Obituaries of Milton Friedman
Obituaries of Milton Friedman:
Peter
Kurrild-Klitgaard
(In Danish)
Remembering Milton Friedman
Gordon St. Angelo
INDIANAPOLIS –Nobel laureate Dr. Milton Friedman passed away
early this morning, in his San Francisco home, of heart failure. He was 94.
Dr. Friedman will be remembered around the world as one of the
20th century’s greatest champions of freedom. When Dr. Friedman began writing
about politics, freedom looked to many like an all but lost cause. Half the
world was in slavery, and the other half badly hobbled by a crisis of confidence
in its central political idea: government based first and foremost on the
liberty of the individual.
In the fifty years that followed, Dr. Friedman helped restore
the free world’s confidence in freedom. The voluntary choices of individuals,
not the dictates of the state, should be the default mode of human life;
government is justified only insofar as it preserves, protects, and defends
people’s liberty.
In his prolific writing and speaking in defense of this creed,
Dr. Friedman became one of the world’s most powerful and influential defenders
of freedom.
Dr. Friedman began his fight for freedom in his professional
work as an economist, where he was one of a handful of thinkers who rejected the
nearly universal consensus in favor of government management of the economy in
the mid-20 th century. His revolutionary work in economic theory earned him the
Nobel prize in 1976.
Throughout his life, Dr. Friedman insisted that economics was
his only true “vocation,” preferring to describe his broader fight for human
liberty as his “avocation.” He lived to see the overwhelming consensus in
favor of big-government economics completely reversed among his peers in favor
of economic individualism.
His primary economic interest was monetary theory. Among many
other contributions, Dr. Friedman vindicated “monetarism,” which upholds the
central economic importance of the money supply. As a leader of the ” Chicago
school,” a group of free-market economists at the University of Chicago, Dr.
Friedman was one of the most important figures in the successful movement to
place the choices of buyers and sellers, not government management, at the
center of professional economic thought.
In the last ten years of his life, Dr. Friedman concentrated on
promoting educational freedom through school choice policies, which allow
parents to choose the public or private school that is best for their children.
Dr. Friedman is well known as the father of the modern school choice movement,
owing to his 1955 proposal for vouchers that parents could use to purchase
education at the schools of their choice. He and his wife Rose founded the
Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996 to promote school choice.
Hoover Institution
Milton Friedman, noted economist, Nobel laureate, and
Hoover senior research fellow, dies at 94
STANFORD ó Milton Friedman, recipient of
the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science and a senior research fellow
at the Hoover Institution since 1977, died this morning. He was 94.
Friedman also had the distinction of being
the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of
Science, both awarded to him in 1988.
“Today Stanford has lost a great scholar
and friend, and our country has lost one of its leading economists,” said Stanford
University president John L. Hennessy. “Dr. Friedman’s ability to
explain complicated economic theories has had a profound impact beyond the
university. We will miss his candor and intelligence, but we are quite certain
that his insights will live for generations."
“Milton Friedman was arguably the
greatest economist of the 20th century,” said Hoover Institution director John
Raisian. “His reach was incredible. Esteemed academic economists
lauded his intellectual capacity and leadership of the Chicago School
of economics. At the same time, he was a household name among
noneconomists. In ordinary life, people knew the name of Milton Friedman
as a great economist ñ it is an amazing tribute to the man. He
contributed to the notion that ideas have meaning; no economist could claim that
phrase more than he could.
“For those of us at Hoover, he was a
bellwether in our thinking about political economy,” Raisian added. “We
enjoyed his collegiality for nearly 30 years. He was active throughout his
lifetime, and his later years were no exception. We will truly miss him.
“Our thoughts and condolences are with
his wife, Rose Director Friedman, in this time of sorrow,” Raisian said. “Milton
and Rose considered themselves ëtwo lucky people,’ as their autobiography
was titled. Rose was not only a loving spouse but also an intellectual
partner. It was a joy to see them in action together. Indeed, the
only time I saw Milton pause on an analytic point was when Rose was
his interrogator.”
A longtime and outspoken proponent of
political and economic freedom, Friedman conceived many of the most important
innovations in economic theory during the second half of the 20th
century. Of those, his landmark work explaining monetary supply and its
effect on economic and inflationary shifts garnered him worldwide renown and
respect.
The influence of Friedman’s work was
felt again this year when Edmund Phelps was announced as the 2006 Nobel Prize
winner in economics for a theory the two Nobelists developed in the 1960s
regarding unemployment and inflation. That theory continues to be used as a
practical guide among the world’s major central banks, including the U.S.
Federal Reserve.
Friedman, who often served as an adviser
and sage for many government leaders, played a key role in this nation’s
economic policy despite never having formally served in an administration after
World War II. He also was known for championing school vouchers,
particularly through the foundation he and his wife created, the Milton and Rose
D. Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.
In addition to his position as a senior
fellow at the Hoover Institution, Friedman was the 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.
He was 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,
Friedman wrote extensively on public policy, always with a primary emphasis on
the preservation and extension of individual freedom. His most important books
in this field were (with his wife, Rose) Capitalism and Freedom
(University of Chicago Press, 1962); Bright Promises, Dismal Performance
(Thomas Horton and Daughters, 1983), which consists mostly of reprints of
columns he wrote for Newsweek from 1966 to 1983; (also with Rose) Free
to Choose (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), which complemented a ten-part
television series of the same name shown on the Public Broadcasting Service
(PBS) network in early 1980; and (with Rose) Tyranny of the Status Quo
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), which complemented a three-part television
series of the same name, shown on PBS in early 1984.
He was a member of the President’s
Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (his opposition to conscription
helped end the draft); the President’s Commission on White House Fellows; and he
was also a member of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board (a group
of experts from outside the government named in 1981 by President Ronald
Reagan).
Friedman was active in public affairs,
serving as an informal economic adviser to Senator Barry Goldwater in his
unsuccessful campaign for the presidency in 1964, to Richard Nixon in his
successful 1968 campaign, to President Nixon subsequently, and to Ronald Reagan
in his 1980 campaign.
He published numerous books and articles,
most notably A Theory of the Consumption Function, The Optimum
Quantity of Money and Other Essays, and (with A. J. Schwartz) A Monetary
History of the United States, Monetary Statistics of the United States,
and Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Friedman served as president of the
American Economic Association, the Western Economic Association and the Mont
Pelerin Society. He also was a member of the American Philosophical Society
and the National Academy of Sciences.
He was 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. degree in 1932
from Rutgers University, an M.A. in 1933 from the University of Chicago,
and a Ph.D. degree in 1946 from Columbia University.
Two Lucky People, his and Rose D.
Friedman’s memoirs, was published in 1998 by the University of Chicago
Press.
Milton Friedman was born July 31, 1912, in
Brooklyn, N.Y., the fourth and last child and first son of Sarah Ethel (Landau)
and Jeno Saul Friedman. He and his wife, Rose Director Friedman, who survives,
were married in 1938. He is also survived by their two children, Janet
Martel and David Friedman, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
Services are pending.