Milton Friedman Versus A Socialist

president obama are you listening and here at the Harper library in the University of Chicago our distinguished guests have their own ideas too so let's join them now it seemed to me he was saying that the golden age for America when it was truly a land of opportunity was the late 19th early 20th century no regulations no permits no red tape I would argue that the government played a decisive role in an enormous grant to the railroads and creating an American capitalist economy and secondly to go back to that Golden Age you find that the government constantly intervened in a rather characteristic way use troops against strikers American labor history has been the most violent bloody class struggle anywhere in the world and the government up until 1932 the law the courts the society always sided with business always sided against working people therefore I would argue that both economically and in terms of repressing the attempts of people to assert their freedom a government prior to the rise of the welfare state in this country was more or less owned by business Miller Freeman Michael Harrington is seeing the hole in the barn door and he's not looking at the barn door itself the plain fact is during the whole of that period while government did intervene from time to time and mostly to do harm I agree with him that government intervention was in the may not a good thing tariffs for example on the other hand throughout that whole period government spending federal government spending central government spending never was more than three percent of the national income it was trivial the land grants to the railroads were a minor factor I'm not I don't approve of them I'm not saying they were a good thing but they were a very minor factor one has to have a sense of proportion and that goes to the whole discussion I am NOT an anarchist I am NOT in favor of eliminating government I believe we need a government but we need a government that sets a framework and rules within which individuals pursuing their own objectives can work together and cooperate together and they work together and cooperate together not only in economic areas well what you Michael Harrington yeah I I just think that that two things one to view freedom positively I think people over 65 years of age in the United States today or freer now because of Medicare I do not think that the freedom to die from the lack of medicine was a very good thing secondly related to industrialist I think that one of the one of the startling things about American history is that when Franklin Roosevelt was saving the system from itself the main beneficiaries were screaming bloody murder at him for being a traitor to his class when he was in fact the salvation of that class and I think if you therefore if you look at our history I do think you find a tremendous myopia on the part of industrialists and you find that the positive increments to our freedom interestingly enough have not come from the college graduates but often from people with and not from the best people its come from working people it's come from poor people it's come from blacks and Hispanics and the like Milton would you reply but then tell us why you took us to Hong Kong to prove something unaccustomed as I am to agreeing with Michael Harrington I will agree in part with what he's just said I do not believe it's proper to put the itchin in terms of industrialist versus government on the contrary one of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary worker in the ordinary consumer I think business is a wonderful institution provided it has to face competition in the marketplace and it can get away with something except by producing a better product at a lower cost and that's why I don't want government to step in and and help the business community now I want to go to your question about Medicare there are many people who have benefited from Medicare but you're not looking at the cost side what has happened to the people who are paying for it it isn't we don't have a free good it isn't coming from nowhere and are they benefiting from it in a cost-effective way those are the questions it's it's demagoguery if you'll pardon me Michael Michael Harrington to say the people who have Medicare are freer of course in one dimension but they themselves have been paying all their lives and have they gotten a good bargain at the moment they have the young man the young working people who are going into Social Security now they're going to get a very raw deal indeed

Channel: Common Sense Capitalism

Views: 964,619

Keywords: milton friedman, socialist, common sense capitalism

Id: FOMI0ORGH44

Length: 4min 31sec (271 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2010