Loving Liberty: Capitalism And Freedom

By Love Quotes2

One of the brightest economists America has had in the last hundred years was Milton Friedman, author of Capitalism And Freedom.  

I am publishing some of this brilliant man’s sayings here, hoping more people will pick up on the truths of his mind.    If only we didn’t have a socialist economist in the position of Secretary of The Treasury today (Timothy Geihtner) our country would be in better shape.

Geihtner is advising the most powerful man in the world, President Barak Obama, and so far he hasn’t done anything to 1) add new jobs (on balance); 2) cut the joblessness rate which is going up and not down as Obama promised more than two years ago, and 3) improve our economy.

On the other hand, the president has taken actions that are self defeating. He had made it almost impossible to do business in coal, oil, and natural gas. He has discouraged our own oil production by closing off-shore drilling in the Gulf while “giving” Brazil $2 billion to stimulate their economy. Whose president is he, Brazil’s or America’s?

The jobless rate now stands at 9.2 percent and if he gets what he wants, that is a tax hike for people making more than $250,000 in America he will make a huge mistake.

That action could create a disincentive for money people from investing in new jobs (in new business enterprises) here in America. We don’t need higher taxes on any level for any business or private citizen.

If you live in California, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey when you add state and local taxes to a big tax hike you could be paying 70 percent taxes–imagine, paying 70 percent of what you make to some government entity. So if you made half a million dollars, you could keep $150,000 and you’d give big government $350,000. Why would I want to live in one of those states? Why would I want to invest in America? I wouldn’t. I’d move to North Dakota, Florida, Texas or another state that doesn’t have a state income tax, right? Right. Or I would move the textile and furniture business to the Orient, which is precisely why America doesn’t make anything anymore, we import these items at our peril.

And if I’m an investor, I would invest outside of the U.S. because I could keep more of my money by doing so.

That tends to dry up investment funds for projects here in the states. That tends to increase joblessness in America and no one wants that. So also, no thinking person wants a tax hike on the rich or on anyone. Get with it, Mr. President.

Liberty, Freedom, prosperity, and Capitalism go hand in hand. You don’t believe it, then just listen to Milton Friedman. I wish he were still alive and available to be our treasury secretary.

1) In 1956 government spending was 26 percent of national income. Non-defense spending ws 1.2 percent of national income. Twenty-five years later (1981) spending for non-defense items had more than doubled and total government spending had risen to 31 percent of national income.

2) Thanks to Ronald Reagan, that spending was curbed and slightly lowered, but that was due to a reduction in defense spending.

3) The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to the Soviet economic collapse in 1992. It marked the end of a 75-year experiment between two alternative ways of organizing an economy.

4) Top-down economic control lost to bottoms-up economic freedom. Private markets and capitalism won over communism and socialism. Planning control lost to private markets.

5) Three smaller experiments yielded the same results: Taiwan versus Mainland China; West Germany versus East Germany; and South Korea versus North Korea.

6) It is now taken for granted that central planning is the road to serfdom, as Friedrich A. Heyac titled his brilliant 1944 polemic.

7) In country after country the immediate post-World War II decades witnessed exploding socialism, followed by creeping or stagnant socialism.

In all these countries today is pressure to give government a smaller role and markets a greater role.

9) In the late 1970s Den Xiaoping privatized agriculture, dramatically increasing output, leading to introduction of additional market elements into a communist command society.

10) The limited increase of economic freedom has changed the face of China, strickingly conforming our faith in the power of free markets.

11) China is far from being a free country, but there is no doubt that the residents of China are freer and more prosperous than they were under Mao–freer in every dimension except for political.

12) Peter Bauer and others pointed out the failure of the socialist formula–central planning plus massive foreign aid.

13) Throughout the world there have been many cases proving one thing: Increasing economic freedom has led to increased prosperity.

14) Competitive capitalism and freedom have been inseparable.

15) Economic freedom is a necesary condition for civil and political freedom.

16) But political freedom is not a necessary condition for civil and political freedom.

17) What is the role of books like Capitalism and Freedom? Is it to provide subject matter for bull sessions, or is it to keep opinions until circumstances make change necessary?

18) There is enormous inertia–a tyranny of the status quo–in private and government arrangements.  Only a crisis–actual or perceived–produces real change.

17) When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas lying around. That is our basic function: To develop alternatives to existing policies and to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.

18) By the late 1960s as Friedman was debating unreconstructed collectivists like Leon Keyserling attacked him by reading Friedman’s list in his Capitalism and Freedom book of 14 unjustified government activities. When he got to number eleven, Keyserling lost the audience and the debate over the military draft issue. (Americans don’t like the draft).

19) Friedman: “The draft is the only item on my list of governmental activities that so far has been eliminated. And that victory is by no means final.”

20) In respect to many of the other principles espoused in this book, America has moved farther away from instituting them.

21) In a much-quoted passage in his inaugural address, president John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not thwat your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.”

22) In Friedman’s mind, the controversy on this passage centers on it’s origin, not its content. Neither half of this (Kennedy) statement expresses a relation between the citizen and the government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies the government is the patron and the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny.

23) The organismic “what you can do for your country” implies the government is the master or the diety, the citizen the servant or the votary.

24) To the free man the country is the collection of free individuals who comprise it, not something over and above them.

25) The free man will ask: “What can I and my compatriots do through government to help us discharge our individual responsibilities to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom?

26) And he will accompany this question with another: how can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?

27) Freedom is a rare and delicate plant.

28) The great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.

29) Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good…and they are not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

30) What two precepts can help us remain free? The scope of government must be limited. Its major funtion must be to protect our freedom from enemies outside our gates and from those from within. Four areas:                                                                                  1) Preserve law and order                                                                  2) enforce private contracts                                                                3) to foster competitive markets                                                      4) at times government may enable us to accomplish jointly what we would find difficult or too expensive to accomplish singly. The Interstate Highway System is an example.

31) To use government this way, there must be a clear and large advantage before we do.

32) By relying on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, we can be sure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the government sector and an effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought.

33) Government power must be dispersed.

34) If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state; better in the state than in Washington.

35) If I do not like what my county or state does, I can move to a new county or state. Few make take the step, but the more possibility acts as a check.

36) Is it just as possible that someone seeking freedom would move from this country when Washington does something untoward?

37) The great tragedy of the drive to centralization or to extend the government in any way is that it is mostly led by men of good will who will be the first to rue its consequences.

 

 

 

 

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