Ep. 4 - From Cradle to Grave [5/7]. Milton Friedman's Free to Choose (1980)

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 followed close behind. Soon other efforts extended governmental activities in all areas of the welfare sector. Growth of governmental welfare activity continued unabated, and today it has reached truly staggering proportions.

Traveling in both Britain and the U.S., Milton Friedman points out that though many government welfare programs are well intentioned, they tend to have pernicious side effects. In Dr. Friedman's view, perhaps the most serious shortcoming of governmental welfare activities is their tendency to strip away individual independence and dignity. This is because bureaucrats in welfare agencies are placed in positions of tremendous power over welfare recipients, exercising great influence over their lives. Because people never spend someone else's money as carefully as they spend their own, inefficiency, waste, abuse, theft, and corruption are inevitable. In addition, welfare programs tend to be self-perpetuating because they destroy work incentives. Indeed, it is often in the welfare recipients' best interests to remain unemployed.

Dr. Friedman suggests a negative income tax as a way of helping the poor. The government would pay money to people falling below a certain income level. As they obtained jobs and earned money, they would continue to receive some payments from the government until their outside income reached a certain ceiling. This system would make people better off who sought work and earned income. This contrasts with many of today's programs where one dollar earned means nearly one dollar lost in welfare payments.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Milton
• Friedman
• free
• market
• capitalism
• Walfare
• system
• Social
• security
• crime
• Britain
• negetive
• income
• tax

[Linguiphile]

I love watching Sowell get indignant at Leftist stupidity. His deep understanding of economic realities and exceptional intelligence really come out when he's slapping down socialists.

[dkswede]

"you don't have to do that, you simply subsidies it!" Brilliant! I love Thomas Sowell!

[FollowingAutumn]

These stupid OBVIOUS liberal F*CKS. We CANNOT continue to governmentally SUBSIDIZE people of less intelligence, morals, and education so that their ill-conceived progeny "have a chance". This is so sickening to me I cannot express it. Daycare for poor people = family and friends and the Church (NO NEED FOR gov't MONEY), so you can go out and "OHMIGOD" GET A F'ING JOB to support YOUR POOR CHOICES IN LIFE.

[FollowingAutumn]

SICKENING. FIVE YEARS? If you can't get on your feet in 2 years (w/o making more welfare babies)... then you need to seek out help from local charities until you and your POOR CHOICES IN LIFE can be supported through YOUR HARD WORK. NO MORE WELFARE after 2 years is what I say. If crime increases because of this lack of Gov't HANDOUTS, then SO BE IT - we will deal with it SEVERELY until the WELFARE populace learns to be decent, hard-working people with FORETHOUGHT, like the rest of us.

[spyletu]

this host sucks.. if he says he can't go into the details of exploring the negative income tax yet, why would he go about to ask his panel of 'experts' if their purpose of being there in the first place is to discuss things in depth.. stunningly trivial entertainment brainfested, unqualified host. he might as well go broadcast baseball.

[superlucci]

at 6:44 You can tell Milton Friedman is absolutely loving how Thomas Sowell is just eating her up

[Graffight]

5:30 - this line is probably the most important part of the video...welfare incentivizes broken families.

[CountArtha]

8:02

And that, boys and girls, is how you make a strawman argument.

[rupertmja1]

The main reason these guys disagree with Friedman is because his ideas attack their 'distributive' jobs directly.

[shadowpoetrk]

You mean seperate the hopes from the reality. Possibly the best comment I have heard.