Power of the Market

Power of the Market - Welfare

Рет қаралды 36,041

16 жыл бұрын

Milton Friedman explains the dynamics of welfare (8 of 30) www.libertypen.com
Source: Free To Choose
Buy it: www.freetochoose.net/store/ind...

Пікірлер: 133

@jfultz100 10 жыл бұрын

Milton Friedman was such a kind and brilliant man. I wish the modern face of conservatism was more like him. Gentle, intelligent and logical. We would have such a better and more prosperous society and far less poverty.

@DarthRadical 5 жыл бұрын

He wasn't a conservative. Libertarians generally have to ally with conservatives to get things done - but they're not the same thing.

@LibertyPen 16 жыл бұрын

many more coming - glad you like them

@concernedcitizen6577 10 жыл бұрын

The welfare has been a machine for producing poor people. People with very little social mobility and individual freedom. The most harmful effects of welfare state are welfare recipients have been given disincentive to work and to create meaning for his/her own life, and incentive to make more children to collect more welfare money. Not to mention what those people walking around with idle hands do with their time? Many engage in criminal activities and drug abuse. As a result, they have developed no practical skills, other than watching TV, to support a large family and the cycle continues. Children growing up in such family often become welfare recipients themselves.

@YoungOG22 11 жыл бұрын

"Nobody spends someone else's money as carefully as he spends his own" I wish the knuckleheads in Washington understand that

@Tidoublemy 16 жыл бұрын

More Friedman please! This was excellent.

@infomorph8 11 жыл бұрын

Well said, the problem is most people have no idea or even don't want to know how economy works.

@dkronst 15 жыл бұрын

and still holds true! A great man.

@ThunderAppeal 14 жыл бұрын

This was filmed in the 70s, and prophetic words were spoken by Mr. Freidman. By the 80s the neighborhoods this was filmed in was destroyed by gangs, poverty and other fallout from the welfare system.

@wjestick 11 жыл бұрын

Many very productive people finished school early or skipped college. Gates, Dell, Jobs, Branson, Ellison. Going back into history the picture is even clearer. Thomas Edison and Michael Faraday. Before formal schooling most people learned the basics at home or from a tutor, or by apprenticeship. Learning from more experienced people is how we learn best. That is how we learn to speak with no lessons at all. But many people fail to read well despite years of school.

@dhc21atyahoo 15 жыл бұрын

Naomi's idea of doing good illustrated so well in this video. Naomi, do good for yourself and your loved ones, do not appoint big brother to do it for you!

@kpeffer 14 жыл бұрын

What an excellent piece. It's sad how quickly our nation is sliding into this dependence. Mr. Friedman and his wife Rose would be ashamed.

@navyboym 14 жыл бұрын

Except the service you provide to an employer is a volentary agreement between you and your employer. Not to mention its an arrangement where both parties benefit. As an employee you gain compensation through providing either physical or intelectual labor. The employer gains the skils required that he could not normally do in his own capacity or have the manpower to accomplish in his own capacity.

@dwightbenignus 12 жыл бұрын

@mooeythemooseman Milton Friedman's idea is based on the assumption that the people know what's best for them and what they are entitled too. The truth is, those in power will take advantage of the people and only give them just enough to get away with so that there is no revolt, and keep the majority of production for themselves. This is why we have unions, they are a function of the market, contrary to what Friedman believes. They function to inform people that they are being taken advantageof

@WHATISUTUBE 11 жыл бұрын

Employers can't pay employees whatever they want. Because employees have limits as to what wages they are willing to accept. At the same time, competition among employees makes it so that an equilibrium is reached whereby their wages match what the work is worth. The problem with eliminating the min wage, though, is that if only ONE sector doesn't have it, the economy still functions with goods and services running under the assumption that that is the absolute bottom.

@Bloodsport1 14 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater what year are you talking about the manufacturing jobs?

@manoman0 14 жыл бұрын

@CosmicFork - A very good argument. Very smart.

