Posted on 09/08/2005 12:06:44 AM PDT by alessandrofiaschi
July 31 marks the 93rd birthday of the world's foremost living economist, Milton Friedman. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Science, Friedman advances the principles of individual choice by popularizing ideas that include school vouchers and private retirement accounts. Through essays, speeches, and books such as Capitalism and Freedom, and Free to Choose, Friedman champions the ideas of liberty. "Milton Friedman has done more than defend freedom as an abstract ideal," President George W. Bush recently said, "He has creatively applied the power of freedom to the problems of our own country, and in the process he has become an influential social reformer."
From Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation Web Site
Milton Friedman - Biography
Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economic Science, has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, since 1977. He is also Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946 to 1976, and was a member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 to 1981.
Professor Friedman was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 and received the National Medal of Science the same year.
He is widely regarded as the leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles and inflation.
In addition to his scientific work, Professor Friedman has also written extensively on public policy, always with primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of individual freedom. His most important books in this field are (with Rose D. Friedman) Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago Press, 1962); Bright Promises, Dismal Performance (Thomas Horton and Daughters, 1983), which consists mostly of reprints of tri-weekly columns that he wrote for Newsweek from 1966 to 1983; and (with Rose Friedman) Free to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), which complements a ten-part TV series of the same name, shown over PBS in early 1980, and (with Rose D. Friedman) Tyranny of the Status Quo (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), which complements a three-part TV series of the same name, shown over PBS in early 1984.
He was a member of the President's Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (1969-70) and of the President's Commission on White House Fellows (1971-73). He was a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, a group of experts outside the government, named in early 1981 by President Reagan.
He has also been active in public affairs, serving as an informal economic adviser to Senator Goldwater in his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency in 1964, to Richard Nixon in his successful campaign in 1968, to President Nixon subsequently, and to Ronald Reagan in his 1980 campaign.
He has published many books and articles, most notably A Theory of the Consumption Function (University of Chicago Press, 1957), The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays (Aldine, 1969), and (with A. J. Schwartz) A Monetary History of the United States (Princeton University Press, 1963), Monetary Statistics of the United States (Columbia University Press, 1970), and Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom (University of Chicago Press, 1982).
Professor Friedman is a past president of the American Economic Association, the Western Economic Association, and the Mont Pelerin Society, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the National Academy of Sciences.
He also has been awarded honorary degrees by universities in the United States, Japan, Israel, and Guatemala, as well as the Grand Cordon of the First Class Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government in 1986.
Friedman received a B.A. in 1932 from Rutgers University, an M.A. in 1933 from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in 1946 from Columbia University.
He and his wife have established the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, for the purpose of promoting parental choice of the schools their children attend. The Foundation is based in Indianapolis and its president and chief operating officer is Gordon St Angelo.
He and his wife have just published their memoirs: Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
See Also:
Autobiography from the Nobel-eMuseum Web Site.
Biography from the Library of Economics and Liberty
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PING!
Same for me. I read "Free to Choose" in high school. I ended up majoring in economics. Milton Friedman had a lasting impact on how I think.
Does he still favor legalizing drugs? It seems he came from a libertarian perspective.
I read Free to Choose when I was much younger.
That probably shaped my philosophy on politics and economics more than anything else.
I don't need Milton Friedman or anyone else, for that matter, to tell me about or to provide choices in life. All of us have the freedom to live our own lives the way we want to. And our OWN choices in life determine the consequences. We each are responsible for our own lives and how we live it.
Thanks for posting this.
I sent him a card on his birthday, and wished him a personal HB when I saw him and Rose in the Safeway.
He is the single most influential economist in the US and perhaps the world.
His work on monetary policy has been the bulwark for conservative economics, stipping the economy of the booms and busts of inflation and deflation, and allowing politics to focus on taxation and public goods.
Now that Democrats no longer have recessions to use as their reason to live, as they have since Emperor Roosevelt II, they have nothing to offer the voters. The party will die as it is now constituted.
For Republicans to extend their advantage in the polls, they will have to focus on both taxes and public expenditures, and avoid the divisive social engineering that's beginning to seep into the party of the majority.
GWB and Rove are the primary authors thereto of that "seeping"...with the baying hounds of the RINOs egging him on....
Please add me to ALL of your ping lists. Thank you
P.S. the Reagan quote on your homepage is an all time classic!
"divisive social engineering "
Yeah, and spending like a drunken sailor......
Thanks for the ping!
Nice article, thanks for the ping.
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