The Phil Donahue Show: Professor Milton Friedman: 'Do Gooders Who Do Harm (1980)'

Source:The Wide World of Wisdom- Professor Milton Friedman, on Phil Donahue, in 1980.

"Milton Friedman discusses the efficacy of "affecting to trade for the public good," as Adam Smith put it. All too often people who are well-meaning and have good intentions end up creating results which are the opposite of the very thing they are trying to fix.From: Donahue (1980)" 

From The Wide World of Wisdom

My main problem with do gooders is that they take other people's money to give to the less-fortunate. And tells them: "Don't worry, your problems are now over, we'll take care of you. Your problems are over." Instead of telling the people: "Look, we know you are doing well and making a good living and are self- reliant. But we have this small population that just isn't for whatever reasons and actually we won't just take money from people who are doing well." 

But for people as well who aren't doing badly and can take care of themselves but perhaps without many resources to spare and have their own issues. And they take this money to give to the less-fortunate in hopes that it will take care of them. Making them dependent on public assistance (by the way) the less- fortunate are still less-fortunate after they are on public assistance and I'll get to that a little later. 

What we should be doing instead of using this money to empower these people to get on their feet and be able to take care of themselves. They leave them in their current situation, where they remain poor with a little tax payer funded public assistance to help them take care of themselves. Which only makes then a little worse off but still worse off and thats the whole problem with the do gooder approach to public assistance. 

If you look at the New Deal legislation from the 1930s and the Great Society legislation of the 1960s and then look at the poverty rates of those era's and then look at them today, by the way you should also look at the approach to public assistance of the 1990s, you can see the The New Democrat approach from the 90s, was much better. Which I'll get to later which is different from the traditional approach and you'll see a huge positive difference. And the so-called cycle of poverty or culture of dependence just continues, because people on public assistance continue to have family's and expanding their family's. 

But low-income families economic situation hasn't changed yet and their kids and then later their grandkids grow up under the same poor circumstances as their parents and grandparents. And have the same future ahead of them, because no one took the time to figure out why they are poor in the first place and tried to help them get on their feet. 

Look, I'm not a Libertarian (contrary to popular opinion) I don't know who spread that rumor around its simply not true. I'm a Liberal and proud of it but I'm not a Socialist in any form either. I do believe government does have a role in helping people in poverty and can be effective at it as well. Because of the fact that the Federal Government represents the whole country and is responsible for looking after the well being of the country. 

State government's have the same responsibility for their states and local government's have the same responsibility for their city or county. Thats why we have a military and law enforcement to use as examples. 

But government also has a responsibility to spend tax payer funds effectively and not waste it. And tax payers have a right to know how their money was spent and how much of it was spent. It's their money after all, so when it comes to public assistance for the less-fortunate, we should be helping people in a way so they are no longer less-fortunate and become self-sufficient. 

And we have experience with this with the 1996 Welfare to Work reform that empowered people on Welfare Insurance to go to school to get the skills that they need to get a good job. And then help them find a job and this is what we should always be doing when it comes to public assistance.