The Milton & Rose Show


The Wall Street Journal interviews economics first and only couple team
I'm putting off working on an opinion piece for this weekend, and one of my distractions is an interview with Milton Friedman. Like most of his accomplishments, it turned into a team effort with his wife Rose Friedman. This certainly got my attention.

Is immigration, I asked--especially illegal immigration--good for the economy, or bad? "It's neither one nor the other," Mr. Friedman replied. "But it's good for freedom. In principle, you ought to have completely open immigration. But with the welfare state it's really not possible to do that. . . . She's an immigrant," he added, pointing to his wife. "She came in just before World War I." (Rose--smiling gently: "I was two years old.") "If there were no welfare state," he continued, "you could have open immigration, because everybody would be responsible for himself." Was he suggesting that one can't have immigration reform without welfare reform? "No, you can have immigration reform, but you can't have open immigration without largely the elimination of welfare.

"At the moment I oppose unlimited immigration. I think much of the opposition to immigration is of that kind--because it's a fundamental tenet of the American view that immigration is good, that there would be no United States if there had not been immigration. Of course, there are many things that are easier now for immigrants than there used to be. . . ."

Did he mean there was much less pressure to integrate now than there used to be? Milton: "I'm not sure that's true . . ." Rose (speaking simultaneously): "That's the unfortunate thing . . ." Milton: "But I don't think it's true . . ." Rose: "Oh, I think it is! That's one of the problems, when immigrants come across and want to remain Mexican." Milton: "Oh, but they came in the past and wanted to be Italian, and be Jewish . . ." Rose: "No they didn't. The ones that did went back."

Mrs. Friedman, I was learning, often had the last word.

There is a reason why this man and his wife are so important to modern economics. And it is not just because of Free to Choose. In just a few words, they've managed to sum up almost everything I feel about the illegal immigration mess.

First, it's impossible to have open immigration as long as we have a welfare state. And second, the people who live here have to want to live here, or they should go elsewhere.

The only bit they missed was dealing with the violent criminals.

I feel like I just got lectured in philosophy on an obvious truism. Stars above, I wish there were more thinkers like that. Maybe more importantly, I wish more people paid attention to the thinkers like that who we do have.

Oh, and they disagree on Iraq.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - July 22, 2006 at 09:05 AM  Tag


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