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Thursday, 9 June 2005

State pensions still a pyramid scheme -- Friedman

A new interview with Milton Friedman has appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle site. He still maintains that what Americans call 'Social Security' and we call Superannuation is a dishonest and immoral pyramid scheme. Asks the interviewer,

What about the fact that Social Security has reduced poverty among the elderly?

"Well," he replied, "what it has done is transfer a lot of income from the young to the old. It is certainly true it has made the old people of the United States the best treated old people in the world."

But why is that a bad thing? "Oh," he replied. "It's not a bad thing for them, but what about the young?"

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1 comment:

  1. Amanda11 Jun 2005, 09:33:00

    Maybe these comments should be seen in the context of Milton Friedman's consistent advocacy of the idea of negative income tax

    ReplyDelete

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