One of my favorite Milton Friedman anecdotes is the following story in which Professor Friedman, while traveling somewhere overseas, reportedly spotted scores of road builders moving earth with basic shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why heavy tractors weren’t being used instead of mere shovels, his host told him that it was to keep the employment rate high: if the workers used tractors, fewer people would have jobs. “Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?”, Friedman inquired. But did this exchange really happen? See link below …