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Fighting for Free Markets | CNSNews.com

July 27, 2012 by NEO Leave a comment

English: Portrait of Milton Friedman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let’s stay with economic for the moment, although a bit more accessible. best way to do that is to let Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman do it for us!

from CNS:

Even if you’ve never heard of Milton Friedman, you’ve likely heard some of the famed economist’s pithy sayings.

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” “Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.” And the classic: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Friedman, who would have been 100 years old on July 31, was for free markets before free markets were cool.

At a time when it was fashionable to assert that collectivism was the wave of the future, he championed the moral and practical superiority of free markets. At a time when “economic” freedom was ranked below “political” freedom, he showed that they are inseparable. And when others looked to government to accomplish their social objectives, he reshaped American politics through his advocacy of monetary restraint, deregulation, the volunteer army, school choice, and the flat tax.

Friedman’s defining attitude was an infectious confidence. A student skit from his alma mater, the University of Chicago, in the 1950s included the line: “Mr. Friedman, is it correct that you have discovered Truth, and that you are now simply verifying it empirically?”

Once, when hiring an administrative assistant who lacked an economics background, Friedman reassured her: “You don’t have to worry about not knowing anything about economics. There are many people who studied economics for years and don’t know anything about economics. Stick with me, and you’ll learn the correct way.”