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| July 31, 2002 | |||
Happy 90th Birthday, Milton Friedman
Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman, regarded widely as the greatest champion of liberty in the 20th Century, celebrates his 90th birthday today. As President Bush recently said of Professor Friedman:
Milton Friedman has shown us that when government attempts to substitute its own judgments for the judgments of free people, the results are usually disastrous. In contrast to the free market's invisible hand, which improves the lives of people, the government's invisible foot tramples on people's hopes and destroys their dreams. . . .
When he began his work, the conventional wisdom held that capitalism's days were numbered. Free market systems were thought to be unsuited to modern problems. Today we recognize that free markets are the great engines of economic development. They are the source of wealth, and the hope of a world weary of poverty and weary of oppression.
We have seen Milton Friedman's ideas at work in . . . Russia, where the government recently adopted a 13 percent flat tax with impressive results. We have seen them at work in Sweden, which has adopted personal retirement accounts. We have seen them even at work in China, where the government conceded long ago that Marxism was, in their words, "no longer suited" to China's problems.
These are extraordinary developments. They demonstrate that the rest of the world is finally catching up with Milton Friedman. . . .
Those interested may peruse further tributes to Professor Friedman from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State George Shultz, Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker, University of Chicago economics professor Casey B. Mulligan, writer Leo Rosten, columnists Deroy Murdock, George F. Will, Thomas Sowell, Bruce Bartlett, Joel Miller, Cato Institute President Ed Crane, and Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Boaz. Milton Friedman's autobiography and the press release announcing his selection by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences are available at the Nobel E-Museum. Also available is his biography from the Library of Economics and Liberty.
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