Milton Friedman, R.I.P.
The Nobel laureate and dogged defender of liberty passed away in San Francisco earlier today. He was 94. He will be missed. Several posts about this sad news on Division of Labour include a number of good links, plus you can hear two recent interviews of Friedman by following the links at the bottom of this page. The Cato Institute offers several items in its tribute.
More from:
* The University of Chicago (provides links to obituaries at the NY Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Financial Times)
* The Hoover Institution.
* Greg Mankiw reposts his 1998 essay naming Friedman “the economist of the century.”
* There are long — and growing — posts celebrating Friedman’s life on PrestoPundit and A Second Hand Conjecture. (HT for the latter to Instapundit.)
The lengthy London Telegraph obit.
Richard Ebeling and Sheldon Richman for FEE.
Finally, the Free to Choose website offers a long list of Friedman links.
He was a giant. A great man of great accomplishments. Certainly the greatest economist of the 20th Century.
Here’s something I did not know: “More recently, [Friedman] became a strong advocate of vouchers to encourage school choice.”
I am sure because emperically, he knew it would improve education.
That wasn’t what you’d call recent…he brought the issue up in Free to Choose from about 1980…Friedman was good at coming up with “compromise” solutions – “Okay, you won’t abolish public education, but here’s something better than what we have now…”
Another, now forgotten, was his proposal for a “negative income tax” to replace the old welfare system – the idea was that everyone files a return, and if his income is low enough, he gets a straight dole, instead of qualifying for a tangle of different entitlements. (He testified against his own proposal when someone in Congress wanted to enact it as an addition to the existing programs…)
Anecdotes about Milton Friedman…
“Everybody loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he isn’t there.” – George Shultz “Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers.” – Robert Solow Brad DeLong wr…