Word: friedman
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...Friedman has a big recipe for economic reform, and he calls for an end to many politically sacred Government programs. A sampling of his ideas: FOOD STAMPS. "There is nothing you can do with stamps that you cannot do better by giving people money. The real drive behind food stamps is not to help the poor; it's to dispose of farm surpluses." Friedman calls the farm-subsidy program, which piles up huge surpluses in grain elevators, "a free-lunch program for mice and rats." PUBLIC HOUSING. "It was instituted in the 1930s to improve the housing of the poor...
...indiscriminately." GOVERNMENT PRIVILEGES. "All over the world, the predominant source of great increases in private fortunes over the past several decades has been Government privileges." For example, the issuance of radio-TV licenses is "an enormous giveaway of valuable capital sums to individuals who are not low-income people." Friedman also holds that the Federal Communications Commission should auction TV channels to the highest bidder and thereafter stay out of the picture...
INFLATION. Friedman challenges the popular theory that full employment and price stability are incompatible. "The belief, like most of those propositions that get widely accepted, is a half-truth," he argues. The two goals conflict over brief periods when an economy is shifting from one rate of inflation to another, he concedes. But over any period of five, ten or 20 years, says Friedman, fast economic growth and full employment can be meshed with stable prices...
...Friedman and some other forecasters believe that the U.S. next year will go through an "inflationary recession." There is almost no way that the U.S. can avoid simultaneous increases in both prices and unemployment; the question is just how bad those rises will be. "Never has a U.S. inflation of the present intensity?5% to 6% a year?been controlled without a recession," says Economist Beryl
REACTION to his ideas, says Milton Friedman, follows "a certain scenario." Act I: "The views of crackpots like myself are avoided." Act II: "The defenders of the orthodox faith become uncomfortable because the ideas seem to have an element of truth." Act III: "People say, 'We all know that this is an impractical and theoretically extreme view?but of course we have to look at more moderate ways to move in this direction.' " Act IV: Opponents "convert my ideas into untenable caricatures so that they can move over and occupy the ground where I formerly stood...