Milton Friedman Passed Away

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What were some of your agreements and disagreements with him?

 

Friedman Debunked the Gospel of Keynes

By Steven Pearlstein


One thing that baffles those of us with no training in economics is that two people who hold diametrically opposite views can both be held out as giants of their profession.

After all, if the great British economist John Maynard Keynes was right that government can smooth out the business cycle by stimulating and managing demand for goods and services through such mechanisms as public-works programs, deposit insurance and deficit spending, then how could Milton Friedman be right that the better approach is for government to cut taxes, curb regulation and focus on the supply of money in circulation?

Or how do we square Keynes's prescription that global finance can be stabilized through fixed exchange rates with Friedman's formula of floating exchange rates?

There is, of course, a political analogy to this conundrum. The same country reveres the memory of Franklin Roosevelt for pulling us out of the Great Depression while crediting Ronald Reagan with restoring the competitiveness of the American economy...

Washington Post

 

One area he may have been wrong in was his opposition to the minimum wage. It's seems to be only recently since the 90's that economist have started to see that modest increases in the minimum wage doesn't cause the unemployment that many economist of Friedman's era assumed it would.

 

The Father of 'Monetarism' has passed away has he?.Has Margaret Thatcher been informed???.:H
Friedman saw control of the 'money supply' as the key to keeping inflation low.Also taxation at it's lowest point in a laissez-faire economy.
Keynes was in favour of the 'mixed economy' of boom & bust & held sway with western economic planners for thirty years after World War Two.
In the 1970s the high inflation/high unemployment crisis of western economies led many in high office to blame the economic policies of the 1950s/1960s.High taxation & an over-bearing,over-manned & low profit margin public sector ,were the key complaints.
Central to the 'Monetarists' was control of the money -supply .'M1' as it became known as.It was thought that inflation was not a result of demand exceeding supply as must as too much money flooding the markets.

With hindsight 'Monetarism' has solved the crisis of 'runaway inflation' but the quality of life has been reduced to the competitiveness of the Rat Race or rats in a maze because we are living in the era of 'Total Capitalism',with the smallest public sector possible & the largest private sector in the history of modern 'liberal' capitalism.(As opposed to 19th century laissez-faire capitalism).
If 1980 was the point at which Reagan/Thatcher/Mitterand ended the demand/managed/mixed economies in favour of the 'monetarist' economy with a massive boost to the private sector.It was also the point that our fortunes as a 'caring' 'sharing' community of peoples declined in the fierce competition for jobs/houses/cars/security etc.

 

If milton Friedman passed away - it was only so he could get a big tax concession - he probably realised he could make the biggest tax saving of his life

Apart from being the guy who absolutely ruined Britain with his selfish and frankly stupid economic vision - he is also the guy that put half his name to a town called Milton Keynes in Britain - which is about right since its the tattiest and most sterile town there is-
it has no society to speak of and the mugging rate is horrendous since theres no work there - its just a place people go home to after working somewhere else

Friedmans sense of social cohesiveness earns nill points - the guy was probably an asshole - all the politicians like Margaret thatcher that followed his economics were assholes so he probably was !
Seems like the kind of guy who only cared if the rich got richer and fuck the poor or borderline poor - Milton friedmans sense of economics caused the death of social politics in britain and the breakup of the unions - now we have people in factories - because of friedman - working up to their ankles in oil without toilets and with only a 1/4 hour lunchbreak

HURRAY FOR FRIEDMAN THAT BASTARD THAT SHLD HAVE SHUT HIS MOUTH
AT LAST THE C*NT IS DEAD
NOW WE JUST NEED THE ASSHOLE THATCHER TO DIE - SO I CAN GO SHIT ON HER GRAVE I hope they bury her, and him, face down
If anyone wonders why I wrote this - I just thought it was about as charitable as his economic policies and the people that followed them were to the public that had to suffer them

 

I think it's only when the little man let's theory direct policy that he releases all control and let's monied interests control his life. The common man does contribute and his contribution should be acknowledged. Fuck your economic theories without the workers you would have no product to sell.

 

Try producing a commodity if you have no low cost labor to produce it.

 

Are you referring to Stagflation here? This is what Friedman says Keyenes never took into consideration and what caused many to rethink some of Keynes' theories.

 

As far Friedman's emphasis on privatization. From what I've read it doesn't seem that privatization itself has been the problem but how it was done.

Friedman was an strong advocate of privatization but I think he didn't clarify the "how to" of it. The problem with privatization in those countries where it didn't work well was that it was done too rapidly and not with the proper oversites. This rapid privatization without oversites is what has led to the corruption that you find in some countries that went from state owned to privatization.

