Watch Milton Friedman Explain Why the Government is the Enabler of Poverty
The video below does not have a date on it. It shows the late Milton Friedman engaging a young man in a discussion about poverty and the role of government. I want you to notice how civil the audience is. It’s obvious that there are two groups, one that applauds the questioner and one that applauds Friedman’s answer.
There’s no one shouting out “white privilege” or looking for a safe space or accusing Friedman of “micro-aggressions.” As far as I can see, there are no police. No one is rioting making it unsafe for Friedman. The administration was not called by protests to shut down the talk because of threats of violence.
Friedman tells it like it is: The government has increased the incidence of a poverty class in the United States by its policies. He explains how minimum wage laws, for example, make it difficult for the poorest people to gain work experience. This is exactly what’s happening in places like Seattle where a higher minimum wage was put into effect. Employees are working fewer hours and the people hired already have experience. What companies would hire someone with no work experience at $13.00 to $15.00 per hour when they can hire someone with experience at those rates?
Every economic policy that today’s “Progressives” are advocating has contributed to a perpetual lower class. And so what do they propose? More of the same.
By the way, that’s not a young Bernie Sanders.
Here’s a “cleverly edited clip of delightful Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman taking Sanders to task for the idiocy that his entire political life is founded upon” that was produced by the Freedom for Economic Education (FEE):