Milton Friedman 1912-2006
Monday January 29, 2007 is “Milton Friedman Day”
Milton Friedman is one of my favorite people to read and quote. Milton Friedman died on November 16, 2006.
"Milton Friedman Day" will be celebrated in San Francisco, California, where he died and in Chicago, Illinois, where he taught at the University of Chicago, as well as many other cities. A full schedule of events for "Milton Friedman Day" can be found at www.miltonfriedmanday.com/
Milton Friedman considered himself a Libertarian who backed the Republican party of Ronald Regan for lowering taxes and reducing government regulation. Some of his ideas, such as public school vouchers and the decriminalization of drug use, remain controversial.
I first reported his death in our "RIP - In Memory Of" forum.
Brad DeLong wrote of Friedman, "His worldview began with a bedrock belief in people and their ability to make judgments for themselves, and thus an imperative to maximize individual freedom."
I credit Milton Friedman to shaping my belief that the "War on Drugs" is wrong and has created a profitable industry for criminals that harms people: Drug abuse should be treated as a medical problem, not a crime. Here are some of his "War on Drugs" quotes.
- ""Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it."
- ""I've long been in favor of legalizing all drugs," he says, but not because of the standard libertarian arguments for unrestricted personal freedom. "Look at the factual consequences: The harm done and the corruption created by these laws...the costs are one of the lesser evils."
- ""There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," the economist says, "$7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."
Below are some of the quotes I've kept that should immortalize this wonderful thinker.
- "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programmes by their intentions rather than their results."
- "There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40% of our national income."
- "If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can only gain at the expense of another."
- "What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself."
You can read Milton Friedman's autobiography here at Nobelprize.org and read the memoirs of Milton and Rose Friedman in "Two Lucky People published in 1998 by the University of Chicago Press.
Free Charts and Other Stuff
Since beating the market is hard for most to do, I recommend a "Core and Explore" approach to investing. Core means place 80 to 99% of your money into a CORE, buy-and-hold, no load, mutual fund portfolio and then EXPLORE with the remainder. To build your core portfolio, I suggest a diversified basket of index funds.
Make suggestions for future articles at Kirk's Market Thoughts.
Kirk Lindstrom:
DISCLAIMER: Answers & my words are general in nature, are not meant as specific investment advice, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of anyone but Kirk. Individuals should consult with their own advisors for specific investment advice.
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