Originally Posted by smooth

At some points in time, capitalists have come to understand this and promote stablizing programs. I'm not too happy about it, I'd like the thing to wither away myself. But we'd need to look at Friedman's writings more carefully to assess whether he also understood that the "necessity" of poverty to the smooth running capitalist economy must be understood with a healthy dose of realization that the long-term effects create very real problems to the system.