Friedman why not use spoons

One of the enduring fault lines in American politics has been over how to best increase economic growth. Conservatives and libertarians have generally argued for lower taxes and fewer regulations. Liberals have called for government investment in infrastructure and measures designed to boost consumer spending.

Even issues like unemployment insurance and education reform are argued about in terms of their contribution to a growing economy. They may have wildly different ideas about how to get there, but all sides have agreed on the basic destination: a growing economy. Until recently. Lately, on the Left a new strain of thought has risen that questions whether growth is a good thing after all. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Milton Friedman.

While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly workers building an earthen dam with shovels. Friedman pointed out that with a bulldozer, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. He saw, said Mr. Aberhart, work in progress at an airport and was told that the men were given picks and shovels in order to lengthen the work, to which he replied why not give them spoons and forks instead of picks and shovels if the object was to lengthen out the task.

Thus, there is evidence that the core of the anecdote and remark were in circulation before the s. Here are additional selected citations in chronological order. He recounted an anecdote in which he delivered a version of the saying: 4. One of the school graduates came to me to pay his respects to the school; he told me he was in charge of helping on one of the Dominion air ports.

We give them picks and shovels and put them out to do it in the old-fashioned way. In a variant of the story was told in the Irish Parliament. The orator referred to an earlier incident that he said took place in the Parliament of the United Kingdom: 5. The farming community cannot sustain as many people, if there is to be a more equitable distribution of our national wealth, and if the people living on the land are to have the high standard of living we would desire for them.

The central incisive comment was pronounced by an unidentified unemployed man who suggested using an even smaller implement, a tea spoon: 6. In an instance of the anecdote appeared in an article by Jerry L. Jordan in the Cato Journal of the Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think-tank.

The cogent remark was delivered by a businessman visiting China: 7. I am reminded of a story that a businessman told me a few years ago. While touring China, he came upon a team of nearly workers building an earthen dam with shovels.

The businessman commented to a local official that, with an earth-moving machine, a single worker could create the dam in an afternoon. In the pundit James K. Glassman wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post that referred to the Cato Journal article. He repeated the anecdote told by Jerry Jordan and noted that Jordan was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland at that time.

In a version of the story was published in the popular London-based magazine The Economist. The journalist evinced uncertainty about the tale which featured an unnamed economist as the principal character: 9. The make-work bias is best illustrated by a story, perhaps apocryphal, of an economist who visits China under Mao Zedong. He sees hundreds of workers building a dam with shovels. In the story appeared in a book by Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. This is the first citation located by QI that connects Friedman to the anecdote.

It is the same basic story as the one told by Moore in that is presented at the beginning of this article. One additional detail is given. The country is identified as India: Our friend the late Milton Friedman once told us a story of being in India in the s and watching thousands of workers build a canal with shovels. He asked why they relied on human labor to do a job that would be more easily and quickly done with modern machinery.

Most of the workers would be unnecessary if the work was completed with machines. If they were only seeking to provide extended employment to many workers, he said, they would need even more if they handed out spoons for digging, rather than shovels. This story came immediately to mind when I saw a congratulatory email sent out by solar energy industry supporters. The email gushed over a so-called boom in solar employment, and it included a graph showing numbers from the U.

Department of Energy for employment in various sectors of the energy industry. In , the email said, the U. In comparison, fossil fuels employed a mere ,, wind energy employed ,, and nuclear rounded out the group with 68, employees.