Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

One of my favorite economists, Milton Friedman, passed away today. He was 94.

I became exposed to Milton Friedman while a freshman in college, which was a time I was quickly developing my worldview. My parents were apathetic Liberals and with a President at that time like Jimmy Carter, I understood why. But seriously, my father was a Great Depression baby and told me stories about going to school barefoot and not being allowed to wear his shoes until he got there in order to prevent them from wearing out. He found in Franklin Roosevelt, optimism and hope for the future. Furthermore, he spent critical years of his life under that Presidency. Think about it. He was 12 when Roosevelt was elected and 24 when the President died. This is a pretty large part of a person's life. My mom was from England, right off the boat in fact. She was raised in Lancashire, which was a strong Labor stronghold. My mom was a socialist, but fortunately for me, not a very passionate one. Neither of my parents were very active, my mom never even became an US citizen. I don't recall my father voting until 1980 (although I'm sure he had before) and that only seemed to be because I informed him I was voting for Ronald Reagan (still the proudest vote of my life).

Becoming a Christian at 16 impacted my views and led me to study different approaches to government. By the time I was 18 I had gotten my hands on Friedman's classic, Capitalism and Freedom. This was republished in a much more mass market friendly book entitled, Free to Choose.

Friedman was a strong advocate of the Monetarism school, which argues that the money supply is the primary means in which economic activity is regulated. It was an answer to the Keynesian approach that used the pumping of money into the economy as a primary way of stimulating the economy, which led to the rampant inflation and unemployment, common in the 1970s.

Although his monetary theories were important, I was more impressed with his approach to freedom in general. He advocated innovative ideas towards retirement (privatizing Social Security), unemployment (negative income tax), and education (the promotion of private options) that took decades before they were tried and many have actually enjoyed success. He was largely responsible for the "Miracle of Chile" where several of his students implemented his economic reforms with cooperation of the government, making that country the biggest economic success in South America.

Friedman accurately argued that government was rarely the solution to our problems and was often the cause of them. I believe he was right and he articulated those views with great dignity and influence. He will be missed and the world is a better place because of him.