Free To Choose: a personal Statement

2. On Liberty, People's ed. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1865),
p. 6.
3. Wealth of Nations, vol. I, p. 325 (Book II, Chap. III).
CHAPTER 1
1. See Hedrick Smith, The Russians ( New York: Quadrangle Books/New
York Times Book Co., 1976), and Robert G. Kaiser, Russia: The
People and the Power ( New York: Atheneum, 1976).
2. Freeman, December 1958.
3. Wealth of Nations, vol. II, pp. 184-85.
CHAPTER 2
1. Wealth of Nations, vol. I, pp. 422 and 458.
2. See George J. Stigler, Five Lectures on Economic Problems ( New
York: Macmillan, 1950), pp. 26-34.
3.
"
A New Holiday," Newsweek, August 5, 1974, p. 56.
CHAPTER 3
1. Lester V. Chandler, Benjamin Strong, Central Banker ( Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1958), p. 465.
315

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316
FREE TO CHOOSE: A Personal Statement
2. Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, A Monetary History of the
United States, 1867–1960
(Princeton:
Princeton University Press,
1963), p. 310.
3. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, vol.
III:
The Great Depression,
1929–1941
( New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 212.
4. Annual Report, 1933, pp. 1 and 20–21.
5. For a fuller discussion see Friedman and Schwartz, Monetary History,
pp. 362-419.
CHAPTER 4
1. It is worth quoting the whole sentence in which these words appear,
because it is such an accurate description of the direction in which we
are moving as well as a wholly unintentional indictment of the effect:
"No man any more has any care for the morrow, either for himself or
his children, for the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and
comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave."
Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward ( New York: Modern Library,
1917; original date of publication, 1887), p. 70.
2. An Over-Governed Society ( New York: The Free Press, 1976), p. 235.
3. A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion
in England during the Nineteenth Century, 2d ed. (London: Macmil-
lan, 1914), p. xxxv.
4. Ibid., pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.
5. Ibid., pp. xxxvii–xxxix.
6. Cecil Driver, Tory Radical (New York: Oxford University Press,
1946).
7. Quoted in Ken Auletta, The Streets Were Paved with Gold ( New
York: Random House, 1979), p. 255.
8. Ibid., p. 253.
9. These figures refer only to OASDHI and state unemployment insur-
ance; they exclude railroad and public employee retirement, veterans'
benefits, and workmen's compensation, treating these as part of com-
pensation under voluntary employment contracts.
10. Social Security Administration, Your Social Security, Department of
Health, Education and Welfare Publication No. (SSA) 77-10035 (June
1977), p. 24. The earliest version of the booklet we have seen is for
1969, but we conjecture that the booklet was first issued many years
earlier. The words were changed in the February 1978 version, by
which time the myth that "trust funds" played an important part had
become transparent.
The revised version reads: "The basic idea of social security is a

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Notes
317
simple one: During working years, employees, their employers, and
self-employed people pay social security contributions. This money is
used only to pay benefits to the more than 33 million people getting
benefits and to pay administrative costs of the program. Then, when
today's worker's earnings stop or are reduced because of retirement,
death, or disability, benefits will be paid to them from contributions by
people in covered employment and self-employment at that time. These
benefits are intended to replace part of the earnings the family has lost."
This is certainly a far more defensible statement, though it still
labels "taxes" as "contributions." When we first discovered the change,
we thought it might be a result of