Appetizer
Dr. X posts this from the Hoover Institution at Stanford. (The building now has some rich guy's name on it - apparently Herbert couldn't keep up the payments):
"I know the First Sea Lord is drafting a note on the late Milton Friedman, so I will just offer one or two quick comments as a warm-up:
- "Winning in big academic economics requires big differentiating ideas, and Friedman picked up monetarism as his weapon of choice, a little like the Botvinnik's devotion to the slightly dodgy Dutch Defense early in his career. By the time monetary targeting had been discredited, Friedman's Nobel Prize was in hand, and his reputation assured.
- "But he had many victories along the way. Much of the economic success of emerging Asia can be credited to his influence.
- "You might not know he was instrumental in eliminating the draft in the U.S.
- "And here is a nice article on his role in the creation of the Earned Income Tax credit, one of the most successful social programs in U.S. history.
- "The Economist piece on him is also good, but no link since premium content yadda yadda yadda.
"I thought him exceptional for two reasons, both unrelated to his achievements in positive economics and the political arena. First, he was clear in his arguments (e.g., "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" or "the social responsibility of business is to make money"). You can say he was proven wrong on various points, but at least he formulated his arguments so subsequent work could prove or falsify them. You'd be surprised how few economists are willing to do this.
Second, he was civil, despite being the target of more than a few ad hominem arguments over the course of his career. Arch-Rival Paul Samuelson says: 'I've known Milton and Rose Friedman for 65 years. We have had considerable differences on policy. We have had considerable agreement on analytical matters. Knowing that differences on policy and ideology often poison and taint personal relations, I think we should both be admired for the friendship and civility we maintained over all these years.'
"Here is one of my favorite stories about Friedman:
" 'Reportedly, while traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep unemployment low. If they used tractors, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic. "Then why don’t you give them spoons?" Friedman inquired.' "
posted by Latouche at Large at 3:56 PM
1 Comments:
My upcoming post on the Monetarist, if I ever get back to it, is a poem. My spitting on his grave will be vers libre.
I have no argument with Friedman's contributions to the field. I mean that literally. I have no argument; ask my credit card people if I have any greatly informed understanding of economic policy.
I know the difference between macro and micro (learned from a bright, and very nearly blind Reed professor, unable to see his five students. Metaphor withheld.) I know that M1 isn't just a rifle. More to the point, I recall a bit from micro about public goods, and externalities, and transition costs and realized - at least in the poetic economy - that all of the human substance of life exists largely in externalities, public goods, and transition costs.
But the point is that real-world economics must always also be understood as politics, sociology and psychology, even biology. The laws of money are laws, I believe, in the same way as the laws governing weather. The movement of money has statistical characteristics which have a limited ability to be predicted. I believe if we could find an expert in the area with many years of experience, he would respond on the order of "duhhhh....."
Monetarists, it seems to me, have far too much faith in the weather: If money were food, monetarists seem to be gatherers rather than farmers.
largely just protecting the present distribution of capital.
And in the past 30 years, that has gotten the vast majority of the people of the United States almost nowhere.
Ok, that was a little marxist. But there you are.
What I remember most distinctly is Friedman's tireless defense of sweatshops, and the dovetailing with the Reagan agenda. He set the tone for "reform," and 30 years later, the great majority Americans have lost out on own their nation's prosperity, houses and health care are increasingly upper-middle class privileges, economic optimism for our children is essentially dead, and we have an ever narrowing circle of robber-barons making economic decisions. Most shocking to me, is that as capital concentrates, the entrepreneurial spirit, flowering last in the internet boom, seems to be getting squeezed out of the national culture.
I will allow that airplane tickets are a lot cheaper.
Friedman's ideological vision claimed to valued freedom, but what it actually values is existing power. And it has left us without the social machinery to stop our own decline as a nation.
On the other hand, during the War, he did invent Withholding.
Post a Comment
<< Home