Timeless Truths – Milton Friedman – Excerpts from Original 1980 Television Series Free To Choose: Vol. 4 – From Cradle to Grave

“The people who get on welfare lose their human independence and feeling of dignity. They become subject to the dictates and whims of their welfare supervisor who can tell them whether they can live here or there, whether they may put in a telephone, what they may do with their lives. They are treated like children, not like responsible adults and they are trapped in the system.

Maybe a job comes up which looks better than welfare but they are afraid to take it …and as a result, this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle rather than simply a temporary state of affairs.”

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“We’ve become increasing dependent on government. 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…  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.”

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“The capitalist system, the private enterprise system in the 19th century did a far better job of expressing that sense of compassion than the governmental welfare programs are today. The 19th century, the period which people denigrate as the high tide of capitalism was the period of the greatest outpouring of Ella Mosner in charitable activity that the world has ever known. And one of the things I hold against the welfare system, most seriously, is that it has destroyed private charitable arrangements which are far more effective, far more compassionate, far more person-to-person in helping people who are really, for no fault of their own, in disadvantaged situations.”

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“ I’ve never heard of a government program which was defective in which the people who ran it didn’t say, ‘If only we had more money to spend on what we’re not being able to accomplish with the amount we’re spending now.’ ”

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“One of the saddest things is that many of the children whose parents are on welfare will in their turn end up in the welfare trap when they grow up.”