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Milton Friedman: Government's Responsibility to the Poor
Free to Choose Network ^ | 1978 | Milton Friedman

Posted on 12/30/2014 10:11:53 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski

Milton Friedman 1978. From a lecture given at Stanford University, he instructs students and faculty on how free markets are the number one tool in the universe to reduce poverty. In the video he disparages government programs that discourage productivity, undermine minority advancement, and actually create poverty...

(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Education; Food; Health/Medicine
KEYWORDS: poor; poverty; wealth; welfare
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Jesus said the following:

Mark 14:7 - "For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always."

Governments do not have an obligation to help the poor and when they try it only results in creating more poor people. People have an obligation to help the poor! How can people help the poor?

1. Keep coercive governments out of the way of the poor

2. Ensure that a free market exists to provide them jobs!

1 posted on 12/30/2014 10:11:53 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski
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To: Jan_Sobieski

Government could do most for the poor by getting out of the way of all.


2 posted on 12/30/2014 10:20:13 AM PST by cripplecreek (You can't half ass conservatism.)
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To: Jan_Sobieski

RIP Mr. Friedman. What a good man!


3 posted on 12/30/2014 10:21:06 AM PST by alstewartfan (But Robin Hood movies Provoke strange emotions That time will not serve to diminish. Al Stewart)
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To: Jan_Sobieski

One can look to LBJ’s “Great Society” to realize what the government can do to the poor. It kept too many blacks poor, uneducated and crime ridden. That’s what the government can do for the poor.


4 posted on 12/30/2014 10:35:02 AM PST by kenmcg
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To: Jan_Sobieski

The poors’ responsibility to America - Shift your mindset just a little. Poverty, like wealth, is a state of mind. The most expensive lifestyle in the world is poverty - it takes every cent you have to maintain it. That, in itself, acts as incentive to escape the grasp of poverty. Or it should.

Charles Dickens wrote of poverty and its stultifying effects on the human condition nearly two centuries ago, and seeing that stark picture in one’s mind, is enough to cause the cold willies in almost everybody. He also delineated the Micawber Principle, based upon this observation:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”

Spend less than you make. That has always made sense throughout history.

Nothing has changed.


5 posted on 12/30/2014 10:41:10 AM PST by alloysteel (Most people become who they promised they would never be.)
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To: kenmcg
"We'll keep those n****rs eating from our hand for the next 200 years!" - President Lyndon B. Johnson after signing the Great Society legislation.
6 posted on 12/30/2014 10:43:28 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Jan_Sobieski

When I was teaching econ to freshmen students, I used to make the statement that I could end poverty overnight. At the time, $9600 for a family of 4 was considered the “poverty line”. When the students asked how, I said: “Get everyone in the country who makes $9600 or less, line them up, and shoot them.” Their eyes would go as big as pie plates. After they settled down, I asked them: “How long does it take before the guy making $9601 starts bitching because he’s the poorest person in the land?” We then proceeded to discuss that, unless you have a perfectly even distribution of income, someone is always going to be defined as poor. I ended by saying that any program that has it’s goal the elimination of poverty is doomed to failure or is designed to abolish a free market system.


7 posted on 12/30/2014 10:43:34 AM PST by econjack (I'm not bossy...I just know what you should be doing.)
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To: alloysteel

An erudite response! Thanks!


8 posted on 12/30/2014 10:46:29 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Jan_Sobieski
I would only add the following to your wise summary:

See Jefferson's description of how much better non-Governmentally directed Welfare worked in Virginia:

Jefferson On Welfare.

One of the tragedies of modern, terribly flawed, education, is that we have, as a people, forgotten what we once knew very well.

William Flax

9 posted on 12/30/2014 10:47:35 AM PST by Ohioan
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To: econjack

So true...makes what Jesus said even more insightful! Truth is, all of your college students were “poor” at the time, but working their way out of it!


10 posted on 12/30/2014 10:48:29 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Jan_Sobieski

11 posted on 12/30/2014 10:50:49 AM PST by econjack (I'm not bossy...I just know what you should be doing.)
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To: econjack
A sound approach, indeed. Of course, what you are up against, and trying to explain to your students, is a technique employed by demagogues & scoundrels since Biblical times; that is to focus their victims--and I use the term victim" advisedly--on imaginary grievances, premised upon selecting the one thing--or things--they do not have, rather than all the Blessings that they do.