@fzqlcs 14 жыл бұрын

@SuperTB4 Wisdom is timeless. At one time a welfare worker myself, I am afraid he is right. Less than 30% of the dough coughed up by taxpayers gets to the intended recipients, the rest gobbled up by tail-chasing bureaucrats and fat pension plans. But, rather than to philosophically disagree, you seem genuinely wounded by the simple truths Milton puts forward. I might suspect you are either a champion of the entitlement mentality or a public employees union guy.

@tapashchatterjee8567 5 жыл бұрын

Power of the Market - Welfare....A MUST WATCH.......

@Paddis92 14 жыл бұрын

What about the people who can't work due to injuries for example? How would they make a living in the society which Milton Friedman would like to see?

@papertiger7 13 жыл бұрын

@Chaaarge China doesn't have a free market. They have state controlled capitalism, coupled with government corruption. However, I agree with your point that free markets promote economic growth. Hence, the higher GDP.

@jeffiek 13 жыл бұрын

@REASONINFUSION Clearly, you are skilled in the art of avoidance. I made no mention of "freezing wages", I made no mention of "capitalism". You responded to things I did not mention. You avoided any mention of the results of increasing wages without increasing productivity and the ever increasing cost of living. Keep it up, in a few more years you may succeed in avoiding life in its entirety.

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater On the contrary, international competition and globalisation is how you prevent monopolies from developing. Protectionism, as you have just described, is precisely the policy that worsens depressions - the market is global, and if you attempt to give your corner of that market unfair advantages, or a competitive edge, other countries will mirror you and everyone is worse off. Globalisation might be unpalatable, but it is not the reason for countries' poverty; it remedies that.

@digitalconservative 12 жыл бұрын

When I was growing up, some family members of mine collected welfare and used their free time to make more money selling drugs. They would also scam the system by getting around food stamp limitations by selling food stamps at a discount (hell, it's all profit to them) for cash which they would then use to buy drugs and alcohol.

@wowsa0 11 жыл бұрын

Both of those things seem possible to me. I'm open to being corrected on it, since i don't know much about economics at all. But as a thought experiment say you have a job that just has to be done, it is essential to the running of the business, but is really easy so anyone can do it. If there are plenty of unemployed people, the wages for this job are really low even though it's essential, as high supply of labour. Introduce minimum wage and people get paid more without extra unemployment.

@lamourlupus 13 жыл бұрын

It is no longer called Health Education and Welfare, HEW, It is now Heath Human Services,HHS. This video might be from the late 1970s of early 1980s. Blame horrendous policies by US elected officials especially the federal to include the president. Outsourcing is the result that has positive aspects, but overall is dividing Americans.

@jackmcslay 11 жыл бұрын

In order to have minimum wage not creating unemployment that would require every employer to be able to afford the same employee at a higher price and every employee to be able to produce above the new wage.

@warwize 13 жыл бұрын

or he could've lived in Canada and gotten universal healthcare and still worked as an orderly the problem in this example isn't welfare, but the fact that his medical insurance company discriminates based on income levels, no different than private insurance companies discriminating based on pre-existing conditions.

@wowsa0 11 жыл бұрын

...(cont) Obviously that is a simplified example, and in practice things are more complicated. But I don't see why, if wages are low because of high supply of workers rather than lack of demand for those skills, that having a minimum wage would have to create unemployment. Again googling seems to say that consensus is current minimum wage does not create unemployment.

@jeffiek 13 жыл бұрын

@REASONINFUSION Anyone skilled in using the tools of reason would immediately recognize the result of wages without increasing productivity. Such a person would also inquire as to why the cost of living goes up even though productivity goes up, rather than mindlessly accepting it as a fact of life.

@jackmcslay 11 жыл бұрын

- Jobs with greater responsibility than minimum wage jobs must remain equally above the minimum wage to keep employees motivated not to switch to other, less stressful jobs. This creates an increase in costs which creates an increase in prices of the products and services in general, creating a cat-and-mouse game in which they keep raising the minimum wage to make the low-level employees better off but it never manages to catch up.

