t you let me have a minimum price on the products that we manufacture?
L. WILLIAMS: Well we aren’t hare, as I understand it, to discuss your problems at the moment in terms of the owners __
BRADY: Is there a difference why a minimum amount of profit ___
L. WILLIAMS: Well, you’re the people I assume who are so anxious to have the free market system and to compete with each other and all the rest of it, we’re talking about the needs of the workers and we’re talking about the needs of the people who come into a society which isn’t providing enough employment for them; which clearly doesn’t seem to be able to provide enough employment for them and what are we going to do? And I think this notion that somehow if we just let every guy who is running a hamburg stand or whatever, we just let all these people exploit the young people of this nation in any way they chose, pay them any little rate they could get away with, that everybody would then go to work, would everybody then have a job, is absolute nonsense.
MCKENZIE: I want to bring Milton to one of the final stages of his film, which is Spartanburg, South Carolina.
FRIEDMAN: Sure.
MCKENZIE: And I want to know what your __ what conclusion you’re drawing from that. Would you, in effect, like to see the whole of the United States become as it were, Spartanburg writ large?
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
MCKENZIE: Yeah. What would that mean? And then we’ll get their reaction to it.
FRIEDMAN: It would mean a widening of the opportunity for everybody. It would mean an opportunity for employers all over to compete with one another for workers. It would mean an opportunity for workers to find jobs which can make the greatest use of their own skills and their own capacities. It would mean that consumers would be able to get better products at lower prices. You know, consumers enter into this situation, too. You might think that somehow or other, you know __one of the things that’s always a mystery to me, if a $2.90 minimum wage benefits people why wouldn’t a $6 minimum wage be better? Wouldn’t a $10 minimum wage be better? Why don’t these people come out for a $200 figure minimum wage? If all you had to do to make a country __
VOICE OFF SCREEN: You’re pretty smart __
FRIEDMAN: Two hundred dollars an hour.
W. WILLIAMS: Or extend it to babysitters.
FRIEDMAN: Yeah. If all you need to improve the lot and the conditions of people is to legislate a higher __
MCKENZIE: You’re back on minimum wages. I want to know how Spartanburg __
FRIEDMAN: All right. Spartanburg improves matters because it introduces a wider range of competition and the real thing that protects the worker is the existence of alternative employers seeking his services, just as what protects the consumer is alternative sellers.
BRADY: Milton, you omit one thing that it would do. And it would result in a very substantial increase in capital investment.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely. It would.
BRADY: And capital is the worker’s second best friend.
___________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
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Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
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Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
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_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
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From the original Free To Choose series Milton asks: “Who Protects the Consumer?”. Many government agencies have been created for this purpose, yet they do so by restricting freedom and stifling beneficial innovation, and eventually become agents for the groups they have been created to regulate.
Milton Friedman noted how the government usually messes up things when they start regulating: “When governments do intervene in business, innovation is stifled. Railroads have been regulated for nearly a century and they are one of our most backward industries.”
Part 2
When governments do intervene in business, innovation is stifled. Railroads have been regulated for nearly a century and they are one of our most backward industries. The railroad story shows what so often results from the good intentions of consumer protection groups. In the 1860’s railroad rates were lower in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Yet many customers thought they were too high. They complained bitterly about the profits of the railroads.
Now the railway men of the time had their problems too. Problems that arose out of the fierce competitiveness among them. Many railroads all trying to get their share of the market, all trying to make a name for themselves. If you want to see what their problems were as they saw them, come and have a look at this.
From inside this private railroad car it may not look as if the people who ran the railroads had any real problems. Some, like the owner of this private car, had done very well. This was the equivalent of the private jet of today’s business tycoons. But for each one who succeeded, many didn’t survive the cutthroat competition.
What we have here is a railroad map of the United States for the year 1882. It shows every railroad then in existence. The country was literally crisscrossed with railroads going to every remote hamlet and covering the nation from coast to coast. Between points far distant like for example New York and Chicago, there might be a half a dozen lines that would be running between those two points. Each of the half dozen trying to get business would cut rates and rates would get very low. The people who benefited most from this competition were the customers shipping goods on a long trip.
