Milton Friedman on Intellectuals, the press, and public opinion
I must say, it's such a wonderful example of a double standard, because I had spent time in Yugoslavia, which was a communist country. I later gave a series of lectures in China. When I came back from communist China, I wrote a letter to the Stanford Daily newspaper in which I said, '"It's curious. I gave exactly the same lectures in China that I gave in Chile. I have had many demonstrations against me for what I said in Chile. Nobody has made any objections to what I said in China. How come?"
Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interview
Interview, 2000, PBS, “On His Role in Chile Under Pinochet,” interview conducted October 1, 2000
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He also said
It is a tragic but undoubted legacy of the past—and one we must try to correct—that, on the average, Negroes have lower skills than whites. Similarly, teen-agers are less skilled than older workers. Both Negroes and teen-agers are only made worse off by discouraging employers from hiring them. On-the-job training—the main route whereby the unskilled have become skilled—is thus denied them.
Newsweek column of September 26, 1966Column, 1966, Newsweek (September 26, 1966), his first Newsweek column; quoted by Friedman himself in “Legislating Unemployment” (Newsweek, 1972), reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, June 28, 1972, p. 23100. Later collected in An Economist’s Protest (1972)., Congressional Record, June 28, 1972, p. 23100Checked against the sourceRead the originalI gave a talk at the Catholic University of Chile under the title "The Fragility of Freedom." The essence of the talk was that freedom was a very fragile thing and that what destroyed it more than anything else was central control; that in order to maintain freedom, you had to have free markets, and that free markets would work best if you had political freedom. So it was essentially an anti-totalitarian talk.
Commanding Heights: Milton Friedman interviewInterview, 2000, PBS, “On His Role in Chile Under Pinochet,” interview conducted October 1, 2000Checked against the sourceRead the transcriptWhatever the merits or demerits of “majority rule” as an abstract principle, the imposition of sanctions against Rhodesia on this ground is a striking example of a double standard. The other former African colonies of Britain that were granted independence without question and without sanctions do not have anything approximating what Americans regard as majority rule. They have minority rule by a black elite that controls the one party permitted to exist.
RhodesiaColumn, 1976, Newsweek, May 3, 1976; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, April 29, 1976, pp. 11979 to 11980, introduced by Representative John Ashbrook of Ohio, who gives it as “an excellent article on Rhodesia by Milton Friedman, which appeared in the May 3 edition of Newsweek”, Congressional Record, April 29, 1976, p. 11979Checked against the sourceRead the original
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