Milton Friedman ,the guy who worked for Pinochet to produce record breaking inflation in post-Allende Chile to prove socialism didn't work, has passed on to the great cash register in the sky.
The Wall Street Journal calls him the greatest economist of the 20th Century. Please gimme a break. He was an imitator, a cheerleader for the Austrian School of Economics. He was far from original having merely rehashed and popularized the theories of Ludwig Von Mises and F. Hayek.
Heck he wasn't even the most influential economist of the 20th Century or even the later half of the 20th Century, The real historically important political economists of the 20th Century are Keynes, Galbraith and Joseph Schumpeter.
See:
It's the Labour Theory of Value, stupid
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One thing Uncle Milty did do sucessfully was make the term "libertarian" disreputable to millions of people.
ReplyDeleteEven in that he was a pale imitation of the damage done to the term libertarian by Ayn Rand. However I believe the American interpretation of the term libertarian was redeemed by Barry Golwater in the eighties when he stood up to the theocratic-statists who took over the Republican Party under Reagan. See my Mr. Conservative.
ReplyDeleteWhile I generally sympathize with those who criticize Friedman (I've never been a fan of him), I think it is neither fair nor accurate to link him to the Austrian school of economics. No Austrian worth a damn would defend much of Friedman's economic views, especially his monetarist views and his relationship with Pinochet.
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