The Wisdom of Milton Friedman

Chronicle · August 1, 2012

The Foundation


"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth." --Alexander Hamilton

Essential Liberty


Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"Milton Friedman, born 100 years ago [Tuesday], was many things: a groundbreaking economist, winner of the Nobel prize in his discipline, an adviser to such heads of state as had the wisdom to seek his counsel. He was a superlative scholar and thinker ... but his most important role was that of teacher.... His economics was no dismal science, but a rigorous framework undergirding the great love of his intellectual life: liberty. ... He was very much a man of his time: In the critical year of 1980, his Free To Choose television series began airing, and an American public that would soon be asked to choose between the two very different visions of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter was given an invaluable education in the economic and moral case for a free society. Capitalism, Friedman argued, was good not because we need not protect the worker and the consumer, but because capitalism actually protects the worker and the consumer, while government merely makes proclamations about doing so. ... The fight for freedom continues, on every continent and in every country. Those who believe in the extraordinary power of ordinary people free to choose have a patron saint in Milton Friedman, who died in 2006 but remains very much with us in spirit." --National Review

MORE

 

No comments:

Post a Comment