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater I think you're putting post-WW2 American economic success down to factors that don't deserve the credit. Before the 1970s, there was far less capacity for developing industrial economies to compete with America! You didn't have to have protectionism. If you want to protect American industries from competition, then the short-sightedness of this policy will be proved when other countries turn to Europe, China, Japan, and India for things that America currently supplies.

@schmoukiz 12 жыл бұрын

"Mr Brown knows" lol

@AnthonyMazzarella 11 жыл бұрын

In Canada some towns use a lottery to decide who gets to see the doctor that week. And when my god mother's grand daughter needed to go on dialysis because certain vital organs were shutting down. The Ontario hospitals Had no room for her. She would have died if they did not come to America.

@majinoce 15 жыл бұрын

The bureaucracy is growing to meet the needs of the growing bureaucracy

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater ? In all countries where there is government-owned industry, the government is 'the corporation'; they are not 'a' corporation, but it is a euphemism that means the government incorporates that particular industry's profits and shortfalls within its budget. 'Corporation' is just a euphemism for state-owned industry, I should think it fairly plain to see.

@azmildman 13 жыл бұрын

Watch the movie "A Christmas Carol" with the lead role, Scrooge and see the end over again. The part where he tells Bob Cratchet that he wants to start helping take care of his family. That was America in the fifites. That loyalty died LONG AGO. Don't talk to me about what an employer deserves. He can only get what the people who do the work do for him in business. American corporations need to remember that. They sent all the Jobs over seas but want American workers to buy their products.

@Chaaarge 13 жыл бұрын

@loeghat it's a matter of principle. If I'm a hard working citizen, why should I pay for someone who doesn't want to earn their own money? on a truly free market, there will be some poverty, yes, but also a lot more productivity from the people who actually work. the most powerful economies in the world (hong kong is a great example) are the ones with less welfare and lower taxes, but strong anti fraud rules

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater In fact not; the US has been a shining example of how well privatisation works. Compared to European countries, America has *far fewer* government-owned services and companies, and lower taxes. The USPS stands alone as a big state corporation in the US; the UK has a completely socialised medical system (more than France even) and is very inefficient and cost ineffective, for example. I'm afraid your argument reflects the strengths of the free market, not of state-ownership.

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater Certainly, but perhaps the USPS isn't the best example because it has quite a lot of autonomy, I think. All industry in the USSR was state-owned. British Telecom, National Rail, British Airways &c. were all instances of government literally being 'the corporation' until they were incrementally privatised by Thatcher's government. When governments bought shares of failing banks using tax money in the recession, that is another instance. This is all socialism in varying degrees.

@Darusdei 13 жыл бұрын

@Chaaarge there are no socialist or communist countries, those which claim that are all totalitarian dictatorships

@cozmoz365 12 жыл бұрын

@mooeythemooseman Not true, if someone feels like they are better off on welfare then they are working then they will stay on it. As he mentioned in the video, support should be removed slowly. This will allow people to enter temporary work without the fear of being cut off completely. Also if you remove the support slowly it will give people the support they may still need while working in low payed jobs.

@jackmcslay 11 жыл бұрын

- Jobs face the constant competition with automation. If automating a certain task costs X and you set the minimum wage to X+10, everyone who does that job will be unemployed. And this kind of automation does not help creating jobs because it comes with a reasoning of cutting costs rather than increasing production

@Foe-Hammer 7 жыл бұрын

and what has technology done to pretty much every job throughout history? when new technology emerges some jobs are made absolete, but in return new job fields are created by or in order to service that new technology.

@NoahHorwitz 11 жыл бұрын

Mr. Brown's problem is not because of the evils of welfare, it is because of the inequity of Government not giving free basic healthcare for all.

