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In every society, however it is organized, there is always dissatisfaction with the distribution of income. All of us find it hard to understand why we should receive less than others who seem no more deserving—or why we should be receiving more than so many others whose needs seem as great and whose deserts seem no less. The farther fields always look greener—so we blame the existing system. In a command system envy and dissatisfaction are directed at the rulers. In a free market system they are directed at the market.
A BROADER VIEW
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
Experience shows that once government undertakes an activity, it is seldom terminated. The activity may not live up to expectation but that is more likely to lead to its expansion, to its being granted a larger budget, than to its curtailment or abolition.
LIMITED GOVERNMENT IN PRACTICE
Hong Kong,
Great Britain,
The British o...
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Though Hong Kong is an excellent current example, it is by no means the most important example of limited government and free market societies in practice.
1846,
Corn Laws—laws
of World War I
Adam Smith’s words quoted earlier, “perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.”
Our society is what we make it. We can shape our institutions. Physical and human characteristics limit the alternatives available to us. But none prevents us, if we will, from building a society that relies primarily on voluntary cooperation to organize both economic and other activity, a society that preserves and expands human freedom, that keeps government in its place, keeping it our servant and not letting it become our master
CHAPTER 2 The Tyranny of Controls
In discussing tariffs and other restrictions on international trade in his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote: What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage. . . . In every country, it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition
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INTERNATIONAL TRADE
The Economic Case for Free Trade
Korea or Hong Kong
The Political Case for Free Trade
Free International Trade and Internal Competition
CENTRAL ECONOMIC PLANNING
Human Freedom
CHAPTER 3 The Anatomy of Crisis
THE ORIGIN OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
FACTS AND INTERPRETATION
Cause or Effect
Where the Depression Started
Effect on the Reserve System
Cradle to Grave
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN WELFARE STATE
These early British measures, like Bismarck’s, illustrate the affinity between aristocracy and socialism.
laissez-faire
RESULTS OF THE WELFARE STATE
Social Security
Public Assistance
Housing Subsidies
Medical Care
As Dr. Gunnar Biörck, an eminent Swedish professor of medicine and head of the department of medicine at a major Swedish hospital, has written: The setting in which medicine has been practiced during thousands of years has been one in which the patient has been the client and employer of the physician. Today the State, in one manifestation or the other, claims to be the employer and, thus, the one to prescribe the conditions under which the physician has to carry out his work. These conditions may not—and will eventually not—be restricted to working hours, salaries and certified drugs; they
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THE FALLACY OF THE WELFARE STATE
YOU ARE THE SPENDER
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE
Where does Social Security fit into this beautiful, if politically unfeasible, dream?
The best solution in our view would be to combine the enactment of a negative income tax with winding down Social Security while living up to present obligations. The way to do that would be: Repeal immediately the payroll tax. Continue to pay all existing beneficiaries under Social Security the amounts that they are entitled to under current law. Give every worker who has already earned coverage a claim to those retirement, disability, and survivors benefits that his tax payments and earnings to date would entitle him to under current law, reduced by the present value of the reduction in his
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WHAT IS POLITICALLY FEASIBLE?
Three Presidents—Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter—have
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
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CHAPTER 6 What’s Wrong with Our Schools?
American Dream.
Erie Canal,
