Tag Archives: arnold schwarzenegger.

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

June 21, 2012 – 7:39 am

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 last 30 plus years. Here is part one.
Volume 1 – The Power of the Market
Abstract:
Finding examples in his visits to Hong Kong, the U.S. and Scotland, Dr. Friedman says that free markets are the fundamental engines of economic progress. In free markets, individuals can go into any business they want, trade with whomever they want, buy as cheap as they can, and sell at the highest price they can get. In truly free markets, governments do not interfere with any of these privileges. Individuals are free to enter the marketplace to do business, and they, and they alone, enjoy the fruits of their successes and the consequences of their failures. In free markets, producers of goods and services respond to signals they receive from buyers in the marketplace. They key production to their understanding of what people are buying and, apparently, wish to continue to buy. Using this information, they decide what to produce and in what quantity. Competitive forces in free markets promote efficiency. Because there is free entry of new producers into the market, individual producers must keep costs down in order to price their products at competitive levels. This means the resources they consume tend to be used efficiently. If they are not, costs of production rise, selling prices go up, and the producer may not be able to sell his product because it is not priced competitively. Free markets promote voluntary cooperation among a great diversity of people. As Milton Friedman points out, even making something as simple as a pencil requires the cooperation of thousands of people largely unknown to one another. Because the pencil manufacturer needs paint, graphite, wood, glue, and other components, widely separated groups of individuals have an incentive to produce these items and ship them to the pencil plant. This cooperation is not accomplished by any government. Individual freedom and economic freedom are tightly linked. It is difficult to conceive of personal freedom existing in isolation from economic freedom. Thus, the free market system not only promotes economic progress, but also buttresses our cherished individual freedoms.
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Hi, I am Arnold Schwarzenegger. I would like a moment of your time because I wanted you to know something. I wanted you to know about Dr. Milton Friedman’s TV series, Free to Choose. I truly believe that the series has changed my life. When you have such a powerful experience as that, I think you shouldn’t keep it to yourself, I wanted to share it with you.

Being free to choose for me means being free to make your own decisions; free to live your own life; pursue your own goals; chase your own rainbow; without the government breathing down on your neck or standing on your shoes. For me that meant coming here to America. Because I came from a socialistic country in which the government controls the economy. It is a place where you can hear 18 year old kids already talking about their pension. But me __ I wanted more. I wanted to be the best __ individualism like that is incompatible with socialism. So I felt I had to come to America. I had no money in my pocket, but here I had the freedom to get it. I have been able to parlay my big muscles into big business and a big movie career. Along the way I was able to save and invest and I watched America change and I noticed this __ that the more the government interfered and intervened and inserted itself into the free market, the worse the country did. But when the government stepped back and let the free enterprise system do its work, then the better we did, the more robust our economy grew, the better I did, and the better my business grew, and the more I was able to hire and help others.

Okay. So there I was in Palm Springs, waiting for Maria to get ready so we could go out for a game of mixed doubles. I started flipping through the television dial and I caught a glimpse of Nobel Prize winner, Economist Dr. Milton Friedman. I recognized him from the studying of my own degree of economics in business, but I didn’t know I was watching Free to Choose __ it knocked me out. Dr. Friedman expressed, validated and explained everything I ever thought or experienced or observed about the way the economy works. I guess I was really ready to hear it. He said, the economic race should not be arranged so that everyone ends at the finish line at the same time, but so that everyone starts at the starting line at the same time. Wow! I would like to write that one home to Austria. He said, that society that puts equality before freedom winds up with neither, but that society puts freedom before equality, we will end up with a great measure of both. Boy, if I would have come up with that one myself, I maybe wouldn’t have had to get into body building.

When I did beef up my body building, at business school, of course it started with what Thomas Jefferson believed and what Adam Smith thought, even what Milton Friedman had to say __ I would be free to choose __ it all came together. Their economic thought with my own personal experience, and in a way I felt that I had come home. I sought out Dr. Friedman and had great pleasure and privilege of meeting him and his economist wife, Rose, and we have all become friends, and now I call him Milton. Then I became a big pain in the neck about Free to Choose.

All my friends and acquaintances got the tapes and the books for Christmas after Christmas, all the way through the Reagan years when I was able to tell them all __ you see, Milton is right. And I think it’s crucial that we all keep moving in the same direction, away from socialism and to its greater freedom and opportunity. That is why I am so excited that Milton Friedman is updating Free to Choose, bringing it into the 90’s by discussing how to deal with the drug disaster, the chabain phenomenon, and of course, the miserable failure of communism. By the way, there are plans now to translate Free to Choose into the languages of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And you know, they really need it to guide them through it __ to take the first walk toward freedom. But we need it too.