@navyboym 14 жыл бұрын

That is not a justification for the minimum wage. If you automatically raise the minimum wage to some amount always above welfare, that would in turn cause even more people onto welfare. You must understand it is not the role of governments to decide what wage a job is worth. You will see (as Friedman points out) that minimum wage leads to discrimination of people who have a skill set not justifyable to pay a set minimum wage.

@Chaaarge 13 жыл бұрын

@Darusdei not because they will earn more money, but because they will actually have to fight to get something. So it's about allowing people to strive to get more money, not actually making them earn more money. Look at the world, the countries with the most productivity are not socialist nations. Free markets will create a higher GDP. That's pretty much proven if you just compare socialist/communist(except for china which is still a free market in a way) nations with free market nations

@th3gr8juan 14 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater However, my ability to purchase a car was increased. Cars were cheaper which left more discretionary spending for me. I got an increase in pay simply by purchasing a cheaper car.

@unvergebeneid 13 жыл бұрын

@uninterestingentity I respect his opinion; I just find the implications scary. Would you please respect that by your own line of argument, instead of presuming that I just don't understand the matter?

@REASONINFUSION 13 жыл бұрын

@jeffiek Are you saying wages are low and have not kept up with the cost of products because of low productivity? I am too busy to play games so I need a means of proving you have no idea of what you are talking about.

@vaj99 14 жыл бұрын

They have a workfare system in europe. u can still claim tax credits while u work.

@lamourlupus 13 жыл бұрын

@2dum2getsocialism, many will find legal ways to keep payroll as close to the minimum! Some owners want to eliminate the minimum wage and lower the working age. The US has a legally documented and researched history of abuse of employees by business owners and their management. Business owners,politicians,and unions have questionable histories. America needs businesses and labor to cooperate instead of being antagonistic.

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater What you need is for American businesses to level with their international competitors, seek more efficient production strategies and more successful international and domestic sales strategies - if American businesses are *not as good* (cost and/or quality) as others, then it only hurts the American consumer by limiting him to the domestic market. The only way you get rid of monopolies and bad companies that waste taxpayer money with frivolous investment is competition.

@fzqlcs 13 жыл бұрын

@mba2ceo redistribution of wealth is the morality of every thief. thanks for identifying yourself.

@th3gr8juan 14 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater So by purchasing a cheaper car, I took a pay cut? That's some magical math you are working out.

@AnthonyMazzarella 11 жыл бұрын

Universal heath care isn't universal. There's no way to have an unlimited supply of a limited resources. All goods and service are limited in that they cost resource to produce. There is only so many doctors etc to supply the human capital. Only so many hospital beds etc. to make more requires investors or a surplus of capita, called profits. Prices reflect this but since the government is paying for this it means that the consumers of the resource don't see the rationing element called prices.

@centurion180ad 13 жыл бұрын

@LogicalFlawDetector That would be the incentive, but if you TRY that in America you'll be arrested and all your capital will be stolen by the government. There are Acts/Statute/Code color-of-law that FORBID selfreliance, or charity that allows people to provide their own means of income.

@seeqr9 13 жыл бұрын

@mba2ceo I have similar dreams hopwever I would teach the children that "humanity" and "society" r not a single thing to b served but are a collection of individuals. Individuals educated to b wise and logical will prosper and need to b "served" very little thus enabling them to serve those truly in need. Voluntarily of course. This would help the maximum amount of individuals even if it didnt look as warm n fuzy as "sacrificing" all u have for others or as "heroic" as steal from "the rich" etc

@seeqr9 13 жыл бұрын

@fzqlcs "it simply indicates a lack of basic morality." ...or excessive regulations/"laws", also symptoms of socialism and lack of true free market.

