Milton Friedman Schools Young Idealist (Stanford)

Video Statistics and Information

Video
Captions Word Cloud
Reddit Comments

Thanks for joining /r/WalkAway! As a reminder, this sub is for discussion, memes, and news about leaving the Left, or reasons to do so. Please follow our rules.

Other recommended subreddits include:
- /r/LibsOfReddit
- /r/HillaryForPrison
- /r/FauciForPrison
- /r/HunterForPrison
- /r/EnoughAntifaSpam
- /r/GlobalLockdown
- /r/TheDonaldTrump2024
- /r/Patriot911
- /r/Conservative_News

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/AutoModerator 📅︎︎ Oct 30 2021 đź—«︎ replies
Captions
Speaker: In reference to talking about government’s role in a free society, you mentioned some of the market failures and I think that you may have just passed over one that is of utmost importance, and that is of poverty. In prefacing my question I would like to refer to what President Kennedy said that if a free society cannot help the many who are poor it cannot save the few who are rich, and to say that while we are a government of the people and when there is a large sector of the people who are hurting perhaps it is the responsibility of this government of the people to help out. My question is regarding how free are the poor, how free are the unemployed, and how free are those people who are disadvantaged, and so in reference to that, what is government’s role? Friedman: First of all.... (audience applause) Prof. Friedman: I’m glad to see one vote for the poor. First of all, the government doesn’t have any responsibility; people have responsibility. This building doesn’t have responsibility; you and I have responsibility. People have responsibility. Second, the question is how can we as people exercise our responsibility toward our fellow man most effectively? That’s the problem. So far as poverty is concerned, there has never in history been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than the free enterprise system and the free market. (audience applause) The period in which you had the greatest improvement in the lot of the ordinary man was the period of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Those of us in this room are the heirs of that. We benefited from the way in which our parents and our grandparents were able to come here, and by virtue of the freedom that was offered to them were able to make a better life for themselves and us. But next, if you look at the real problems of poverty and denial of freedom to people in this country, almost every single one of them is the result of government action and would be eliminated if you eliminated the bad government failures. Let me be precise and specific. Why do we have so high an unemployment rate among black teenagers? It’s a disgrace and a scandal. Why do we have so high an unemployment rate? First of all, because we give them lousy schooling through governmental schools which make them unqualified to hold decent jobs and, second of all, we require employers to discriminate against them by not hiring them unless their productivity is enough to justify a minimum wage. The minimum wage rate is the most anti-Negro law on the books and it’s an anti-Negro law because of precisely having first not enabled the young blacks to have a decent schooling so that they can have productivity; we next deny them the on-the-job training that they might get if you could induce employers, by being able to hire them for relatively low wages, to give them on-the-job training that would make them qualify for higher payment and higher productivity. In the third place, we have constructed a governmental welfare scheme which has been a machine for producing poor people. We have induced people to come under control of welfare. I’m not blaming the people; don’t misunderstand me. It’s our fault for constructing so perverse and so ill-shaped a monster as the whole set of welfare programs we have under which we encourage people, families to break up--we encourage people to move from one part of the country and come to another, under which we have in effect made many people poor... (Interrupted) Have I ever been where? Speaker: Have you ever been on welfare or poor? Prof. Friedman: Of course, of course! More so than most of the people in this room. (audience applause) How many of you have worked a twelve-hour day and gotten paid 78 cents? But, you know, that’s all irrelevant. Is there one of you who is going to say that you don’t want a doctor to treat you for cancer unless he himself has had cancer? (audience applause and laughter) I could go down the line but when all is said and done, while there are people in this country who are worse off than other people, by and large even the poorest people in this country are relatively well-off compared to the conditions in many other countries in the world.
Info
Channel: Free To Choose Network
Views: 599,549
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Milton Friedman (Academic), Stanford University (College/University), Welfare State (Literature Subject), Minimum Wage, Free Market (Literature Subject), Free Trade (Literature Subject), Poverty, John F. Kennedy (US President), Free Society, Government (Quotation Subject), Moral Responsibility (Literature Subject), Free Enterprise System, Free To Choose (Book), Unemployment (Quotation Subject), Education
Id: 0E-URmNAa5o
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 5min 5sec (305 seconds)
Published: Tue Mar 15 2011
Related Videos
Note
Please note that this website is currently a work in progress! Lots of interesting data and statistics to come.