From the Reporters

An Entrepreneurial Hero Dies

 

Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist who inspired some of Ronald Reagan's deregulatory and laissez faire economic policies, has died, the Wall Street Journal reports. The son of small business owners from Rahway, New Jersey—his mom ran a dry goods store, his father operated a series of what Friedman called "mostly unsuccessful jobbing ventures"—Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976 for his work.

Though Friedman served in government during the heyday of Roosevelt's New Deal, during which time he helped to design the payroll withholding tax system that is still with us, he eventually became a critic of Depression-era economic policies, suggesting that some of them did more harm then good.

Friedman's avowedly pro-business philsophy was one of the key intellectual elements of Reaganomics (along with Arthur Laffer's tax-cut-justifying Curve), which came of age at the same time as the entrepreneurial revolution of the late 1970s. As such, Friedman was undoubtedly one of the most influential economists in American history, and even world history--a black mark on his record is that he was reportedly a fan of Chile's dictator Pinochet because the junta supported free-market reforms.

Given that association with Reaganomics, Friedman has always been a popular figure among entrepreneurs who feel that America's free market isn't free enough. Some economic historians believe that the policies inspired by Friedman's work directly fed the entrepreneurial renaissance of the past 30 years. Others argue that advances in technology such as the personal computer would have happened anyway, and that they were more directly responsible for the prosperity that the U.S. has enjoyed more or less since that time.

Where do you come down on this question?

For a little further reading, you can find Friedman's biography on the Nobel Prize's website here.

You can find his Wikipedia autobiography here.

For a history of the Chicago School of Economics, click here.