Milton Friedman has died

[WilliamPitt]

Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the last century, died today. He was 94.

Mr. Friedman's death was also announced at a conference of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington by the institute's vice president of academic affairs, James A. Dorn. The audience of academics and policy makers observed several moments of silence in observance.

Mr. Friedman was awarded the Nobel prize in 1976. He has long championed the cause of political and economic freedom and the links between the two. He has originated, or been associated with, many breakthroughs in economics since the 1950s. He is best known for explaining the role of the money supply in economic and inflation fluctuations. He also, with this year's Nobel prize winner Edmund Phelps, developed the theory in the 1960s that policy makers couldn't achieve a permanent tradeoff between lower unemployment and higher inflation, and that efforts to do so would simply result in the same unemployment rate and higher inflation, a view that holds sway at major central banks today, including the Fed.

Mr. Friedman also exercised extraordinary influence not just through his academic work but through his advice to politicians and his many popular books, such as Capitalism and Freedom in 1962 and Free to Choose, with Rose Friedman, in 1990, which was made into a television series.

Mr. Friedman had enormous impact on economic policy though he never had a formal job in a government administration after World War Two. His opposition helped lead to the end of the draft. He was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan. He has been closely associated with school vouchers and other applications of free market principles to policy issues.

More: http://www.dealbreaker.com/2006/11/milton_friedman_is_dead.php

[devilgrrl]

1. Bummer...

:sarcasm:

[shain from kane]

2. The money supply is lowered today, because I understand that he figured out a way to

take it with him.

[Alcibiades]

3. My favorite Friedman quote says it all about him:

on the minimum wage:

"Some people just aren't worth $2.35 an hour."

[shain from kane]

5. What is a human cadaver worth nowadays?

[hatrack]

7. Does Satan's fluff-boy get minimum wage? And if so, how much is that?

Just asking . . .

[bigtree]

4. Friedman: "there's no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest"

" Let me talk, rather, of those presidents who I've known in my own lifetime. And there, there's no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest.

"...it took real principles to do what he did. "

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=060904E

[whistle]

6. Like I said needed to be done with Ronald Reagan's corpse, goes

...double for Milton Friedman's corpse, drive a sharp wooden stake right through his black heart! And, as for the rest of the monetarists in the world, follow Milton Friedman's fate as quickly as possible.

[Naturyl]

8. There was one good thing about Friedman

He supported a negative income tax, which is a gauranteed minimum income for all citizens. However, I'm not saying that he did so for moral reasons. Rather, he wanted a social saftey net for pragmatic reasons - essentially because it costs less to support people finacially than to pay for crime and sickness. His support for NIT was good, even if his reasons for supporting it were callous and evil.

And that's about the best I can do for Uncle Milty. Anything else I might have to say about the man will be left unsaid out of respect for the dead.

[hfojvt]

10. Uncle Milty

that's what I call him too.

I think he also pushed for an end to the draft. I am not sure if that is in balance a good thing or a bad thing, but I was happy to not be drafted.

He lived a long and comfortable life, so his death is certainly not a great tragedy in any case.

[vireo]

9. He was mentioned on Colbert earlier this week

Stephen was proud to be likened to him.