On the other hand, between some segments of that trip, say for example, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, there might be only a single line that was running and that line would take full advantage of its monopoly position. It would charge all that the traffic would bear. The result was that the sum of the fares charged for the short haul was typically larger than the total sum charged for the long haul between the two distant points. Of course, none of the consumers complained about the low price for the long haul, but the consumer certainly did complain about the higher prices for the short hauls. And that was one of the major sources of agitation leading ultimately to the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The cartoonists of the day delighted in pointing out that railroads had tremendous political instinct. As indeed they did. They used the consumer’s complaints to get the government to establish a commission that would protect the railroad’s interest. It took about a decade to get the commission into full operation. By that time, needless to say, the consumer advocates had moved on to their next crusade. But the railway men were still there. They had soon learned how to use the commission to their own advantage. They solved the long haul/short haul problem, by raising the long haul rates. The customers ended up paying more, some protection. The first commissioner was Thomas Cooley, a lawyer who had represented the railroads for many years. The railroads continued to dominate the Commission.
In the 1920’s and 30’s when trucks emerged as serious competitors for long distance hauling, the railroads induced the Commission to extend control over trucking. Truckers, in their turn, learned how to use the Commission to protect themselves from competition. This firm carries freight to and from the Dayton, Ohio International Airport. Its the only one serving some routes and its customers depend on it. But Dayton Airfreight has real problems. Its ICC license only permits it to carry freight from Dayton to Detroit. To serve other routes it’s had to buy rights from other ICC license holders including one who doesn’t own a single truck. It’s paid as much as $100,000 a year for the privilege.
Secretary: Our company is in the process of trying to get rights to go there now. Yes, we’ll do that and thank you for calling sir.
The owners of the firm have been trying for years to get their license extended to cover more routes.
Air freight company: Now I don’t have any argument with the people who already have ICC permits except for the fact that this is a big country and since the inception of the ICC in 1936, there has been very few entrants into the business. They do not allow new entrants to come in and compete with those who are already in.
Unnamed individual: Of course, Dayton Airfreight suffers but so do the customers who pay higher freight charges. Quite frankly, I don’t know why the ICC is sitting on its hands doing nothing. This is the third time to my knowledge that we’ve support the application of Dayton Airfreight to help us save money, help free enterprise, help the country save energy, help, help, help. It all comes down to consumers ultimately going to pay for all of this and they are the blame. The ICC has to be the blame.
Friedman: Dayton Airfreight now has many of its trucks lying idle. Trucks that could be providing a valuable service. Far from protecting consumers, the ICC has ended up making them worse off.
As far as I’m concerned, there is no free enterprise in interstate commerce. It no longer exists in this country. You have to pay the price and you have to pay the price very dearly and I don’t mean we have to pay the price, it means that the consumer is paying that price.
The price consumers pay when it comes to medicine could be their lives. In the 19th Century pharmacies contained an impressive array of pills and potions. Most were ineffective and some were deadly. There was an outcry about drugs that maimed or killed. The Food and Drug Administration in response to consumer pressure succeeded in banning a whole range of medicines. The tonics and lotions with their excessive claims disappeared from the market. In 1962 the Kefauver Amendment gave the FDA power to regulate all drugs for effectiveness as well as for safety. Today, every drug marketed in the United States must pass the FDA. It’s clear that this has protected us from some drugs with horrific side effects like thalidomide. And we all know of people who have benefited from modern drugs. What we don’t hear much about however, are the beneficial drugs that the FDA has prohibited.
Well, if you examine the therapeutic benefits of significant drugs that haven’t arrived in the U.S. but are available somewhere in the rest of the world, such as in Britain, you can come across numerous examples where the patient has suffered. For example, there are one or two drugs called beta blockers which now can prevent death after heart attack, we call it secondary prevention of coronary death after myocardial infarction, which if available here, could be saving about 10,000 lives a year in the United States. In the ten years after the 1962 amendments no drug was approved for hypertension. That’s for the control the blood pressure in the United States, where as several were approve in Britain. In the entire cardiovascular area, only one drug was approved in the five year period from 67 to 72. And this can be correlated with known organizational problems at FDA.
These carts are taking to an FDA official the documents required to get just one drug approved.
Worker: Well, hi there, must be the new one they called me about.
Friedman: It took six years work by the drug company to get this drug passed.
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]
George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]
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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]
Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6. Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]
Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]
Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]
Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present. This is a seven part series. […]
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I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]
_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]
“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
The essence of what Milton Friedman is saying in this episode is found in this statement:
“The situation of immigration restrictions really has to do with the question of a welfare state. As I say in the film, I would favor completely free immigration in a society which does not have a welfare system. With a welfare system of the kind we have, you have the problem that people immigrate in order to get welfare, not in order to get employment. You know, it’s a very interesting thing, if you would ask anybody before 1914 the U.S. had no immigration restrictions whatsoever, I’m exaggerating a little bit, there were some immigration restrictions on orientals, but it was essentially, mainly free. If you ask anybody, any American economic historian was that a good thing for America, everybody will say yes it was a wonderful thing for America that we had free immigration. If you ask anybody today, should we have free immigration today, everybody will __ almost everybody will say no. What’s the difference? I think there’s only one difference and that is that when we had free immigration it was immigration of jobs in which everybody benefited. The people who were already here benefited because they got complementary workers, workers who could work with them, make their productivity better, enable them to develop and use the resources of the country better, but today, if you have a system under which you have essentially a governmental guarantee of relief in case of distress, you have a very, very real problem.”
