Who was Milton Friedman?
Milton Friedman is my favorite economist of all time, and I wrote this paper about him. He has an interesting story and mind, unlike most economists today he encouraged debate.
"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." - Milton Friedman
Before all the static and political fostering of the recent economic crisis, a great man passed away on November 16, 2006 at the age of 94. Milton Friedman was that man, and he insightfully clung to the belief that free market economics is not merely a series of insignificant accidents or coincidences, but rather a tapestry of measures that have culminated from an exquisite side of the human psyche. That is to say, that if policy makers are to choose wisely we must recognize the fundamental principles of our system; how a complex organized, and smoothly running system can develop and flourish without central direction, and how coordination can be achieved without coercion (Friedman and Friedman, Free to Choose).
Prior to divulging into the economic and political views of Milton Friedman, we must recognize that much like the free market, a man’s measure is also no mere coincidence. On July 31, 1912, Jeno Saul Friedman and Sarah Ethel Landau bore their fourth child, and only son for which they named Milton. Having immigrated from Berehovo, Ukraine -formerly part of Hungary and Czechoslovakia- to the United States in 1890 and 1895 respectively, Milton’s parents knew the value of a dollar; and just 13 months into Milton’s life they moved to Rahway, New Jersey where his father ran a dry goods store. Although their financial position was precarious, and no member of the family had been to college before, it was decided early that Milton would attend college (Champion of Economic Freedom).
Friedman attended Washington Public School, where he skipped the sixth grade and transferred to Columbus School in the seventh grade, both public schools in Rahway; and although he attended Hebrew school in the afternoon after public school and was “bar-mitzvahed,” Friedman became an agnostic at an early age of twelve (Champion of Economic Freedom). From 1924-1928, Friedman attended Rahway High School where his favorite subjects were political science and geometry. Outside of his academic studies, he participated in sports, won an oratory competition, and almost read out the local public library (Ramrattan and Szenberg). He won a scholarship to attend Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, which at the time was a private school.
Having a fascination with mathematics out of high school, Friedman majored in mathematics at Rutgers. Despite his fascination, Milton referred to himself as an “ignorant boy in a small town,” and that he “didn’t know what you used mathematics for…only…that it was used in the insurance industry somehow” (Friedman, Milton Friedman Interview). He took the actuarial exams, but since he failed some of them, he switched to economics. The economics department at Rutgers had two stalwart economists, Arthur F. Burns, who was writing his Ph.D. at Columbia, and Homer Jones who had been a student of Frank Knight, and completed graduate work at the University of Chicago. Friedman offered his abundant praise to them, for their teaching, influence and friendship. Friedman studied insurance and statistics with Homer Jones and it was Jones who introduced Friedman to the “Chicago view” of individual freedom and the right reform policy. Friedman wrote that “Had Homer not chosen to spend a couple of years teaching at Rutgers, I would almost certainly not have gone to Chicago.” He also remarked that besides being at the bottom of the Great Depression, “… becoming an economist seemed more relevant to the burning issues of the day than becoming an applied mathematician or an actuary” (Friedman, Milton Friedman Interview).
After finishing up his undergraduate degree at Rutgers, Friedman accepted a scholarship at the University of Chicago in 1932. At Chicago, Milton made one of the most important discoveries of his life upon taking Jacob Viner’s class on “Price and Distribution Theory.” Mr. Viner’s policy was to seat students alphabetically which landed Milton a seat beside a lovely woman named Rose Director. After courting each other for a few years Rose and Milton contemplated marriage, but decided that it would have to wait until they could maintain economic footing (Champion of Economic Freedom).
Aside from Milton’s new found love, he studied History of Economic Thought with Frank Knight, Monetary Theory with Lloyd Mints, and Correlation and Curve Fitting with Henry Schultz. Friedman noted: “I took courses enough to have the equivalent of a master’s degree in mathematics–which stood me in very good stead in my later career (Friedman and Friedman, Two Lucky People).“ Friedman received his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1933, and with the encouragement of Schultz, was awarded a year’s fellowship to continue postgraduate studies at Columbia University. Friedman asserted that “the ideal combination for a budding economist was a year of study of Chicago, which emphasized theory, followed by a year of study at Columbia which emphasized institutional influences and empirical work–but only in that order, not the reverse” (Friedman and Friedman, Two Lucky People).
(Left to Right above: George Stigler, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith)
Friedman took a job with the National Resources Committee shortly after his graduation, making an annual income of $2600. Milton wrote of this period in his life that “… ironically, the New Deal was a lifesaver for us personally. The new government programs created a boom market for economists, especially in Washington; Absent the New Deal, it is far from clear that we could have gotten jobs as economists” (Friedman and Friedman, Two Lucky People). In 1937, Friedman left the NRC and joined the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City. With this steady flow of income from his economic work, Milton Friedman and Rose Director finally tied the knot in 1938 under full Jewish religious tradition. Rose would play a large part in Friedman’s work as they collaborated on many books and projects over their lives including their joint memoirs, “Two Lucky People.”
In 1940, Friedman accepted a job at the University of Wisconsin but was forced to resign within a year. Friedman had fallen into conflict with other members of the faculty over America’s entry into World War II, which Friedman favored and others opposed (Champion of Economic Freedom). During World War II, he worked in the Treasury Department, where he helped create the federal withholding tax system, a system in which we take for granted today; prior to that, Americans had paid their taxes in a single lump sum each year. During the last years of the war, he suspended economic research and was employed as a mathematical statistician by a special projects group at Columbia University, concentrating on problems of weapons design, military tactics and metallurgical experiments (Champion of Economic Freedom).
Paul Krugman, a Nobel winning economists, has found himself as the new voice of Keynesianism; a form of economics which supports the idea that government spending indeed helps to lead to economic prosperity. Krugman supposedly has a track record of predicting economic crisis while maintaining his Keynesian mantra. He is a staunch supporter of government spending and has even said on 
