The U.S. needs more socialism.

[Bradley in DC]

[Pilfered from the Mises Scholars list]

Here is an interesting quote from Milton Friedman (http://www.sangam.org/taraki/articles/2006/11-25_Friedman_MGR.php?uid=2075), which is very much apropos to our present concerns:

Major premise: Socialism is a failure. Even lifelong Communists now accept this proposition. Wherever socialism has been tried, it has proved unable to deliver the goods, either in the material form of a high standard of living or in the immaterial form of human freedom.

Minor premise: Capitalism is a success. Economies that have used capitalism - free private markets - as their principal means of organizing economic activity have proved capable of combining widely shared prosperity and a high measure of human freedom. A private market system has proved to be a necessary though not a sufficient condition for prosperity and freedom.

Conclusion: The U.S. needs more socialism. An obvious non sequitur, yet there is no denying that many apparently reasonable people - including most members of Congress and of the Bush administration - accept all three propositions simultaneously.

[dvictr]

The title of this article is a sarcastic dichotomy

The actual translation follows... from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_socialism


Economist Milton Friedman argued that socialism, by which he meant state ownership over the means of production, impedes technological progress due to competition being stifled. As evidence, he said that we need only look to the U.S. to see where socialism fails, by observing that the most technologically backward areas are those where government owns the means of production