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The modern manifestation of this is supply-side economics. Supply-side economics holds that the rich in the United States have not been working because they have too little income. So, by taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich, we increase effort and stimulate the economy. Can we really believe that any considerable number of the poor prefer welfare to a good job? Or that business people-corporate executives, the key figures in our time-are idling away their hours because of the insufficiency of their pay? This is a scandalous charge against the American businessperson, notably a hard worker. Belief can be the servant of truth-but even more of con venience.
这一观点的现代表现形式是供应经济学。供应经济学认为美国的富人不再坚持工作是因为他们的收入太少。所以，把援助穷人的钱给富人可以增加工作积极性、刺激经济。难道我们真的认为大多数穷人宁愿要福利而不愿要一份好工作？或者认为那些商人—企业经理人员，那些当今时代的关键人物——真的因为工资低而游手好闲，虚度时光？这简直是对美国商人特别勤奋的人的无耻的诽谤。信念可以是真理的仆人，但更多的情况下，只是一时之需。
The fourth design for getting the poor off our conscience is to point to the presumed adverse effect on freedom of taking responsibility for them. Freedom consists of the right to spend a maximum of one's money by one's own choice, and to see a minimum taken and spent by the government. (Again, expenditure on national defense is excepted.) In the enduring words of Professor Milton Friedman, people must be "free to choose."
第四种使我们不为穷人的存在而内疚的方案指出，如果政府替穷人承担责任，可能会对自由产生不利的影响。自由包括人们有权利最大限度地自由支配自己的钱，让政府最低限度地拿走并支配他们的钱。（强调一下，花在国防上的钱除外。）正如弥尔顿·弗里德曼教授那句久为流传的名言，人们应该“自由选择”。
This is possibly the most transparent of all of the designs; no mention is ordinarily made of the relation of income to the freedom of the poor. (Professor Friedman is here an exception; through the negative income tax, he would assure everyone a basic income.) There is, we can surely agree, no form of oppression that is quite so great, no construction on thought and effort quite so comprehensive, as that which comes from having no money at all. Though we hear much about the limitation on the freedom of the affluent when their income is reduced through taxes, we hear nothing of the extraordinary enhancement of the freedom of the poor from having some money of their own to spend. Yet the loss of freedom from taxation to the rich is a small thing as compared with the gain in freedom from providing some income to the impoverished. Freedom we rightly cherish. Cherishing it, we should not use it as a cover for denying freedom to those in need.
这也许是所有方案中最清楚不过的了：通常没有人提及收入和穷人的自由之间的关系。（弗里德曼教授在这里是个例外，他认为通过缴纳所得税可以保障每个人的最低收入）我们完全可以同意，没有哪种压迫形式比身无分文更厉害，也没有哪种对思想和行动的束缚比一无所有更全面彻底。尽管我们听到很多关于税收造成的收入减少给富人的自由权利带来种种限制，却没听说穷人有可支配的钱而使他们的自由大幅度地增加。实际上富人税收失去的自由与穷人获得一些收入所得到的自由不可同日而语。我们珍惜自由是对的。正因为我们珍惜自由，我们就不能以此为借口，不给最需要自由的人自由。
