Milton Friedman on Rent control and housing
Has adequate housing been assured for all, and especially for the poor? Has urban blight been eliminated? Hardly. … Public-housing projects built at great expense—for example, the Pruitt-Igoe houses in St. Louis—have literally been blown up because they had become a hotbed of crime and a breeding ground of poverty.
Context. From a 1979 Newsweek column. The column is framed as a daydream: he imagines President Carter giving a televised talk, and everything inside the talk is his own recommendation voiced through that imagined Carter, not anything Carter said. On public housing, urban renewal and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The ellipsis omits a sentence quoting Martin Anderson’s figures on urban renewal, which are Anderson’s words, not his.
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Milton Friedman, “What Carter Should Do” (Newsweek, June 18, 1979; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, June 13, 1979, p. 14740, introduced by Representative G. William Whitehurst of Virginia, who cites “the June 18, 1979, issue of Newsweek”, 1979), Congressional Record, June 13, 1979, p. 14740. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/urban-blight-hardly-pruitt-igoe-1979
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He also said
Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing: running servants replaced running water. … They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of Western capitalism have redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.
Rent control is certainly one example in which I will challenge you to find from the professional economists from the left to the right, I will challenge you to find anybody who will defend rent control from a technical economic point of view.
Context. After distinguishing what he says as an economist (the predictable consequences of rent control in New York City) from what he says as a man with values (that it is wrong to force an owner to rent below the price he would accept), and saying the public wrongly believes economists disagree on technical questions.
The Open MindInterview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)Checked against the sourceWatch itThe threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect. The public schools would remain dominant, perhaps somewhat improved by the threat of potential competition. But elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools.
Free to ChooseBook, 1980, Ch. 6 “What’s Wrong with Our Schools?”, p. 170Checked against the sourceFind the book
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