A Quote by Milton Friedman
Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.
Related Quotes
You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. 'But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?' 'Oh, no,' they'll say, 'We couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a bare subsistence level.'
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
What's the difference? How can people be so inconsistent? Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today? Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There's a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense as we had it before 1914 is not possible today. Why not?
I believe that the Welfare State redistributes poverty and reduces income. As Karl Kraus once said of psychoanalysis, the Welfare State is the disease which it purports to cure.
I deny the right of Congress to force a slaveholding State upon an unwilling people. I deny their right to force a free State upon an unwilling people. I deny their right to force a good thing upon a people who are unwilling to receive it. The great principle is the right of every community to judge and decide for itself, whether a thing is right or wrong, whether it would be good or evil for them to adopt it; and the right of free action, the right of free thought, the right of free judgment upon the question is dearer to every true American than any other under a free government.
Find someone who you really believe in - that can be at a state level. The one thing I can encourage women to do the most is to start at the state level.
Reform immigration to make it easy for individuals to come over here, be documented, pay taxes - immigration reform is needed to state that its about work, its not about welfare... Set up a grace period where they can get a work permit... social security card so that they can pay income tax, social security, Medicare.
To continue on the road we Americans have traveled for the past century is ultimately to deliver ourselves completely into the hands of an unlimited government. We can have a free society or a welfare state. We cannot have both.
The State, of course, is absolutely indispensable to the preservation of law and order, and the promotion of peace and social cooperation. What is unnecessary and evil, what abridges the liberty and threatens the true welfare of the individual, is the State that has usurped excessive powers and grown beyond its legitimate function - the super-State, the socialist State, the redistributive State, in brief, the ironically misnamed 'Welfare State.'
Strictly enforce the scale of "fixed responsibility." The first and foremost level of responsibility is with the individual himself; the second level is the family; then the church; next the community, finally the county, and, in a disaster or emergency, the state. Under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare.
General welfare is a general condition - maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state - the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession.
If you're talking about the narrow issue of public assistance, I would like to see us move to a more healthy system. But until we come up with certain guarantees - for example, guaranteed jobs where mothers move off welfare - I support welfare very strongly. The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.
The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all.
We cannot allow voters to fall for the spin that a vote to leave is the only way to deal with concerns about immigration. We can do far more to address both the level and impact of immigration while remaining in the E.U.
Only a system of state-controlled schools can be free to teach whatever the welfare of the State may demand.
Sen. Robert Menendez's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2010 would try to nullify every single state and local law that fights illegal immigration. Congressman Luis Gutierrez's CIR ASAP Act with over 100 Democratic co-sponsors does the same thing.
Related Authors
Adam Smith Quotes
Scottish
Economist
Alan Greenspan Quotes
American
Economist
Benjamin Graham Quotes
American
Economist
Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
Austrian
Economist
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
American
Economist
John Maynard Keynes Quotes
English
Economist
Joseph Stiglitz Quotes
American
Economist
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
Austrian
Economist
Muhammad Yunus Quotes
Bangladeshi
Economist
Murray Rothbard Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Craig Roberts Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Krugman Quotes
American
Economist
Richard Thaler Quotes
American
Economist
Robert Reich Quotes
American
Economist
Thomas Sowell Quotes
American
Economist
Walter E. Williams Quotes
American
Economist