… is from page 238 of Milton & Rose Friedman’s great 1980 book, Free To Choose:
The government first provides schools in which many young people, disproportionately black, are educated so poorly that they do not have the skills that would enable them to get good wages. It then penalizes them a second time by preventing them from offering to work for low wages as a means of inducing employers to giver them on-the-job training. All this is in the name of helping the poor.
DBx: Yes, and it’s all so sad. Government-supplied “education” (so called) and government-imposed minimum wages are precisely the sorts of policies that would be designed and vigorously enforced by the vilest of racists. (Indeed, in the case of minimum wages, a chief and explicit motivation of many its proponents was racism.) Yet this reality remains hidden behind layers of romantic, progressive mythology, and of appalling ignorance of both history and economics.
…..
Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was born on this date, July 31st, in Brooklyn. He is so very much missed.
