Milton Friedman has passed away

[hsmith]

The man you can thank for the income tax withholding

94, not a bad age

FT.com / World / US & Canada - Milton Friedman, economist, dies aged 94

[lew]

I was thinking it was David at first, not Milton.

[lew]

Milton was great on some things, and not so great on other things.


RIP.

[lew]

I just realized David is Milton's son.

[hsmith]

^^^ owned

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by lew

Milton was great on some things, and not so great on other things.


RIP.

Sad loss!


I just wish young people today has professors who taught more Milton and less Marx!

[Diesel66]

Originally Posted by hsmith

The man you can thank for the income tax withholding

negative ghostrider

[TheScatman]

NYTimes article said he persoanlly had reservatrions about how the withholding system was used post WW2

but none the less, its a big enenmy of liberty

But Milton Friedman fought for liberty his whole life and wrote in a way everyone could understand, RIP

[TheScatman]

Originally Posted by lew

I just realized David is Milton's son.

He just took the free market to a greater extreme than his dad

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by TheScatman

NYTimes article said he persoanlly had reservatrions about how the withholding system was used post WW2

but none the less, its a big enenmy of liberty

But Milton Friedman fought for liberty his whole life and wrote in a way everyone could understand, RIP

the ny times article sucked, tried to peg him as a conservative, the financial times article was much better

[kinggovernor]

he was the best economist of the 20th century

[TheScatman]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

he was the best economist of the 20th century

mises? rothbard?

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by TheScatman

mises? rothbard?

friedman proved keynesian economics wrong and that is in my book

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

friedman proved keynesian economics wrong and that is in my book

I second that!

[Ardentfrost]

what a sad day Even at 94, he was still always getting his opinion in papers and stuff, trying to change the state of modern economics. Shame more people didn't wisen up in his lifetime.

Still, I guess a Nobel prize is a good measure of achievement while you're alive.

[lew]

Originally Posted by kinggovernor

he was the best economist of the 20th century

His son is even greater.

[TheScatman]

Originally Posted by lew

His son is even greater.

I wouldnt say that

Two different types of academic work imo

[hsmith]

Originally Posted by Diesel66

negative ghostrider

care to backup your claim

Milton Friedman Unraveled by Murray N. Rothbard

But it is in the macro sphere, unwisely hived off from the micro by economists who remain after sixty years ignorant of Ludwig von Mises’s achievement in integrating them, it is here that Friedman’s influence has been at its most baleful. For we find Friedman bearing heavy responsibility both for the withholding tax system and for the disastrous guaranteed annual income looming on the horizon. At the same time, we find Friedman calling for absolute control by the State over the supply of money – a crucial part of the market economy. Whenever the government has, fitfully and almost by accident, stopped increasing the money supply (as Nixon did for several months in the latter half of 1969), Milton Friedman has been there to raise the banner of inflation once again. And wherever we turn, we find Milton Friedman, proposing not measures on behalf of liberty, not programs to whittle away the Leviathan State, but measures to make the power of that State more efficient, and hence, at bottom, more terrible.

[goldenponderbob]

I heard the news, and a bit of semi-even handed bio on PBS.

I wondered what the popular news outlets would do, so I was looking
with my clicker last evening, but just kept running into OJ and Pelosi.

I wondered how telling he would have thought of that. My guess is he
wouldn't have been surprised.

I was hoping that I would find something here on this important person's
passing.

I'm not much for this sort of thing, but here goes . . .

Milton Friedman was the best known of the Monetarists.

He was a well-known economist and was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics in 1976.

He was born in New York in 1912, worked at Columbia University and for the
government, then became Professor of Economics at Chicago University.

It was there that he, with the help of other Monetarists, became known
as the 'Chicago School' of Monetarist theory.

Dr. Friedman was more than just an economist, he was a free thinker and a
courageous defender of liberty.

He believed in the power of free markets and free people.

He did a series of television programs entitled Free to Choose', and helped produce a book of the same name.

He was controversial, courageous, charming, witty and wonderfully funny.

He was a freedom fighter, and we could use more like him these days.

He will be missed.

goldenponderbob

[avsp]

All the UK news reports i saw yesterda,y (even on predominately celebrity-obssessed 'news' shows), mentioned his death. This is probably coz even tho' his TV show never making it over here (IIRR), his thinking was central to Thatcherism & was at the time cited very very heavily, ..., very heavily indeed.

Seemingly direct control of the money supply, (MLR & PSBR etc) is less important now with control of interest rates being the prefered 'controlled' varible.

His significance, to me, was that he was the front man for saying the aim of govt should be to control inflation not unemployment level.

Its forgotten that he was concerned more about how rather tham whether the govt should 'command' the economy.

Whatever happened to claims that he'd 'massaged' his empirical data on increase on money supply & inflation? Perhaps I should do my own research?

Either way RIP

Incidently, post WW2 many 'new towns' were built surrounding London. The most infamous is a place called Milton Keynes. This was long before the debate between the two schools of economic thought arose. I've alway found this strangely startling. MK is most fanous for its concrete cows that inhabit the fields between its 'suburban villages', ..., someone i know participated in a programe of putting concrete cow pats in the fields