As it hought that it couldn’t hurt to refresh our memories on Milton Friedman i’ve found a great article on wikipedia about him:
Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912) is an American economist, known for his work on macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history, statistics, and for his advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism. In Capitalism and Freedom (1962) he minimized the role of government in a free market in order to create political and social freedom. In 1976, he won the Nobel Prize for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.[1] His television series Free to Choose aired on PBS in early 1980. It became a book, co-authored with his wife, Rose Friedman. The book was widely read, as were his columns for Newsweek magazine.
In statistics, he devised the Friedman test, a non-parametric analogue to the two-way analysis of variance.
Political views
Friedman is the leading proponent of the monetarist school of economic thought. He maintains that there is a close and stable link between inflation and the money supply, mainly that the phenomenon of inflation is to be regulated by controlling the amount of money poured into the national economy by the Federal Reserve Bank; he rejects the use of fiscal policy as a tool of demand management; and he holds that the government’s role in the guidance of the economy should be severely restricted. Friedman wrote extensively on the Great Depression, which he called the “Great Contraction,” arguing that it had been caused by an ordinary financial shock whose duration and seriousness were greatly increased by the subsequent contraction of the money supply caused by the misguided policies of the directors of the Federal Reserve. “The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933…. Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.”[5] Friedman also argued for the cessation of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates. Friedman’s macroeconomic theories were soon displaced. His close friend George Stigler explained, “As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago.”[6]
Friedman worked at the Treasury Department during World War II and played an important role in designing the United States withholding tax system. [7] Before 1942, there was no withholding system; the rich people who paid income taxes did so in one lump sum on March 15 of the following year.
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. He has said that he is a libertarian philosophically, but a member of the U.S. Republican Party for the sake of “expediency” (”I am a libertarian with a small l and a Republican with a capital R. And I am a Republican with a capital R on grounds of expediency, not on principle.”) But, he says, “I think the term classical liberal is also equally applicable. I don’t really care very much what I’m called. I’m much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person.”[8]
Friedman made headlines by proposing a negative income tax to replace the existing welfare system and then opposing the bill to implement it because it merely supplemented the existing system rather than replace it. 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.” His idea is that vouchers would allow private schools to compete with the public school monopoly.
Friedman allowed the Cato Institute to use his name for its Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty in 2001. His wife Rose, sister of Aaron Director, with whom he founded the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation for School Choice, served in the international selection committee. Friedman’s son, David D. Friedman, has carried on his tradition of arguing in favor of free markets, but to a further extreme, advocating anarcho-capitalism.
At a ceremony celebrating Friedman’s achievements, Alan Greenspan said “There are many Nobel Prize winners in economics, but few have achieved the mythical status of Milton Friedman.”[9]
According to Harry Girvetz and Kenneth Minogue, Friedman is co-responsible with Friedrich von Hayek for providing the intellectual foundations for the revival of classical liberalism in the 20th century.[10]
In 2005, Friedman and more than 500 other economists, called for discussions regarding the economic benefits of the legalization of marijuana.[11]
