John Stossel asks, “Why is America So Successful?”
Stossel concludes, following Friedman, that it’s not natural resources that gave America “a standard of living that’s the envy of most of the world.” Instead, it’s limited government and free market choices that make America prosperous:
More than any other American, Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, clearly warned the world about the unintended consequences of big government.
“We’ve become increasingly dependent on government,” said Friedman. “We’ve surrendered power to government; nobody has taken it from us. It’s our doing. The results — monumental government spending, much of it wasted, little of it going to the people whom we would like to see helped.”
That’s from Friedman’s PBS TV series “Free to Choose,” which aired 30 years ago and became the basis of his No. 1 bestseller by the same name….
The title says a lot. If we are free to make our own choices, we prosper. That was a new idea to many back then. At the time — when inflation and interest rates were in double digits and unemployment approached 10 percent — people thought a wise government could ensure economic growth, guarantee full employment and eliminate poverty.
Friedman explained that the opposite was true, that bigger government had brought us “burdensome taxes, high inflation, a welfare system under which neither those who receive help nor those who pay for it are satisfied. Trying to do good with other people’s money simply has not worked.”
No, it hasn’t. So why, 30 years later, is America doing so much more of it?
Because people still have not learned Friedman’s lesson.
No, they haven’t. Even in a small town like Whitewater, Friedman’s lesson escapes most of our town squires and supposed people of influence. That’s why, although we should be a successful American town, we’re beset with chronic child poverty. Local government meddles in our town’s economy with disastrous results: money is wasted, better private alternatives inhibited, and the fairytale persists that our city administration is gifted in its understanding of business and productive enterprises. Repeating the tale again and again doesn’t make it true; the repetition only reveals the foolishness of those who believe it, and their willingness to embrace tall tales over the actual conditions before us.
It’s predictable that those who have made a career out of spending taxpayers’ money (and insisting that they can do so better than the taxpayers themselves) would not have the humility to admit that all these projects have done little or nothing to uplift ordinary people.
Even if one chooses to ignore the poverty, hunger, and empty buildings and lots in Whitewater, there’s another way to see that this municipal administration’s proud claims are false.
Would you be more likely to place your retirement savings in the hands of a private advisor, or the city bureaucrats of Whitewater? If you received an inheritance, would you find a private advisor to help manage it, or one of the appointed bureaucrats of Whitewater?
The question is meant to be rhetorical, as the answer’s clear. Without the authority to spend money taxed from others, these gentlemen would never have the chance to spend amounts so large. Private parties, large and small, would not freely cast their lot with the advice of Whitewater’s public officials. In a world of greater free choice, these officials’ advice would be ignored.
It’s only through the power of compulsion, and the collection of special interests and hangers-on who wish to stand close to that power, that the string of empty projects on which Whitewater is hooked could continue. In a world of free, private choice, sensible people would never have committed to these ineffectual schemes.
We’d be freer, and consequently more prosperous, with a more limited and restrained local government.