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Milton Friedman on Capitalism and socialism

Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.
We Have Socialism, Q.E.D.
Column, 1989, The New York Times, December 31, 1989, Section 4, p. 11
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  1. In 1945–46, intellectual opinion was almost entirely collectivist. But practice was free market. Government was spending something like 20–25 percent of national income. But the ideas of people were all for more government. And so from 1945 to 1980, you had a period of galloping socialism.
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  2. The average income of blacks here is far higher than the average income of all the people in the Soviet Union. The official government definition of the poverty line in the U.S. is higher than the average income in the Soviet Union; it’s higher than the income received by 90 percent of the people on the world’s surface. Now, that doesn’t mean blacks aren’t subject to injustice; of course they are.
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  3. What is socialism? In its purest form, socialism is government ownership and control of the means of production. Ownership of anything implies the right to the income produced by that thing.
    We Have Socialism, Q.E.D.
    Column, 1989, The New York Times, December 31, 1989, Section 4, p. 11
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript

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