November 16, 2006
Milton Friedman Posted by John Steele Gordon at 04:00 PM EST A reporter just called to get a comment on the death of Milton Friedman this morning, thus informing me of it.
Professor Friedman was, of course, one of the giants of economics, second, perhaps, only to John Maynard Keynes among economists of the twentieth century and the most influential American economist of them all. His mantelpiece is positively stuffed with awards and honors, ranging from the John Bates Clark medal given to leading economists under the age of 40 in 1951 to the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Science Medal in 1988.
Three of his many scholarly books and papers were extraordinarily important. Capitalism and Freedom was published in 1962. The Times Literary Supplement listed it among the hundred most important books published since World War II. The next year saw the publication of A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, co-authored by Anna Schwartz. To give just one indication of how influential the latter book was, when the Federal Reserve received an advance copy, it immediately initiated an internal review of its own policymaking practices.
Free to Choose, coauthored with his wife, Rosa, was published in 1980 as a companion volume to a 10-part series of the same name on PBS and has never been out of print. The book and the TV series were powerful and entertaining arguments as to why free markets produce superior results over any other economic system—not just superior economic results but moral ones as well.
If you want to know why rent controls, minimum wages (“the most anti-black law on the statute books” according to Friedman), progressive taxation, and welfare (now, thanks in part to Friedman’s influence, greatly reformed) were and are such terrible ideas, Milton Friedman’s relentless logic and clear prose will tell you exactly why.
The man will be greatly missed. His influence will be with us for a very long time.
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