THE MILTIE SHOW
Roane, Stephen
I have been doing a slow burn over the Miltie Show on television. With his pixielike smile you have to call him "uncle Millie." You cannot possibly think of him as Professor Milton Friedman,...
...The fact is that the "unseen hand," if it exists, is not working for us...
...Besides, what about all the depressions that occurred before the 1929 catastrophe...
...On the other hand, what Milton would have is a competition between our workers and those of the underdeveloped countries, which would result in the lowest possible standard of living for both groups...
...When they starve enough, they will go back to work under conditions that will make domestic production once again competitive, and they will be working for the same wages and conditions as the foreign workers who captured the business for "their" capitalists...
...Demand is frequently unalterable (as with wheat or oil) and free competition becomes a fiction...
...But what to do...
...Steel and Bethlehem...
...It gradually impinges that Milton wants to starve a lot of people to solve our economic problems...
...It wasn't the stock market crash that caused the depression, but the depression that caused the crash...
...THE "FREE MARKET" is largely a myth...
...He has been "solving economic problems" for every right-wing Crazy from Pinochet of Chile on...
...WHAT ABOUT our own Great Depression of 1929, if we may leave Miltie's favorite nineteenth...
...Oh, if only we could get rid of all this government regulation and red tape, all these fetters on the free conduct of business...
...Because of this increase in supply, food prices would drop to a reasonable level...
...But sometimes it takes 10 or 15 years for people to die...
...Didn't landlords freely build tenements that were slums when brand-new...
...Milton would say, "Well, so what...
...it is an outworn idea whose time is past...
...Millions of people went hungry when there was a glut of food...
...q 473...
...that would be government intervention in the free market, the worst thing...
...Because in these underdeveloped countries, hungry people can be found who will work for abysmally low wages, and impossible hours and working conditions...
...It appears that "the free market" is the miraculous mechanism of Adam Smith that regulates the economy by an "unseen hand" that leaves everybody (or almost everybody) happy...
...Well, sure they can make them cheaper...
...This is no joke, this is a slow horrible death...
...But wasn't there terrible poverty and misery in the nineteenth...
...But which is more needed,which should be built...
...Private traders from all over the world would ship food to Ireland...
...But Miltie...
...Irish landlords were actually exporting grain from Ireland to find better markets...
...In other words, they want to take advantage of the sweatshop labor in the underdeveloped countries...
...If we just import their products it will simply eradicate the corresponding industries in our own country, and throw masses of people out of work...
...The millionaire and the beggar could each pick the bridge he wished to sleep under...
...Look," says Milton, "let's just do away with all this nonsense of unemployment insurance, and welfare, and stuff...
...It would be unfair to the grain merchants...
...Adam Smith's citizens could tell the difference between a good or bad pair of shoes...
...Little kids of five or six could, if they so desired, put in 14 or 16 hours a day of wholesome labor...
...Friedman is busy removing such bureaucratic roadblocks as unemployment insurance and welfare...
...It makes them "more competitive...
...But no...
...There was a famine so bad that one third of the population died, and one third emigrated...
...This caused the stock market to crash...
...The choice could be left to them...
...What about the glorious "free market...
...It was strictly man-made poverty, replete with incredible misery...
...The trouble is, the marketplace has this unfortunate tendency to do a little cheating and thieving and conniving (even Dr...
...Let the underdeveloped nations export goods to us, and we will buy the goods, if they can make them cheaper...
...Even nowadays anyone can tell a good soda from a bad one...
...The trouble was, people in Ireland did not have any money to pay for food, no matter what its price...
...But between U.S...
...But he is the theoretician of Ronnie Reagan, and all hands to the right of King Louis XIV...
...He actually said this, I have to keep repeating that...
...The English gentlemen in charge were greatly concerned...
...And they should remain free and competitive...
...Somebody has to take care...
...All because of absence of mind...
...Friedman it was all because of the absentmindedness of someone at the Fed...
...Large-scale modern enterprise generally requires too much capital for the unrestricted entry into the business required for the even partial working of Adam Smith's scheme...
...They then import the products of these factories into our own country...
...But that's not exactly what we wanted to do...
...People out to make money are not always so particular, especially if they're a corporation and not a person at all...
...By that time, if the owner hasn't made enough to buy a gambling casino, he simply makes a new product "Brand Y," with the same stuff, and sells it again...
...It will do them good...
...That is the blessing of the "free market...
...What happened...
...Oh, the free market...
...Nowadays government bureaucrats can examine Brand X, and determine that it is poison when only a few people have died, instead of a lot of people having to die...
...The only time Friedman's voice gets choked up is when he mumbles incantations from his tome...
...All right, they wouldn't be the best jobs, or very highpaying jobs, but the people would work...
...So lots of workers and their families will starve...
...After a while people will start dying from Brand X, others won't buy it any more, and it will go out of business...
...In the meantime, while masses of our workers are being thrown out of work, Dr...
...Miltie walks around with a big old tome, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith...
...The free market will take care...
...How do you or I or Dr...
...There is no "noblesse" in the free market, and therefore no "noblesse oblige...
...By the way, it is interesting to note that many of the factories in the underdeveloped countries are built by owners from our country, with profits they made here...
...Which should be done...
...Common sense, indeed any kind of sense would indicate that they should get as many ships as possible, load them with food, and send them to Ireland to feed the people...
...Friedman admits that...
...The free market does not permit us to expend our resources wisely, or to reach desirable goals, or to solve serious and difficult problems such as the energy crisis, inflation, or unemployment...
...The world is much more complicated, and the average citizen simply does not have the knowledge to make the vital market decisions...
...A standard only sufficient to keep them alive, and raise enough children to provide future workers...
...At least that's what us bleeding-heart liberals wanted to do...
...At the same time Friedman advocates free international trade...
...Well, wait a minute...
...Finally, the question must be asked, "Is the free market, and the most profitable activity, the best way to determine what we should do with our resources?' You make more money building office buildings than building housing...
...We didn't want to lower our standard of living to that of the workers in Sri Lanka or Hong Kong, but to raise their standard of living to our levels...
...Famine in Ireland...
...But we live in a technological age...
...Grown men were routing around in horse shit to find edible seeds...
...The number of companies remains severely limited...
...Suppose somebody manufactures a food—we will unoriginally call it "Brand X." And suppose it happens to be poison...
...You cannot possibly think of him as Professor Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and Doyen of the extreme conservatives...
...Free enterprise was at its height...
...Friedman's system does not make for freedom...
...Let the free market do its thing...
...According to Dr...
...Around 1848 the potato blight hit Ireland...
...Friedman know whether our food is poisoned, or the advertisements are phony, or our airplanes reasonably safe...
...Making beanie hats is more profitable than producing public transportation at affordable fares...
...Between gourmet restaurants and clothing boutiques, competition does exist...
...Miltie thinks (he actually said this) that the great century was the nineteenth...
...This at a time when women and children in Ireland were dropping dead from starvation in the streets...
...Then people would have to go out and get jobs...
...Ask the Irish about the lovely nineteenth...
...They were not Hitlers, they really wanted to help...
...Let the workers suffer a little...
...Wasn't it...
Vol. 27 • September 1980 • No. 4
