Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

by Milton Friedman

CONCLUSION The empire ruled over until recently by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has been spending more and more of our money each year on our health. The main effect has simply been to raise the costs of medical and health services without any corresponding improvement in the quality of medical care. Spending on education has been skyrocketing, yet by common consent the quality of education has been declining. Increasing sums and increasingly rigid controls have been imposed on us to promote racial integration, yet our society seems to be becoming more fragmented. Billions of dollars are being spent each year on welfare, yet at a time when the average standard of life of the American citizen is higher than it has ever been in history, the welfare rolls are growing. The Social Security budget is colossal, yet Social Security is in deep financial trouble. The young complain, and with much justice, about the high taxes they must pay, taxes that are needed to finance the benefits going to the old. Yet the old complain, and with much justice, that they cannot maintain the standard of living that they were led to expect. A program that was enacted to make sure that our older folks never became objects of charity has seen the number of old persons on welfare rolls grow. By its own accounting, in one year HEW lost through fraud, abuse, and waste an amount of money that would have sufficed to build well over 100,000 houses costing more than $50,000 each. The wast...