You cannot redistribute wealth that hasn’t been created.
The welfare state is downstream of private-sector wealth creation. Innovation, investment, entrepreneurship, risk-taking and productivity create the wealth that governments can then tax and redistribute.
Friedman understood this perfectly. The resources available to government ultimately come from economic activity generated outside government.
A stagnant, over-regulated economy cannot sustain generous welfare commitments indefinitely.
And that strengthens, rather than weakens, Friedman’s argument on immigration.
His point wasn’t simply “immigration bad”. It was that open immigration into a system of extensive, unconditional entitlements creates a tension: the private sector creates the wealth, while the welfare system redistributes it.
If immigration is predominantly work-driven, productive and increases the tax base, the economy can expand.
If large inflows primarily access the redistributive side of the system, the fiscal burden and incentive problems increase.
This is the part many on the Left simply fail to understand. Perhaps it’s naïveté. Perhaps ideology. Perhaps ignorance. More likely, in some cases, a combination of all three.
They see the welfare state as the source of prosperity rather than what it actually is: a system that can only redistribute wealth that someone else has first created.
You cannot endlessly expand the welfare state while simultaneously undermining the private-sector wealth creation that ultimately pays for it.