Pt 5
L. WILLIAMS: Dr. Friedman and Walter Williams go back in history and they take a look at a situation where America was empty, where we didn’t have anything like the sophisticated industrial economy we have today, but had a much more agricultural and rural kind of economy and of course when the __ when the impoverished peasants of Europe, my ancestors and most of our ancestors, except for the slaves, which is another situation, but when these people came from Europe and came to a wide open continent with the most fertile soil then available to anyone in the world, naturally there was progress; and I or any of us would be mad to deny progress. But as that developed and as population increased and as we moved into a much more sophisticated industrial economy, we moved then into the situation in the 1930s, or earlier than that , at the end of the century. As some of the more skilled jobs came along, the labor movement didn’t happen by accident. Didn’t happen because there wasn’t a need there. The results of this development, even with all the wealth available in America, the results of this development was that many working people were not having anything like, by standards of civilization or whatever, anything like their fair share in this progress.
MCKENZIE: Now you’re arguing that in a free market, for labor, everyone benefits. Does that mean that you would favor abolition of all immigration restrictions?
FRIEDMAN: The situation of immigration restrictions really has to do with the question of a welfare state. As I say in the film, I would favor completely free immigration in a society which does not have a welfare system. With a welfare system of the kind we have, you have the problem that people immigrate in order to get welfare, not in order to get employment. You know, it’s a very interesting thing, if you would ask anybody before 1914 the U.S. had no immigration restrictions whatsoever, I’m exaggerating a little bit, there were some immigration restrictions on orientals, but it was essentially, mainly free. If you ask anybody, any American economic historian was that a good thing for America, everybody will say yes it was a wonderful thing for America that we had free immigration. If you ask anybody today, should we have free immigration today, everybody will __ almost everybody will say no. What’s the difference? I think there’s only one difference and that is that when we had free immigration it was immigration of jobs in which everybody benefited. The people who were already here benefited because they got complementary workers, workers who could work with them, make their productivity better, enable them to develop and use the resources of the country better, but today, if you have a system under which you have essentially a governmental guarantee of relief in case of distress, you have a very, very real problem.
MCKENZIE: But this is true of every western industrialized country.
FRIEDMAN: That’s right and that’s why today __
MCKENZIE: Yeah.
FRIEDMAN: __ under current circumstances you cannot, unfortunately have free immigration. Not because there’s anything wrong with free immigration, but because we have other policies which make it impossible to adopt free immigration.
MCKENZIE: Well I’d like other reactions. Is it at all feasible to open the door of the labor market internationally now? Bill Brady?
BRADY: I would __ I would say yes providing they open the door to us. I think that the door to not only the labor market, the door to all markets should be __ should be open. That is the product markets.
W. WILLIAMS: My feelings about the undocumented workers of Mexican-Americans are inscribed at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. I think that the people should have the right to come to this country. Now, those who would say, you know, I hear a number of people saying that, well the immigrants are contributing to our unemployment problem. And I point this out to some people, I said, “look, you know, this is the same rhetoric that the Irish used when the blacks were coming up from the north, ” you know, they’re using blacks as scapegoats. They’re saying, “get those people back where they came from so that our members can get jobs, ” you know. Unions were as well doing this, you know, they called them scabs, strikebreakers, etcetera, etcetera. So I do not wish for Mexican-Americans to become the new scapegoats of our particular national problems. They are not the problem, and our nation benefits to the extent that these people come here and work. And to that extent __ to that extent__ so it’s kind of good for them to remain illegal aliens as opposed to being legal aliens where they’re subject to our welfare programs, so that we don’t want them to come here to __
(Several people talking at once.)
GREEN: I think that this country cannot have a group of workers to remain outside the framework of our laws and our protection. And as long as we have workers who are attracted to the United States because of the standards of living; and I think minimum wages play a part in that as part of that attraction. But it seems to me to have undocumented workers without providing either a means of protection for them and it seems to me that we’ve got to go to the question of providing the amnesty for those generations of workers who have come here over a period of time, now two, three, maybe four generations. We have to see that they have the same rights and protection of all other workers. And as it stands now, large numbers of them live outside the framework of the laws and statutes that we have on the __ on our books.
