Milton Friedman on Capitalism and socialism
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
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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. 11Checked against the sourceRead the transcriptKeep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that is the true tax. Every budget is balanced. There is no such thing as an unbalanced federal budget. You're paying for it. If you're not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you're paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing. The thing that you keep your eye on is what government spends. And the real problem is to hold down government spending as a fraction of our income. And if you do that, you can stop worrying about the deficit.
What is called a deficit is a form of taxation. It is a very bad form of taxation, but it is a form of taxation.
Why Government Is the ProblemJournal article, 1993, Hoover Institution Press, Essays in Public Policy no. 39, p. 16Checked against the sourceRead the original
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