The Surest Way For A Poor Nation

Yet It Ought To Be Clear That A Minimum Wage Law Is, At Best, A Limited Weapon For Combatting The Evil Of Low Wages, And That The Possible Good To Be Achieved By Such A Law Can Exceed The Possible Harm Only In Proportion As Its Aims Are Mode.

Government Relief Tends Constantly To Get Out Of Hand. And Even When It Is Kept Within Reasonable Bounds It Tends To Reduce The Incentives To Work And To Save Both Of Those Who Receive It And Of Those Who Are Forced To Pay It. It May Be Said, In Fact, That Practically Every Measure That Governments Take With The Ostensible Object Of 'helping The Poor' Has The Long-run Effect Of Doing The Opposite.

Relief, Or Redistribution Of Income, Voluntary Or Coerced, Is Never The True Solution Of Poverty, But At Best A Makeshift, Which May Mask The Disease And Mitigate The Pain, But Provides No Basic Cure.

The State, Of Course, Is Absolutely Indispensable To The Preservation Of Law And Order, And The Promotion Of Peace And Social Cooperation. What Is Unnecessary And Evil, What Abridges The Liberty And Threatens The True Welfare Of The Individual, Is The State That Has Usurped Excessive Powers And Grown Beyond Its Legitimate Function - The Super-state, The Socialist State, The Redistributive State, In Brief, The Ironically Misnamed 'welfare State.'

The Long-run Historical Tendency Of Capitalism Has Not Only Been To Increase Real Incomes More Or Less Proportionately Nearly All Along The Line, But To Benefit The Masses Even More Than The Rich.