Tuesday 31 July 2012

Happy100th Birthday Milton Friedman!

Milton Friedman was born on this day, July 31, in 1912 and he would have been 100 years old today.  Unfortunately, Milton died on November 16, 2006 when he was 94 years old.  Coincidentally, that was just several months after the Carpe Diem blog started in September 2006.  A custom Google search of Carpe Diem reveals that "Milton Friedman" has "appeared" on this blog more than 1,200 times in the last six years, and his ideas, quotes and videos should be familiar to all regular CD visitors.  In contrast, I found 694 results for "Milton Friedman" on Marginal Revolution, 651 on Cafe Hayek and 258 on Greg Mankiw's blog

Since he's made such regular appearances here, I didn't feel that it was necessary to provide a special tribute for Milton Friedman's 100th birthday, except to provide some links below to others who have written today about Milton Friedman (here's his Wikipedia page):

1. Thomas Sowell writing in Investor's Business Daily, "On Milton Friedman's 100th Birthday, He's Needed More Than Ever."

2. Don Boudreaux in today's StarTribune "Milton Friedman -- a man of intellectual stature."

3. Chicago Tribune staff editorial, "Milton Friedman's Century," which concludes, "The world has changed immensely in the past 100 years. Thanks in part to Milton Friedman, many of the changes have been for the better."

4. Steve Moore in today's WSJ, "The Man Who Saved Capitalism," with a great quote from Harvard's Andrei Shleifer who describes 1980-2005 as "The Age of Milton Friedman," an era that "witnessed remarkable progress of mankind. As the world embraced free-market policies, living standards rose sharply while life expectancy, educational attainment, and democracy improved and absolute poverty declined."

5. Steve Hayward at Powerline, "Milton Friedman at 100."

6. My favorite Milton Friedman quotes.

7. And finally, an excellent summary of Milton Friedman's impact from a WSJ editorial after Friedman's death in 2006:  "Few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom than Milton Friedman."

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