Milton Friedman Essay

Submitted By hebe927
Words: 823
Pages: 4

Milton Friedman There are series of Milton Friedman’s videos—“Free to Choose”, talking about that how the United States authorities to develop excessive regulations, implement excessive regulation, establish excessive administrative agencies and spent more money and resources, in the end to reduce the social wealth of the people of the United States. When the U.S. government to intervene in every socio-economic, the consequences are often tragedy although their starting point is good. Friedman also tells us how to extend some of our freedoms, increase our wealth. What give me a deep impression are market mechanism, welfare system and equality. In the article “Market Mechanisms and Central Economic Planning” written by Milton Friedman, he uses an example of pencil to illustrate the function of market mechanism, as known as the function of prices. There are three functions: transmit information, provide an incentive, and determine the distribution of income. All of these three have effect on another, their interrelation is that, when the price transmit information, it also gives an inventive for people, and then people make response to the information and determine who gets what and how much. Friedman thinks that it is impossible to separate these three functions, for example, when the influence of price to the distribution of income disappears, the function of transmitting information and providing an incentive will be both gone. In the video of “Power of the Market—The Pencil”, Friedman analyzes the productive process of a pencil to illustrate the market mechanism. This concise, convincing and compelling case let me realized that the most ordinary pencil was made by so many people and through so many procedures. Actually a small pencil contains big science: the “invisible hand” of the market commands the industries to develop coordinately, and promote cooperation in various sectors of society, therefore, the big machine society can function smoothly. However, the "invisible hand" is just an economic law, the real behind the scenes to promote the economy and make the social machine functioned is actually each of us, each one who carried a certain kind of social production. Another part impressed me is the welfare system. Friedman takes the U.S. Great Depression as an example. In 1932, Roosevelt was elected to be the U.S. president, and his "New Deal" is very helpful to the United States at the time, part of it is the welfare system. In order to better pry more people, he took a lot of measures to support the welfare system. Thus, the modern welfare state began to appear. However, the emergence of the modern welfare state resulted in increasing pressure on the country. The welfare system is to use the money of the middle-aged to raise the elder, and the young as a preparatory team. Then there will be a problem that our society is developing, the group who need the welfare will be bigger and bigger because of the population aging, the natural growth of population and the population immigration policy. In particular, the UK and Sweden who known as whole welfare state, they are facing growing pressures of economy and the increasing discontent of society. Finally, equality is also a major point impressed me, Friedman introduces two aspects of equality: equality of opportunity