> The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy. Milton Friedman did not

> The irony of it is that this sort of a system was one of the few things Keynes and Friedman agreed should be part of public policy. Milton Friedman did not say that this should be part of public policy, though his words are commonly interpreted very generously to imply that he did, by people who wish to demonstrate that this is a policy with "conservative support". What Friedman actually said is that the cash value of all welfare and other support systems is greater than the in-kind value. That's a pretty narrow statement. In theory, that sounds like it's a statement of support, but it's really not. In practice, basically nobody is actually proposing doing away with all welfare, social security, government subsidies, etc., because it would be a political non-starter. Even if we scope this discussion to the context of the YC research experiment, that's plainly evident, because there's no stipulation that the participants abstain from all other forms of public assistance, as well as deduct the cash value of every other stipend and subsidy that they receive from the $1000 payment. Comparing what Freidman wrote about to this proposal is like trying to discuss Adam Smith in the context of the political left, on the basis of the common term "liberal". Yes, there technically exists a frame of reference in which that's a meaningful comparison, but it's not a particularly useful or relevant frame of reference, and it does nothing but mislead and obfuscate the actual details of the underlying facts.