The average income of blacks here is far higher than the average income of all the people in the Soviet Union. The official government definition of … - Milton Friedman

"Hardly any worker today engages in the kind of backbreaking labor that was common a century or so ago and that is still common over most of the globe. Working conditions are better; hours of work are shorter; vacations and other fringe benefits are taken for granted. Earnings are far higher, enabling the ordinary family to achieve a level of living that only the affluent few could earlier enjoy. If Gallup were to conduct a poll asking: "What accounts for the improvement in the lot of the worker?" the most popular answer would very likely be "labor unions," and the next, "government" — though perhaps "no one" or "don't know" or "no opinion" would beat both. Yet the history of the United States and other Western countries over the past two centuries demonstrates that these answers are wrong. During most of the period, unions were of little importance in the United States. As late as 1900, only 3 percent of all workers were members of unions. Even today fewer than one worker in four is a member of a union. Unions were clearly not a major reason for the improvement in the lot of the worker in the United States. Similarly, until the New Deal, regulation of and intervention in economic arrangements by government, and especially central government, were minimal. Government played an essential role by providing a framework for a free market. But direct government action was clearly not the reason for the improvement in the lot of the worker."

"Who Protects the Consumer? "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens." — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. I, [>]"

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both