@azmildman 13 жыл бұрын

People can't live on minimum wage as it is, but you think spending his life working for you is an education? He knew how to work before you and will work after you. If you gave him the responsibility to begin with, you are going to experience good and bad employees, the cost of doing business. But you think you shouldn't have an over head like everyone else. That is what is ruining the job market. We don't live in the fifties anymore when people could buy land and a house for 15 to 19,000

@gucylucy24 13 жыл бұрын

his point of that he will automatically get a job if his social welfare was cut some how doesn't seem realistic. I live in Ireland and there r so many people emigrating now because they can't get a job...any job regardless of whether it doesn't have the incentive of earning much more money than the welfare. Yet, if you did cut the welfare and the family still cant get a job..what are they supposed to do...resort to crime...or starve to death.

@crossxlui 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater htt p://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/The_new_deal What you're proposing has already been tried and tested before: quotas, sanctions, tariffs, you name it. It prolonged the depression, creating double digit unemployment for a prolong period. The fallacy in your thinking is that someone must suffer in order for someone to gain. That's not always true. The third world and the US can mutually cooperate for mutual benefits.

@JoeQuilantang 4 жыл бұрын

Crazy how this still applies today. Why work when you can make more at home on welfare? Shm

@zdon25 15 жыл бұрын

"Government has no wealth of its own. Before it gives anything to anyone, it must take from those who produced it."

@manoman0 14 жыл бұрын

@ThunderAppeal - Nooooo...do not question reality!! Change the meaning of words! good= bad, peace= war, then your so called "destroyed neighbourhoods" are a good thing!

@fzqlcs 15 жыл бұрын

The disabled are justified in having their hands out, not the able-bodied.

@AnthonyMazzarella 11 жыл бұрын

No I will not ask them. 2 reasons. 1) costs are hidden since because it is paid for by taxes. 2) don't pay taxes they put you in a steal cage called prison. And I am sure there are many people whom are perfectly content using other peoples money.

@spark300c 12 жыл бұрын

@gucylucy24 well be happy that you do not live in Greece where whole country went over board with welfare and is going default. however Ireland is welfare state it has high risk of get too much debt too. U.S.A it is the same. every one in government refuse to cap spending and do not report welfare spending.

@eorobinson3 13 жыл бұрын

@eorobinson3 have made* well those goes my credibility

@wowsa0 11 жыл бұрын

That's ridiculous. You're claiming that unemployment didn't exist before the introduction of the minimum wage? You've just undermined the intelligent arguments given in the video. The minimum wage doesn't obviously create unemployment. If there is a job that needs doing, like cleaning, and it is the only high supply of labour that keeps the wages low, then a minimum wage could conceivably raise wages without increasing unemployment. Bit of googling and this seems to be current consensus

@italianmiltyfriedman6264 7 жыл бұрын

20 people on welfare disliked this video

@mba2ceo 13 жыл бұрын

@seeqr9 ... that is 100 % my dream in life, if I ever become wealthy, is to create a "Boy's & Girl's Town" were all the underprivileged children can be educate to serve humanity ... but we all have dreams. I think wealth is wasted on the RICH. I think the greatest hindrance to human prosperity is human stupidity. But as I get older I losing faith in humanity.

@seeqr9 13 жыл бұрын

@mba2ceo If u really cared and where moral it would be "make yourself rich and give to the poor"

@enotdetcelfer 15 жыл бұрын

it looks like you pulled a quick switch in that comment. First you say that real capitalism means you fail and socialism for the rich is when bankers are rewarded for their failure. Thats two different ideas. So you can't say thats why real capitalism doesn't work, thats why socialism for the rich doesn't work. Keep your concepts separated.

@eorobinson3 13 жыл бұрын

@eorobinson3 s* excuse me I am a bit drunk.

@flagship21 14 жыл бұрын

the husband lives pretty well

@TheMarksmenCat 13 жыл бұрын

@2dum2getsocialism Yea, I cant even find a goddamn job because of the minimum wage here in Canada, and altough I surely would have loved to get paid 9,65$/hour, I dont give a damn since I can`t get one. The lucky ones that got a job are being spoiled.