(See Variations On Demonic Theme.)

William Flax

12 posted on 12/30/2014 10:54:22 AM PST by Ohioan
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To: econjack
Diabolically wise and prophetic. Reminds me of this verse:

Luke 16:8 - "...for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
13 posted on 12/30/2014 10:58:28 AM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: cripplecreek

Case in point. This week one of my friends who lives up in the mountains organized a few professionals and enlisted the help of Home Depot to donate and then install a hot water heater and connect both hot and cold water to some people who are in really dire shape. They also delivered firewood for the wood stove which will help keep the house warm but not like where you live. Home Depot one of the dreaded robber baron corporations donated the water heater and the skirting to help protect the new pipes from the cold weather.

These folks live in a place you wouldn’t let your dog live in. They have two small kids and the husband is out of work but trying desparately to find something.

No legislation had to get passed, no public funding had to be used, no new government employees had to be hired. No taxes had to be raised. For God’s sakes don’t tell Obama.


14 posted on 12/30/2014 11:14:43 AM PST by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose o f a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped.)
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To: Jan_Sobieski
Government definitely has a responsibility to the poor and God links the right o rule to consideration of the causes of the poor and needy. You wont eliminate the poor, but off shore their jobs and let the starve and see how long you remain in charge of government.

Jer 22:15 Shalt thou reign, because thou closest thyself in cedar? did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was well with him? Jer 22:16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the LORD.

But you do have to be wise about it and take a balanced approach. There always needs to be incentives to work.

Free trade is currently enriching Chinese and other third world markets even as it destroys the industries we built in America. And the resulting high unemployment is enabling big government here in the U.S. That unemployment is a direct result of US trade policy.

15 posted on 12/30/2014 11:17:53 AM PST by DannyTN
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To: Jan_Sobieski

The period from roughly 1750 through the early 1900s was probably the most “Capitalist” period in the West. And look how much the lives of ordinary individuals improved during that period. And that was without Welfare and Food Stamps and Free Obamacare. A rising tide does lift all boats. Things that were prohibitively expensive 10, 20, 30 years ago are commonplace among the Middle Class and even the poor today.

The poor have flat screen TVs. The poor have cell phones. Only the “rich” had these things 20 to 30 years ago.


16 posted on 12/30/2014 11:18:21 AM PST by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: Jan_Sobieski

In England, before Henry the VIII passed all of his illegal laws intended to grab all power into his own hands, the people of England took care of their own poor. The parish priest preached why it was important to have mercy on your fellow man and the people responded in kind by taking care of the poor. The king did not have to lift a finger because the people were spontaneously charitable. When Henry smashed the culture of charity in England, by destroying the entire infrastructure, guess what? The poor began to move to London. And then, when London had more poor than they knew what to do with Elizabeth passed anti-begging laws which jailed them for the first offense, put a hot poker through their ear for the second and for determined repeat offenders - death by hanging.


17 posted on 12/30/2014 11:24:24 AM PST by Slyfox (To put on the mind of George Washington read ALL of Deuteronomy 28, then read his Farewell Address)
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To: econjack

Imagine what would happen if that poster appeared in all the Black neighborhoods?


18 posted on 12/30/2014 12:25:33 PM PST by captain_dave
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To: Jan_Sobieski

Look at what the free market could do for the poor if all our taxes were lowered to begin with? Look how lower energy costs are helping? You can go on and on? If we were to lower all the regulation and taxes why would companies send their good to China?


19 posted on 12/30/2014 12:53:02 PM PST by nikos1121
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To: DannyTN
I disagree. When governments take the place of individuals, it always results in coercion and disaster. If we give individually, the aggregate sum is that our nation gives.

Additionally, the economic Principle(Law) of Comparative Advantage says that some industries should be shipped off shore in order to free up resources to work in higher margin industries. If it were not for the highest corporate tax rate in the world, America would have many more jobs. And...if there are no jobs, why are the Mexicans dying to get in?!?
20 posted on 12/30/2014 2:05:02 PM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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