MCKENZIE: Comment Milton.
FRIEDMAN: They do and the tragedy of the situation, as what Walter Williams point out, that as long as they are undocumented and illegal they are a clear net gain, the nation benefits and they benefit. They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t. The tragedy is that we’ve adopted all these other policies so that if we convert them into legal residents it’s no longer clear that we benefit. They may benefit, but it’s no longer clear that we do. What Lynn Williams said before is again a travesty on what was actually going on. The real boost to the trade union movement came after the Great Depression of the 1930s; that Great Depression was not a failure of capitalism; it was not a failure of the private market system as we pointed out in another one of the programs in this series; it was a failure of government. It was not the case that somehow or other there was a decline in the conditions of the working class that produced a great surge of unionism. On the contrary __ unions have never accounted for more than one out of four or one out of five of American workers. The American worker benefited not out of unions, he benefited in spite of unions. He benefited because there was greater opportunity because there were people who were willing to invest their money because there was an opportunity for people to work, to save, to invest. That’s still the case today. You say, we have to provide them with something or other Ernest. Who are the “we”?
GREEN: We the people.
FRIEDMAN: How do we the people __ but how do we the people do it?
GREEN: And it seems __ we the people provide them the protection by seeing that their safety __
MCKENZIE: You’re talking about the immigration population now.
GREEN: __ and occupational health codes that protects the environment that they work in, see that they have civil rights laws that protect their own person. See that they have civil liberties laws that protect them further. We the people of this country provide that protection.
W. WILLIAMS: Why are they coming here it’s so bad? If they don’t have, you know, you’re kind of painting an image, you know. Why are these people coming? We’re not pulling them here by chains.
GREEN: It’s obvious why people come here; it’s one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
(Several talking at once.)
MCKENZIE: Gentlemen, don’t all talk at once. Lynn, and then __
W. WILLIAMS: So what are you talking about protecting them?
GREEN: Why did you leave Little Rock, Arkansas to go to Philadelphia? It seems to point__
L. WILLIAMS: It seems to me that it’s obvious __
W. WILLIAMS: Would you extend the courtesy to finish. Look, look, first thing, look, let me say the following things: There’s some basic things that we need to know.
L. WILLIAMS: Well now are you going to say the thing I was interrupting and then say five more things. I mean there isn’t all afternoon.
W. WILLIAMS: You know, labor unions, and minimum wages for that case cannot improve the condition of the working people of the country.
L. WILLIAMS: We do it everyday.
W. WILLIAMS: Because if__ are you suggesting __
L. WILLIAMS: We improve the working conditions of working people in countries all around the world, everyday.
W. WILLIAMS: Well you know this __ you know what you’re telling the audience, you’re saying that you can solve the problems in Bangladesh. You can make them a rich country if you tell them to unionize like we are __
L. WILLIAMS: I didn’t say that.
W. WILLIAMS: __and demand high wages.
L. WILLIAMS: No, I didn’t say anything remotely like that.
W. WILLIAMS: It’s productivity that keeps income low.
MCKENZIE: Lynn, let him finish.
BRADY: I come back to my initial question: why are so many leaving the union?
L. WILLIAMS: There aren’t very many leaving the union.
BRADY: Oh, there are too. I’ve given you the statistics.
L. WILLIAMS: Ah, now, do you think I’m __ you grind off some percentages. I live in the labor movement.
BRADY: You __ do you have other percentages?
FRIEDMAN: In or on?
L. WILLIAMS: In, with and on. And of course they pay me, of course, and I don’t have any objection to that at all.
FRIEDMAN: Neither do I.
L. WILLIAMS: At least we got you a few minutes ago __ we got you to get the labor movement up into this century. And I agree with the observation you made __
(Laughter)
L. WILLIAMS: I agree with the observation you made that the industrial union movement __ that there was a union movement came out of the, out of the dirty ’30s and out of the depression and grew and that was essentially and industrial union movement. But I wonder if __ I wonder when I hear your commentary on the film and so on about unions and restricting practices and restricting access to industry and all of this, I really __ I don’t mean it disrespectfully, but I really wonder __
FRIEDMAN: Don’t mind being disrespectful, it’s all right. I’m used to it.
L. WILLIAMS: I really wonder if you, if you do understand how the industrial union movement, which is __ the more recent part of the union, how it really operates. We’re not telling anybody who they have to hire.
FRIEDMAN: (Laughing)
___________________________
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms. I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]
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I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]
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_________________________ Pt3 Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]
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“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]
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