@azmildman 13 жыл бұрын

@2dum2getsocialism Unlimited greed has struck the employers who were raised to think that labor isn't important. If it were up to them, there would be NO LABOR save a few guys to maintain and feed supplies to the machines that do all the work. In the year 2000, some thought they could get one guy to do three people's work and lay off two people to maximize profit. They forgot all the employees and their labor that made them rich. We are seeing the downfall of capitalism that Marx predicted.

@manoman0 14 жыл бұрын

@CosmicFork - You'd rather suffer for your ideology than to make things right FOR people, huh?

@UnOxonien 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater The answer is not for government to step in with protectionist strategies, that is how you *guarantee* that US industry will *fail*. If the US wants more domestic industry, its industry needs to make itself cost-effective! You can't 'protect' yourself from Asia. If you enorse protectionism, other countries will stop buying American goods, and your industries will be even worse. Protectionism never works in the long-run, and it certainly doesn't work in today's globalised market.

@REASONINFUSION 13 жыл бұрын

@jeffiek Anyone challenging someone skilled in using the tools of reason should know the freezing of wages has more to do with retaining a profit margin than the cost to produce. Capitalism is not a moral system that is concerned with paying any wage beyond that which keeps labor loyal. if you got your nose out of your 50 year old micro economics text book and into the real world, you would know that.

@crossxlui 13 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater 3 words: The New Deal. Read up on how successful it actually is. :D

@mba2ceo 13 жыл бұрын

@fzqlcs my morality is take from the rich give to the poor. See we have an impasse ... who's morality is right.

@spark300c 12 жыл бұрын

@azmildman I do not really think the church want third world counties. after all the church support education.

@th3gr8juan 14 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater Let me make this perfectly clear for you. Throwing out stupid one liners and claiming that everyone that disagrees with you as "brainwashed" and "hoodwinked" does not win an argument. You haven't even thrown out any facts as to how the loss of manufacturing jobs leads to decrease in pay. You remind me of the liberal of the 80's who told us that America's best days were behind us. That the future was one of scarcity. To quote Reagan, I utterly reject that view. And he was right.

@Darusdei 13 жыл бұрын

@Chaaarge you have this illusion that unemployment is a choice. in a true free market there will be more productivity from the people who work? why, because they earn more money? already proven false...

@eorobinson3 13 жыл бұрын

Respond to this video...Learn about the actual means of economy? A. What does that even mean in the context you never provided? B. If you had studied economics you would not made such simpleton statement.

@Moionfire 12 жыл бұрын

$5 a month!!!

@maxpower252 2 жыл бұрын

Common sense on steroids.

@hol9672 14 жыл бұрын

eat the rich!

@th3gr8juan 14 жыл бұрын

@louiethegreater Thank God your antiquated ideas about jobs did not win the day 200 years ago. Imagine your logic used on agriculture. These machines are taking the jobs of farmers! This will lead to hundreds of thousands unemployed! The reality is that the market will create new jobs. And as far as I am lucky enough to have a job, not true. I am actually underemployed right now. I was laid off. But now I pick myself up. Good thing that I haven't fallen for the class envy path that you have.

@ventilize 15 жыл бұрын

elf.

@unvergebeneid 13 жыл бұрын

This guy is really, really scary. I'm happy the recent near-breakdown of the financial system proved so many points wrong he makes.

@haasxaar 15 жыл бұрын

such a load of BS here. Milton cherry picked some people and then ignored how poverty and extreme inequality declined dramatically since the New Deal. His ideas werent exactly great for social cohesion either. Friedman had about as much concern for the average worker as Pol Pot did.

@eatcarpet 13 жыл бұрын

Capitalism is ending.

@mwangolatrue 15 жыл бұрын

I hope He stop sudying hope and read something worthy

@1jackal1 8 жыл бұрын

Conversely, it is not the 'fault' of the welfare state that someone is better off in receipt of welfare than they would be if they had a job, it is the fault of the employer, not paying workers enough of a wage for them to live on, doing so for the employer to preserve profit.

