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Today is Milton Friedman Day honoring the 100th anniversary of his birth on July 31.
Kevin Williamson on Milton Friedman’s economics of love.
… The libertarianism of Rand … was based on an economics of resentment of the “moochers” and “loafers,” the sort of thing that leads one to call a book The Virtue of Selfishness. Friedman’s libertarianism was based on an economics of love: for real human beings leading real human lives with real human needs and real human challenges. He loved freedom not only because it allowed IBM to pursue maximum profit but because it allowed for human flourishing at all levels. Economic growth is important to everybody, but it is most important to the poor. While Friedman’s contributions to academic economics are well appreciated and his opposition to government shenanigans is celebrated, what is seldom remarked upon is that the constant and eternal theme of his popular work was helping the poor and the marginalized. Friedman cared about the minimum wage not only because it distorted labor markets but because of the effect it has on low-skill workers: permanent unemployment. He called the black unemployment rate a “disgrace and a scandal,” and the minimum wage the “most anti-black law” on the books with good reason. He talked about two “machines”: “There has never been a more effective machine for the elimination of poverty than the free-enterprise system and a free market.” “We have constructed a governmental welfare scheme which has been a machine for producing poor people. . . . I’m not blaming the people. It’s our fault for constructing so perverse and so ill-shaped a monster.” …
Donald Boudreaux, econ prof at George Mason is next.
At the height of the Vietnam War, U.S. commander Gen. William Westmoreland testified before the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Force. The 15 members of that commission were charged with exploring the feasibility of ending the military draft.
Staunchly opposed to an all-volunteer military, which must pay its soldiers market wages, Gen. Westmoreland proclaimed that he did not want to command “an army of mercenaries.” One of the commission members immediately shot back with a question: “General, would you rather command an army of slaves?” That penetrating query was posed by Milton Friedman, a diminutive (he stood only 5 feet 3 inches tall) giant among 20th-century scholars. Were he still alive – he died in 2006 – Friedman would celebrate his 100th birthday on July 31. …
Stephen Moore has the honors for the WSJ.
It’s a tragedy that Milton Friedman—born 100 years ago on July 31—did not live long enough to combat the big-government ideas that have formed the core of Obamanomics. It’s perhaps more tragic that our current president, who attended the University of Chicago where Friedman taught for decades, never fell under the influence of the world’s greatest champion of the free market. Imagine how much better things would have turned out, for Mr. Obama and the country.
Friedman was a constant presence on these pages until his death in 2006 at age 94. If he could, he would surely be skewering today’s $5 trillion expansion of spending and debt to create growth—and exposing the confederacy of economic dunces urging more of it.
In the 1960s, Friedman famously explained that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” If the government spends a dollar, that dollar has to come from producers and workers in the private economy. There is no magical “multiplier effect” by taking from productive Peter and giving to unproductive Paul. As obvious as that insight seems, it keeps being put to the test. Obamanomics may be the most expensive failed experiment in free-lunch economics in American history.
Equally illogical is the superstition that government can create prosperity by having Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke print more dollars. In the very short term, Friedman proved, excess money fools people with an illusion of prosperity. But the market quickly catches on, and there is no boost in output, just higher prices.
Next to Ronald Reagan, in the second half of the 20th century there was no more influential voice for economic freedom world-wide than Milton Friedman. Small in stature but a giant intellect, he was the economist who saved capitalism by dismembering the ideas of central planning when most of academia was mesmerized by the creed of government as savior. …
Erika Johnsen at Hot Air.
In these strange times of Obamanomics, populism, Keynesian revival, envy politics, big government, bureaucracy, regulation, and widely held belief in basic economic fallacies, the life and work of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman is all that much more poignant. Though he passed away in 2006, today would’ve marked Mr. Friedman’s 100th birthday, and it’s always worthwhile to appreciate a voice like his that could cut through all of the baloney out there with such clarity and simplicity. If you haven’t read Capitalism and Freedom, get on it — it’s a quick and rewarding read that delivers more intellectual honesty than you can shake a stick at. …
If Milton Friedman were alive today — and there was never a time when he was more needed — he would be one hundred years old. He was born on July 31, 1912. But Professor Friedman’s death at age 94 deprived the nation of one of those rare thinkers who had both genius and common sense.
Most people would not be able to understand the complex economic analysis that won him a Nobel Prize, but people with no knowledge of economics had no trouble understanding his popular books like “Free to Choose” or the TV series of the same name.
In being able to express himself at both the highest level of his profession and also at a level that the average person could readily understand, Milton Friedman was like the economist whose theories and persona were most different from his own — John Maynard Keynes. …
Bob Enlow, CEO of the Friedman Foundation, in National Review.
Exactly a century ago, the United States was a highly charged magnet for immigrants around the world. Thousands entered Ellis Island each day in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their families. Two of those immigrants were Jeno and Sara Friedman; they would become the parents of Milton Friedman, one of the most influential and important economists of the 20th century.Dubbed by the New York Times as the “grandmaster of free market economic theory,” Friedman in his writing — especially his 1980 book Free to Choose, authored with his wife, Rose — refuted popular claims that “more government” would improve the quality of our lives. Milton Friedman was the most ardent spokesperson advocating the complete opposite: Voluntary choices of individuals rather than arbitrary dictates of the state, he argued, should be the default mode of human life. Government is justified only insofar as it preserves, protects, and defends individual liberty. …
Pickerhead once got some tax advice from Dr. Friedman.
YouTube has many videos of Milton Friedman available. We have highlighted a few including the first episode of Free to Choose.