Free market advocates originally endorsed attacking income inequality at its source

Evidence

Even as Friedman’s “Roofs or Ceilings?” revealed his proclivity for, and inclination toward, engagement in public debate, it also introduced him to the challenges of working with ideologically motivated institutions. In the month before the publication of the pamphlet, Friedman and Stigler engaged in a fi erce dispute with FEE administrators that nearly led them to withdraw it from publication and decline the attendant compensation. The issue centered on a paragraph professing the authors’ support for economic equality: … The fact that, under free market conditions, better quarters go to those who have larger incomes or more wealth is, if anything, simply a reason for taking longterm mea sures to reduce the in e qual ity of income and wealth. For those, like us, who would like even more equality than there is at present, not alone for housing but for all products, it is surely better to attack directly existing inequalities in income and wealth at their source than to ration each of the hundreds of commodities and ser vices that compose our standard of living. It is the height of folly to permit individuals to receive unequal money incomes and then to take elaborate and costly mea sures to prevent them from using their incomes. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 422

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the current stereotype of free-market economists as indifferent to inequality; relates to the broader intellectual history of how ‘neoliberalism’ shed its distributive and egalitarian strands. — connects to: Early free-market economists deliberately adopted progressive-sounding positions to shield their deeper agenda — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 137; In the 1960s even Milton Friedman endorsed basic income redistribution; Early Chicago liberal Simons advocated abolishing fractional-reserve banking and heavy wealth redistribution — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 722 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Shows that early free-market advocacy explicitly distinguished attacking inequality at source from rationing its effects — a conceptual boundary central to defining what ‘neoliberalism’ meant then.

Broader Connections

• In the 1960s even Milton Friedman endorsed basic income redistribution #exemplifies (0.90)