@TheRev1269 7 жыл бұрын

1jackal1 wrong. Idiot

@Foe-Hammer 7 жыл бұрын

the fact is some jobs are not meant to provide a "living wage" because they require low to no previous skill sets. the benefit of those jobs is that even though you start at a low wage, you can acquire new skills that provide more value and therefore can get you a better job.

@1jackal1 7 жыл бұрын

That's an interesting point. My main issue with it personally is that it seems to suggest that people doing 'low skilled' jobs are not 'worth' giving appropriate wages in order for them to live even the most basic of existences, despite doing exactly, in essence, what someone doing a highly skilled job is doing, which is giving up the most precious thing they have to offer; their time and energy. A person who is a cleaner working 9-5 and a person who is a manager doing 9-5 are in essence doing the exact same thing - giving up their time and energy worth 8 hours. The monetisation of giving up our time and energy is currently what a job is. Why shouldn't there be a 'base' or minimum level of earned credit for doing this exact same thing, allowing people at least to be able to live from this exchange? You mention providing value - well often I think it's the lowest paid jobs which actually provide the most immediate value for society. Again taking the example of a cleaner - I think if toilets weren't getting cleaned then things would break down a hell of a lot quicker than if a middle manager wasn't there to create a spreadsheet. Who is to say one is less or more valuable than the other? I understand that people doing higher skilled jobs will have had to expend energy and time at another period in order to reap the benefits of higher pay. I'm not disputing that. What I'm disputing is that some people, such as Mr Friedman feel there is a 'need' to under pay people for doing certain jobs to the extent they can't actually live from the menial reward they receive despite expending time and energy and keeping the cogs of society turning. What the cleaner and the manager are doing, at base, is THE SAME - investing their time and energy into a collective pool called society, giving individuals within it the opportunity to address basic needs of food, clothing, shelter and then because the collective investment in this cause is greater than the sum of it's parts, allows further opportunity for happiness and contentment. This is what society is. What Mr Friedman is championing is a version of this, but one that is highly exploitative. The only 'need' I can see, for Mr Friedman's stance on underpaying people is a control mechanism to keep a large underpaid and under valued working class down trodden enough to be subservient to the fact they are essentially propping up systems above them which mainly benefit a smaller group.

@sdrtcacgnrjrc 7 жыл бұрын

+1jackal1 good points. I know little about Friedman or economics in general. (His criticisms here of the way welfare works seem very good: seems the powers that be should have a listen..) But the main point I wanted to make here is about the (mainly American) idea that if you work very hard you will succeed: unfortunately for many, working very hard - I mean doing a lot more than a 40 hour week - is necessary just to get the very basics for survival, and trying to get out of that cycle is extremely difficult. Like you, I find this unreasonable. I know this is similar in other countries (Britain, Germany, Ireland).

@rocsaltjohn 6 жыл бұрын

Your assumption is that you get to decide what an "appropriate wage" is. Here's a thought. Hire a kid to shovel your walk in the winter. I've decided that you should pay him appropriately $200 to shovel your walk. I've also decided that you cannot shovel it yourself as well as you cannot hire anybody else to shovel your walk for less than $200. Now you may say "but that's too much money to pay for that", and I will retort with "you are a greedy profiteer and you don't care about anybody else but yourself". Labor doesn't have a static value. It isn't worth a price that you or anybody else decides. Economically when you put a static price on something, you create a price floor. Any minimum wage creates a price floor and ultimately ends up hurting the people that it is intended to help. If you buy a bag of flour at 2.58 cents and it suddenly goes up to 9.00, Yor budget doesn't allow you to pay 9.00 for one bag of flour. You will ether have to buy less flour or go without something else. That's basic economics and labor cost's are not immune to that. Government has no motivation to "save" money as it doesn't earn it to begin with. It simply takes it from you and me.

@AnthonyMazzarella 11 жыл бұрын

Is this a joke.

@amritjanardhanan 5 жыл бұрын

AnthonyMazzarella No this is reality sooooooory