I commend to you the new television series Free to Choose and encourage you to walk into the 21st century in freedom, in opportunity and in success, with Dr. Milton Friedman.

Thanks for listening.

 
Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians who lived here traded the 22 square miles of soggy Manhattan Island to the Dutch for $24.00 worth of cloth and trinkets. The newcomers founded a city, New Amsterdam at the edge of an empty continent. In the years that followed, it proved a magnet for millions of people from across the Atlantic; people who were driven by fear and poverty; who were attracted by the promise of freedom and plenty. They fanned out over the continent and built a new nation with their sweat, their enterprise and their vision of a better future.For the first time in their lives, many were truly free to pursue their own objectives. That freedom released the human energies which created the United States. For the immigrants who were welcomed by this statue, America was truly a land of opportunity.They poured ashore in their best clothes, eager and expectant, carrying what little they owned. They were poor, but they all had a great deal of hope. Once they arrived, they found, as my parents did, not an easy life, but a very hard life. But for many there were friends and relatives to help them get started __ to help them make a home, get a job, settle down in the new country. There were many rewards for hard work, enterprise and ability. Life was hard, but opportunity was real. There were few government programs to turn to and nobody expected them. But also, there were few rules and regulations. There were no licenses, no permits, no red tape to restrict them. They found in fact, a free market, and most of them thrived on it.Many people still come to the United States driven by the same pressures and attracted by the same promise. You can find them in places like this. It’s China Town in New York, one of the centers of the garment industry __ a place where hundreds of thousands of newcomers have had their first taste of life in the new country. The people who live and work here are like the early settlers. They want to better their lot and they are prepared to work hard to do so.Although I haven’t often been in factories like this, it’s all very familiar to me because this is exactly the same kind of a factory that my mother worked in when she came to this country for the first time at the age of 14, almost 90 years ago. And if there had not been factories like this here then at which she could have started to work and earn a little money, she wouldn’t have been able to come. And if I existed at all, I’d be a Russian or Hungarian today, instead of an American.
By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Milton Friedman | Comments (0)

Katherine Schwarzenegger thought about changing last name

August 9, 2011 – 2:37 pm

Photo credit: Nikolai Von Bismarck

posted by Lizbeth Scordo – Tue Aug 9 2011, 7:35 AM PDT

After managing to stay out of the spotlight for most of their lives, the Schwarzenegger kids were suddenly swarmed with media attention during the demise of their parents’ marriage earlier this year, when it was revealed that their dad, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, had fathered a child out of wedlock. A mega scandal ensued.

Read the Full Interview with Katherine

For eldest daughter Katherine, 21, the change was overwhelming. “It was like everything came out of nowhere overnight,” she says in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar. “I would go out to lunch, and literally 20 people would come and scream at me. And I’m like, ‘This is so inappropriate; you’re trying to provoke me to have an attack and say something crazy.'”

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In fact, “crazy” was what Katherine had been trying so hard to avoid since her father became governor when she was just 13. Though she admits to doing some partying in high school, she also knew that one slip-up could ruin everything. “It could have ruined my father’s career if I was caught drunk driving or something like that,” Katherine says. “Being the oldest and going from being an actor’s kid to being the governor’s daughter, it’s a totally different amount of pressure put on you to be perfect.”

“It’s something I deal with every day,” Katherine says of having the Schwarzenegger name. Nikolai Von Bismarck/Harper

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Eventually, when Katherine began attending college a few years ago, she found that having Schwarzenegger for a last name made certain aspects of her life, well, less than perfect. “I thought of changing it because, especially for dating, it’s impossible,” she tells the magazine. “It’s something I deal with every day, and I am hyperconscious about it. When I got to college, people — much more guys than girls because girls don’t give a crap about bodybuilding — were coming up to me, and it would automatically jump to a conversation about my dad and weight lifting or how to do a proper bicep curl. It’s like, ‘Do you want to date my father, or do you want to date me?'”

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Despite having the same last name as her dad, it’s her mother, Maria Shriver, with whom she feels more connected. The two talk around six times a day and email constantly. “I’ve always been way closer to my mom,” Katherine admits. “Even when I was little, I was glued to her all the time. I’m close to my dad, but they’re totally different kinds of relationships.”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Schwarzenegger does not want to pay spousal support

July 21, 2011 – 9:15 pm
  1. FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2009 file photo, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver pose for photos before they meet at the second Governors' Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles. The former California governor indicated in a divorce filing that he does not want to pay Shriver spousal support. Shriver filed divorce papers July 1, 2011, to end their marriage of 25 years. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
  2. LOS ANGELES (AP) — Arnold Schwarzenegger indicated in a court filing that he does not want to pay wife Maria Shriver spousal support or attorney fees as the couple ends their 25-year marriage.

