Milton Friedman - The Four Ways to Spend Money — Transcript

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1. 0:00Friedman: Well you know, you can spend your own money on yourself and when you spend your
2. 0:06own money on yourself you’re very careful of what you spend it on and you make sure
3. 0:12that you get the most for your dollar. You can spend your own money on somebody else.
4. 0:18You give gifts to other people; you take people out to dinner. And when you spend your own
5. 0:23money on somebody else you’re very careful that you don’t spend too much, you try to
6. 0:29keep down the amount you spend, but you don’t worry very much about what the other fellow’s
7. 0:34getting from it. You don’t pay anything like as much attention to the gifts you buy
8. 0:38for other people as to the things you buy for yourselves. Or you can spend somebody
9. 0:43else’s money as when you’re spending the government’s money, I say the government’s
10. 0:48money, the taxpayers’ money, which the government has control of. Now you’re spending somebody
11. 0:52else’s money, let’s say you’re spending your boss’s money you’re out to lunch
12. 0:57on a expense account but you’re spending it on yourselves. You are very careful that
13. 1:02you get good things for your money, you try to have a good lunch and pick the right things,
14. 1:08but you’re not very much worried about whether you get the cheapest you spend all you want,
15. 1:14you’ll be careless. Now what happens when you spend somebody else’s money on somebody
16. 1:19else? You’re a distributer of welfare funds, well you are interested in making your own
17. 1:29life as good as you can, and most people have humane instincts and want to do the best they
18. 1:35can, but you’re not going to be anything like as careful in spending somebody else’s
19. 1:40money on somebody else. So there are four ways in which you can spend money.