Economist Milton Friedman Dies at 94 By JUSTIN M. NORTON The Associated Press Thursday, November 16, 2006; 1:56 PM SAN FRANCISCO -- Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94. Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death. "Milton's passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know," said Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation's president and CEO, in a statement. "His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike." In more than a dozen books, a column in Newsweek magazine and a TV show on PBS, Friedman championed individual freedom in economics and politics. The longtime University of Chicago professor pioneered a school of thought that became known as the Chicago school of economics. His theory of monetarism, adopted in part by the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, opposed the traditional Keynesian economics that had dominated U.S. policy since the New Deal. He was a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board. His work in consumption analysis, monetary history and stabilization policy earned him the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976. "He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision _ the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions," President Bush said in 2002. "That vision has changed America, and it is changing the world." Friedman favored a policy of steady, moderate growth in the money supply, opposed wage and price controls and criticized the Federal Reserve when it tried to fine-tune the economy. A believer in the principles of 18th century economist Adam Smith, he consistently argued that individual freedom should rule economic policy. Outspoken and controversial, Friedman saw his theories attacked by many traditional economists such as Harvard's John Kenneth Galbraith. In an essay titled "Is Capitalism Humane?" he said that "a set of social institutions that stresses individual responsibility, that treats the individual ... as responsible for and to himself, will lead to a higher and more desirable moral climate." Friedman acknowledged that "pure capitalism" did not exist, but said that nations that cherished freedom must strive to keep the economy as close to the ideal as possible. He said government should allow the free market to operate to solve inflation and other economic problems. But he also urged adoption of a "negative income tax" in which people who earn less than a certain amount would get money from the government. He lived to see free market reforms spread in the former communist world and Latin America, but played down his own influence. "I hope what I wrote contributed to that, but it was not the moving force," Friedman told The New York Sun in March 2006. "People like myself, what we did was keep these ideas open until the time came when they could be accepted." Born in New York City on July 31, 1912, Friedman began developing his economic theories during the Great Depression when President Franklin D. Roosevelt based his New Deal on the ideas of Britain's John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the time. Keynes argued that the government should intervene in economic affairs to avoid depressions by increasing spending and controlling interest rates. Friedman graduated from Rutgers University in 1932 and earned his master's degree the following year at the University of Chicago. After working for the National Resources Commission in Washington from 1935 to 1937, Friedman was a member of the staff of the National Bureau of Economics Research in New York from 1937 to 1945 and received his doctorate from Columbia University in 1946. After World War II, he taught at the University of Minnesota, then returned to the University of Chicago. He became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1977. Friedman married Rose Director in 1938. They had two children, Janet and David, and Rose was co-author of some of his books. Among his most famous books were: "Price Theory," 1962 (with Rose Friedman); "Capitalism and Freedom," 1962 (with Anna J. Schwartz); "An Economist's Protest," 1972; "There Is No Such Thing As a Free Lunch," 1975; and "Free to Choose," 1979, co-authored with his wife. "Free to Choose" also was a series on the Public Broadcasting Service. Friedman wrote columns for Newsweek from 1966 to 1983 and was one of the few economists to bridge the gap between academia and the public. He involved himself in political campaigns, supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1968. He served on Nixon's commission for an All-Volunteer Army in 1969 and 1970. In an interview with Playboy magazine in 1973, later republished in a collection of his essays titled "Bright Promises, Dismal Performance," Friedman said he was encouraged by an apparent trend away from government control. "There are faint stirrings and hopeful signs," he said. "Even some of the intellectuals who were most strongly drawn to the New Deal in the '30s are rethinking their positions, dabbling just a little with free-market principles. They're moving slowly and taking each step as though they were exploring a virgin continent. But it's not dangerous. Some of us have lived here quite comfortably all along." Friedman, whose wit made him a popular guest on radio and television shows, appeared to enjoy sparring with other economists. In the Playboy interview, he referred to his disagreement with Galbraith, who endorsed wage and price controls. When Nixon went against Friedman's advice and imposed the controls in an effort to slow inflation, Friedman said he wrote a note to Galbraith. "You must be as chagrined as I am to have Nixon for your disciple," Friedman wrote. Galbraith didn't reply, Friedman said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/16/AR2006111600592_pf.html
RIP. Friedman changed me perhaps more than anyone else outside my immediate circle of friends and family. Reading Capitalism and Freedom inspired me beyond words.
An incredibly influential man in the field of economics, and by extension politics. He will be missed; RIP.
RIP also. Milton Friedman's ideas were very influential and responsible for much of the prosperity that we have today. He was an absolutist but more right than wrong and its sad that many who subscribe to his economic beliefs on freedom don't also subscribe to his views on how freedom applied to many more aspects of life.
RIP, Friedman. Milton wrote one of the best letters regarding the drug war that I have ever seen. ___________________________________________________________ An Open Letter to Bill Bennett by Milton Friedman, April 1990 In Oliver Cromwell's eloquent words, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" about the course you and President Bush urge us to adopt to fight drugs. The path you propose of more police, more jails, use of the military in foreign countries, harsh penalties for drug users, and a whole panoply of repressive measures can only make a bad situation worse. The drug war cannot be won by those tactics without undermining the human liberty and individual freedom that you and I cherish. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are tearing asunder our social fabric, ruining the lives of many young people, and imposing heavy costs on some of the most disadvantaged among us. You are not mistaken in believing that the majority of the public share your concerns. In short, you are not mistaken in the end you seek to achieve. Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault. Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. I append excerpts from a column that I wrote in 1972 on "Prohibition and Drugs." The major problem then was heroin from Marseilles; today, it is cocaine from Latin America. Today, also, the problem is far more serious than it was 17 years ago: more addicts, more innocent victims; more drug pushers, more law enforcement officials; more money spent to enforce prohibition, more money spent to circumvent prohibition. Had drugs been decriminalized 17 years ago, "crack" would never have been invented (it was invented because the high cost of illegal drugs made it profitable to provide a cheaper version) and there would today be far fewer addicts. The lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent victims would have been saved, and not only in the U.S. The ghettos of our major cities would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands. Fewer people would be in jails, and fewer jails would have been built. Columbia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of narco-terror. Hell would not, in the words with which Billy Sunday welcomed Prohibition, "be forever for rent," but it would be a lot emptier. Decriminalizing drugs is even more urgent now than in 1972, but we must recognize that the harm done in the interim cannot be wiped out, certainly not immediately. Postponing decriminalization will only make matters worse, and make the problem appear even more intractable. Alcohol and tobacco cause many more deaths in users than do drugs. Decriminalization would not prevent us from treating drugs as we now treat alcohol and tobacco: prohibiting sales of drugs to minors, outlawing the advertising of drugs and similar measures. Such measures could be enforced, while outright prohibition cannot be. Moreover, if even a small fraction of the money we now spend on trying to enforce drug prohibition were devoted to treatment and rehabilitation, in an atmosphere of compassion not punishment, the reduction in drug usage and in the harm done to the users could be dramatic. This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations. Professor Friedman, 1976 Nobel Laureate in economics, now serves as Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. This letter appeared in the September 7, 1989, issue of The Wall Street Journal. Reprinted by permission of Professor Friedman and The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Co., Inc., 1989. http://www.fff.org/freedom/0490e.asp
Glad someone pays tributes, he is a big idol for me, read Capitalism and Freedom also, felt very sad when I heard the news. RIP. He is the reason I am in business school at U of Chicago