The dispute may have little impact on the divorce, since the former Hollywood couple is expected to reach a confidential, out-of-court settlement.

Schwarzenegger’s filing Wednesday differs little from Shriver’s initial petition for divorce, which was filed on July 1. Both seekjoint custody of their sons, ages 17 and 13.

Neither indicated exactly when they separated, although they announced in May they were estranged and Schwarzenegger later admitted he fathered a child with a member of his household staff.

The former couple does not have a prenuptial agreement, according to their filings. That means Shriver would be entitled to half of Schwarzenegger’s assets under California law, although the exact terms were expected to be set through private mediation.

Schwarzenegger would also be expected to provide financial support for his children. In other celebrity divorces, those sums have totaled tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Any agreement reached by Schwarzenegger and Shriver would become public only if there is a later dispute over its terms, or they opt to handle their divorce through a Superior Court judge.

Schwarzenegger’s disclosure of his out-of-wedlock child forced a temporary halt to his acting comeback plans, although it was recently announced that he will appear in the upcoming film “Last Stand” as a border-town sheriff who unwittingly finds himself battling a notorious drug kingpin on the run.

Shriver, a Kennedy family heiress and former network television journalist, has not announced her plans.

Even before the breakup with Schwarzenegger was revealed, she appeared in videos posted on YouTube and talked about stress in her life, the weight of expectations, and the search for faith in a troubled world.

Schwarzenegger’s legal filing was first reported Thursday by celebrity website TMZ.

have written many times about Arnold Schwarzenegger before. Here are just a few of the times:1. President Reagan having a photo taken with Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas. 8/23/84.2.Here is a video clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger using an Airlight
Broom as a prop for “cleaning house” in the California Recall
Election as seen on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, ect in 2003. The
Airlight Broom is manufactured by Little Rock Broom Works.3. I heard John Fund of the Wall Street Journal speak in Little Rock on April 27, 2011 and in his speech he mentioned the struggle that Arnold Schwarzenegger had with the envirnomentalists in California. I took time to repeat a lot of the facts about that in my blog post that day.4. At that same luncheon on April 27th that I mentioned earlier, one subject that John Fund brought up was the red tape that Arnold Schwarzenegger had to deal with in California. I wrote about that too.5. St. James Palace has confirmed  that Kate Middleton and Prince William – or, more officially, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – will be visiting California from July 8-10 this summer. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to greet the Royals as they touch down.6. Which is better for setting up a business: California or Texas? Arnold Schwarzenegger is mentioned in this post too.7. Arnold Schwarzenegger is fond of quoting Milton Friedman but he rejected fiscal conservative idea to cut spending.8. Pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver through the years. Video clip of them at Ronald Reagan’s funeral.

 

9. I wrote a post on American Exceptionalism and put in a video clip of Arnold Schwarzenegger doing the introduction to an episode of “Free to Choose.”

10. Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of  infidelity? I hope so (Part 1).

11. Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so (Part 2)

12. Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so (Part 3 )

13. Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so (Part  4)

14. Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so (Part  5)

15. Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so (Part  6)

In this series “Will Maria Shriver’s marriage survive Arnold Schwarzenegger’s admission of infidelity? I hope so,” there has been a great reaction to it by the public. I have included articles from “Family Life” of Little Rock, Arkansas about how to recover from an infidelity. I have also included info on how to take part in a “Weekend to Remember,” where you can hear ”Family Life” speakers with your spouse. The only hope for Maria’s marriage will come from the power of Christ in her life to forgive. “A Family Life Conference” would be a great first step. Below is some info on that:

In just one November weekend, for example, more than 6,200 people attended 10Weekend to Remember® marriage getaways around the country. Here are a couple quotes from those who went:

We are moving from a place of being ready to divorce to looking forward to growing together through Christ. This has given us important tools to do so.

We’ve been walking separate roads for many years. Infidelity was the final straw leading us to divorce. I was filling out the papers two days before we came to this event. Over the course of the weekend we found each other, wrote love letters that will be kept as reminders of our true love for each other. I granted forgiveness that my husband really needed. We are going to burn the divorce papers when we get home!

In today’s culture, the issues of marriage and family are open doors for the gospel–the Good News of Christ. Because people want their marriages and families to succeed.  

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)