Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labour secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities’ access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one.

I have just started watching the series “Free to Choose,” and it is genuinely fascinating and entertaining. The best part– which I was not expecting– is Milton Friedman’s endearing warmth, curiosity and joie de vivre. You wouldn’t guess that this man practices the ”dismal science.”

In this clip from Part IV: “From Cradle to Grave” (1980), he discusses the deleterious effects of the welfare state:

One of the things I hold against the welfare system most seriously is that it has destroyed private charitable arrangements which are far more effective, far more compassionate, far more person-to-person in helping people who are really, through no fault of their own, in disadvantaged situations.