Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912)
is a U.S. economist,
known primarily for his work on macroeconomics and for his advocacy of
laissez-faire capitalism. In 1976 he was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of
Alfred Nobel "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy." His book
Free to Choose, coauthored with his wife Rose, was made into a
ten-part television series that aired on PBS in early 1980.
Biography
Born in New York City to a working-class family of Jewish Hungarian immigrants from Beregszász (Berehove,
today Ukraine), Friedman grew up in Rahway,
New Jersey, was educated at Rutgers University (B.A., 1932) and at the University of
Chicago (M.A., 1933). After
working for the federal government and for Columbia
University, he received a Ph.D. from that institution
in 1946. He then served as Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1976, where he contributed significantly to the intellectual tradition
of the so-called Chicago school of
economics. Since 1977, Friedman has been affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Friedman can be classified as a monetarist and he is widely regarded as the
leading proponent of that economic school of thought. He maintains that there is a close and stable link between inflation and the money supply,
rejects the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management and holds
that the government's role in the management of the economy should be severely restricted. Friedman wrote a veritable tome on the
subject of the Great Depression which he called the Great Contraction, attributing it to the failure of The Federal Reserve. He
argued for the cessation of intervention in exchange markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as
the practice of freely floating exchange rates.
Friedman has also supported various libertarian policies such as
decriminalization of drugs and prostitution. In addition, he headed the Reagan committee that
researched the possibility of a move towards a paid/volunteer armed force, and played a role in the abolition of the draft that
took place in the 1970s in the U.S. He served as a member of U.S.
President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board in 1981. In 1988 he received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science.
In recent years Friedman has devoted much of his effort to promoting school vouchers that can be used to pay for tuition at both private and public schools, saying, "What
is needed in America is a voucher of substantial size available to all students, and free of excessive regulations."
Milton Friedman's son, David Friedman, has carried on his tradition
of arguing in favor of free markets.
Political controversy
Friedman visited Chile in 1975 during the
military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Invited by a private
foundation, he gave a series of lectures on economics. Several professors from the University of Chicago became advisors to the
Chilean government and several Ph.D. graduates from the same university -- known as "the Chicago boys" -- served in Chilean ministries. Despite having no direct personal contact with Pinochet's
government, Friedman was accused of supporting a regime whose policies included torture and the killing of political opponents. A number of protesters demonstrated against Friedman during the
1976 Nobel Prize ceremony. (See: Miracle of Chile)
Critics have remarked that Chile's dictatorship used its power to implement free-market policies, thus contradicting the
relationship that Friedman claims exists between open markets and political freedom. Friedman defends his role in Chile on the
grounds that the move towards open market policies by the dictatorship was laudable, and that, in his view, it contributed to the
softening of Pinochet's rule and to its eventual replacement by a democratic government in 1990. He also stresses that the lectures he gave in Chile in 1975 were the same lectures he later gave without
incident in China and other Socialist
states.
In the 1970's, Friedman argued against the trade and diplomatic embargoes that many Western nations had imposed on the white minority governments of South Africa and Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe), claiming that the embargoes played into the hands of anti-Western,
Communist insurgencies in those countries, that far more repressive regimes in
Africa and elsewhere were not being similarly punished, and that progress towards racial equality and freedom in South Africa and
Rhodesia might be better pursued through a policy of engagement with their governments. Friedman was criticized for visiting
those countries in 1976 and meeting with members of pro-Apartheid government without publicly calling for repealing the racist
electoral laws that were then in place.
Works
Notable academic publications
Quotes
- "I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible."
- "A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it [...] gives people what they want instead of what a
particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom
itself."
- "Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."
- "The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
- "There's no such thing as a free lunch."
- "We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork."
Lists
External links
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