FRIEDMAN'S LEGACY
Milton Friedman reminded America and the world about the dignity of the individual
BY JOE ENGE
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Joe Enge is a member of the Carson City School Board, author of two world history textbooks, a former high school teacher in Nevada from 1988 to 2006 and a Fulbright teacher to the former Soviet Union.
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Nobel laureate and intellectual giant of the 20th Century, Milton Friedman, died Nov. 16 last year. Rose Friedman, Milton�s wife and close working partner, recently received special recognition Oct. 13 at the Conservative Leadership Conference in Sparks from Chuck Muth of Citizen Outreach. Paul DiPerna with the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation accepted the award on behalf of Rose for greatly enriching the conservative legacy of classic liberalism.
The clarity of Milton Friedman�s mind, ideas and vision while working closely with Rose are evident in his writings and those fortunate enough to hear him speak in person. He washed away decades of muddled thinking and false theoretical assumptions that had dirtied the windows of economic and intellectual progress, reminding us that only by respecting the dignity of the individual and allowing freedom of choice and freedom from government coercion can we ever improve economic well-being for all.
Friedman�s criticisms of Keynesian government interventions in the 1950s and 1960s hit at the heart of their erroneous assumptions that came to fruition during the stagflation of the 1970s, when using inflation as a tool to maintain full employment would eventually lead to higher inflation and not lower unemployment. He stated, �You can�t keep fooling the people all the time, and people will recognize what�s happening, and as they recognize what�s happening you�ll have to have more and more inflation to achieve that objective. And even that won�t work because people will catch on to it. And what happened in the 1970s was about as clear a demonstration of something that had already been predicted in advance as you could have. And that�s what made the stagflation.�
At severe political cost, President Ronald Reagan adhered to Friedman�s ideas and supported the Federal Reserve to contract the money supply to fight inflation. This came at the predicted cost of a recession in the early 1980s. Friedman�s ideas and Reagan�s courage to bite the bullet to end government�s artificial manipulation of the monetary supply to create inflation laid the foundation for monetary stability and the economic success we have seen to the present.
A decade later, young intellectuals and leaders in the former Soviet Republic of Estonia applied Friedman�s ideas as they threw off the shackles of Communism. Former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar read smuggled writings of Friedman during Soviet occupation and applied his concepts, knowing they would face severe short-term economic hardships and pay a heavy political price to reap long-term gains. It worked and confirmed Friedman again. Estonia is now one of the leading economic tigers among former communist countries, rated by the World Economic Forum as 25th out of 125 countries for global competitiveness.
Laar wrote, �Milton Friedman�s legacy in the modern World is the best proof that ideas really do matter. It is hard or not possible at all to imagine today�s world without Friedman�s ideas. But, I have actually seen this kind of world; I lived in it nearly half of my life. This was in the Soviet Union, built on the ideas of Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin. There was no place for ideas such as freedom, free choice, human initiative or dignity. This was a world of state control, orders and violence. Human beings did not have any value there.�
Upon accepting the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize, Laar said, �We have really empowered the people in Estonia. We have liberated them to make choices that help move the country forward. Good government policy can give people the opportunity to create something, to be innovative, to look to the future, to dream, and to realize those dreams. I think this is what freedom is about.�
We can best honor Milton Friedman by remembering his words.
�The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights.� His legacy that good government policy provides equality of opportunity, not outcome, should never be forgotten and is as true for education as it is for economics.
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