The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been w… - Milton Friedman

The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening — one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism.

The old saw is that the Quakers went to the New World to do good and ended up doing well. Today, well-meaning reformers go to Washington to do good and end up doing harm.

Perfect competition is a theoretical concept like the Euclidian line, which has no width or depth. Just as we’ve never seen that line there has never been truly free enterprise.

This leads to my next myth—the myth that government can spend money at nobody’s expense. What was really involved in that last story was that somehow the local people do not pay out the money coming down from Washington somebody else does. Of course, the truth is that the money makes a round trip between Florida and Washington, and there is a discount taken off for cash as it passes through Washington. Some of you may remember that wonderful description of government by the French economist, Frederic Bastiat, who said that government is that fiction whereby everybody believes that he can live at the expense of everybody else.