This month marks the tenth anniversary of the passing of Milton Friedman. He was the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century, as Keynes had been of the first half. The critical difference, of course, is that Friedman was right.
I can’t ever remember, before or since, the death of a 94-year-old being so deeply mourned as Friedman’s was. In a classic National Review eulogy, his great friend William F. Buckley, Jr. – while wondering about the appropriateness of lamenting the passing of a nonagenarian – spoke of the grief he and other friends were experiencing. It was as if the great man’s death had been somehow untimely.
Peggy Noonan wrote recently that we seem to be raising generations of ostensibly educated Americans of whom it might be said that they have seen the movie, but haven’t read the book. Fortunately for them, for us and for posterity, Milton Friedman (with his beloved wife Rose) left us both, in the book and the PBS documentary series Free to Choose. In whichever medium, it is the resource to which I still default when asked to recommend one introduction to free-market capitalism.
Free to Choose was first telecast in 1980, and significantly updated (along with the book) ten years later. Even at that, it is of necessity showing its age. But only in the details (with references to East and West Germany, and to Hong Kong as a British crown colony); the fundamental principles are both clear and timeless.
Why do the great mass of people – making their own financial decisions in their own best interest – produce not merely a richer economy but a more just society than one that is centrally directed by government? Why does a government-mandated minimum wage inevitably destroy entry-level jobs? Why must free trade be a net benefit, since no transaction is ever entered into freely unless both parties see an advantage to it? These and dozens of other fundamental economic questions are explained and illustrated – entirely without technical jargon – in Free to Choose.
I commend the book to you, and even more urgently recommend that the videos be shared by you and your children (and older grandchildren), as inoculation against the malignant fiction that capitalism has somehow failed, and that only government regulation and redistribution can produce economic and social well-being.
In either medium, you will encounter both one of the great intellects of our time and a sparkling wit. It was, after all, this Nobel Prize-winning economist who said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
© 2016 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Nick reviews current books and other resources for the advisor in his monthly newsletter, a sample issue of which may be found at www.nickmurraynewsletters.com. His new book is Around the Year with Nick Murray: Daily Readings for Financial Advisors.