"A machine for producing poor people."

If you are a government school teacher, maybe you should gather your students around the computer to watch this clip. It is a short excerpt from a Q&A session that took place in 1978. The speaker is Milton Friedman. He is asked by a Stanford University student the following question: "How free are the poor, how free are the unemployed, how free are the people who are disadvantaged? What is government's role?"

Milton Friedman's response is worth a listen. Amazing how it still applies today, 32 years later. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the clip:

• "Government doesn't have any responsibility. People have responsibility."
• "There has never been a more effective machine for eliminating poverty than the free enterprise system and the free market."
• "If you look at the real problems of poverty and the denial of freedom to people in this country, almost every single one of them is the result of government action."
• "We have constructed a governmental welfare scheme, which has been a machine for producing poor people."

Toward the end of the video, a heckler from the crowd shouts out: "Have you ever been on welfare ... or been poor?" Milton Friedman shoots him down with one sentence: "Is there one of you who is going to say that you don't want a doctor to treat you for cancer unless he himself has had cancer?"