Sunday, July 26, 2009

Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue Show 1979

Here is a clip of the late libertarian economist Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue show in 1979. The main issue under discussion was a proposed government bailout of Chrysler. (It is funny how some things do not change in thirty years.) I would like to thank my cousin for sending this clip to me. I challenge anyone to watch the full program and come back and say that libertarianism does not offer a coherent and logical way out of our economic predicament.

2 comments:

Miss S. said...

That was very interesting. Sadly, the US is a long way off from the free-market system. We now live in a world full of monopolies; which is also a very old problem. 100 years before we took Bill Gates to court, we had J.P. Morgan doing the same thing. This is not a country that changes its economic policy due to past failures; but rather the whims and ideas of those who fund the lobbyists.

I think Mr. Friedman makes a very good argument. I wonder how he defend the libertarian stance on health care however. Last night I heard on talk radio a commercial which painted a picture that government involvement in health care would be like a post office with doctors. Ok; but at least everyone has access to their mail; even if it is a pain. In some tax years, I have paid close to 10K in taxes, but went without coverage for a good part of that year, because I worked as an independent contractor, not an employee; so did not have the benefit of getting health care coverage at a group rate. I certainly was not interested/able to pay $150/month after taxes just for health care coverage. So while I feel that Libertarians have a very good point, I would like the government to alleviate some of my tax burden before releasing them from the responsibility of taking care of these types of things.

On a side note, I wish that talk shows tackled such interesting, intelligent topics today. Somehow we went from have discussions with the likes of Professor Friedman to pulling people out of the housing projects and asking, "Who's the father?" It is like a double insult of what we have become.

Miss S. said...

I wonder how he defend

..."would" defend...sorry.