|
 The Minnesota Free Market Institute will be hosting a local celebration for Milton Friedman's birthday at Santorini’s in Saint Louis Park from 5:30 to 7 pm. (For details, click here.)
Tomorrow, July 31, would have been the Nobel prizewinning economist Milton Friedman’s 96th birthday. He passed away in 2006. Friedman is today regarded as one of the world's most powerful and influential promoters of freedom. It's especially important to remember his contributions given the amount of erroneous information about him, consistently propagated by the mainstream media. He added greatly in both fundamental and concrete ways to our thinking about freedom, free markets and limited government.
From Econlib.org:
Friedman established himself in 1945 with Income from Independent Professional Practice, coauthored with Simon Kuznets. In it he argued that state licensing procedures limited entry into the medical profession, thereby allowing doctors to charge higher fees than if competition were more open.
His landmark work of 1957, A Theory of the Consumption Function, took on the Keynesian view that individuals and households adjust their expenditures on consumption to reflect their current income. Friedman showed that, instead, people's annual consumption is a function of their expected lifetime earnings.
In Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman liberated the study of market economics from its ivory tower and brought it down to earth. He argued for, among other things, a volunteer army, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of licensing of doctors, a negative income tax [instead of dependency creating welfare programs--mm], and education vouchers. (Friedman was a passionate foe of the military draft: he once stated that the abolition of the draft was the only issue on which he had personally lobbied Congress.) Although his book did not sell well, many of the young people who did read it were encouraged by it to study economics themselves. His ideas spread worldwide with Free to Choose (coauthored with his wife, Rose Friedman), the best-selling nonfiction book of 1980, written to accompany a TV series on the Public Broadcasting System. This book made Milton Friedman a household name.
Although much of his trail-blazing work was done on price theory—the theory that explains how prices are determined in individual markets—Friedman is popularly recognized for monetarism. Defying Keynes and most of the academic establishment of the time, Friedman presented evidence to resurrect the quantity theory of money—the idea that the price level is dependent upon the money supply.”
“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena” is one of the most famous quotes from his book with Anna Schwartz, Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960, and he was a well known and sharp critic of the US Federal Reserve money supply policies.
Tomorrow, fifty events in 41 states will be held to honor “Uncle Milty.” The type of program varies from breakfasts, policy briefings, lunches, forums, receptions and dinners with all concentrating on Friedman's contributions to freedom. (For a list of events go to The Friedman Foundation)
Young America’s Foundation and Townhall.com are sponsoring a national live online chat featuring Young America’s Foundation’s Milton Friedman Lecturer John Stossel. The chat is scheduled to take place from 1:30 – 2:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Go hereto learn more about it. |