 

I hope Keysian theorist are called to account. Privatization of the US military has lead to GIs being ill equipted and the US taxpayer paying many times the amount needed to support the troops. But we were sold this on the terms that it would save us money. Why are companies providing services ahead while the US government is so far in deficit. If you have stock in Haliburton and their ilk, good oh, but if not you have to pay and your benefits and control will be limited, because they stand to profit, and they don't want to lose it.

 

I must take a trip to the shithouse they bury friedman in

 

Where in Britian can you find factories without toilets and how are those conditions connected to Friedman?

 

friedmans politics advocated that societies must release themselves from the grip of the trade unions which in Britain were powerful to the extent that thatcher thought they were responsible for destroying the economy

This culminated in the miners strike which was virtually civil war -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_%281984-1985%29

The National Union of Mineworkers was the strongest and most loyal of the unions - strong in number and intellect - loyal to socialism - the NUM and the T&GWU vitually were the labour party - it really was like a civil war the strike killed many and then some of the miners got hard assed about it and open war broke out where cops were targeted and beaten to shit - and the same was happening to miners - when the miners were picketing they sent in armies of police on horseback to baton these people down - it was awful I met people who vowed they would kill Thatcher the immoral slut of the upper classes if they ever they had the chance, and they meant it- 10 dead and hundreds permanently injured by those police - they actually used the army dressed as police too ! To my dying day I will never get rid of the image of police on horseback beating miners to the ground nor of the scenes where miners with their faces pouring with blood grouped at vilages attended by frantic women. the miners strike divided families and the nation - some of my family were miners - in the coal mines -
A few years earlier than the miners strike I actually visited and went into a
coal mine with my uncle. I understood why they needed a union. While I was there a chunk of rock about 3 ton in weight fell and injured two miners slightly but they could have been killed. They needed the unions and still the places around thoise mines are desolate places where work is had to find. Thatcher could have been more kind but she chose to be a heartless bastard and follow friedmans desires and whims and screw the workers - thatcher and friedman are scum
as far as the links are concerned about factory conditions - wait - I have to find them - but on BBC radio 4 and BBC tv two weeks ago they ran a story about unacceptable factory conditions - links later ....
Suffice to say according to me some rich twat with more money than sense does not automatically have the right to be hailed as a genius whether his politics were pervasive or not he was a friggin fascist with no sense or even the compassion to think about anyone but himself and nothing but hs own bankbalance any evidence to the contrary would be to deny the 20 million people in britain who supported the miners strike a right to state that their lives were ruined at the time by him and the whore that adopted his economics- he stood for the rich - loved the rich and his politics shit all over common decent ordinary people - men women and children alike
I hope they drop the coffin while the cameras are watching !
I will laugh my ass off as he is finaly put into 6 foot of turd
the day he is buried I hope all socialists will drink to that !
My greatest hope though is that thatcher herself is tortured by what she did - I hope she is is guilty inside her own mind I hope she realises what a murdering bastard she is and what bastard she was for taking on friedmans economy

 

First of all, Friedman wasn't this revolutionary force in economics you all imagine. He simply built off of von Hayek's work.

At any rate, Keynesian politics needed to die with advent of catch-all parties. Keynes recommended huge reductions in social services and higher taxes during boom periods. Unfortuneately, as soon as political parties started refusing to make unpopular decisions, they stopped paying off the deficits/debt Keynesian econmics when they had the money, thus resulting in a permanent deficit, and an economy that begins stalling out.

Corporations didn't kill Keynes. Our electoratye did.

 

Thats one way to look at it - didnt quite look that way when some of the people that voted in the conservatives started getting beat round the head with a baton. Didnt look that way either when the lovely smiling conservatives all turned nasty and started asset stripping the best industries and turfing people out of work so theyd have to settle for much lower wages to get jobs but hey - its all just history - or is it?
Pity about the police killing miners they could have had a nice life if only the conservatives had been honest about what they stood for instead of blinding the electorate with a load of ambigious and frankly smug jokes they mustve been laughing up their sleeves at the mugs that voted them in and couldnt get rid of them because of the boundary changes and all that electoral fraud.
Still neer mind - theyll never get back in power while theres bastards like me reminding everyone what thy really stand for

 

Is police brutality bad? Yes.

Were the coal-miners operating inefficient and unprofitable mines at the expense of the government (contributing significantly to the massive deficits Britain was running every year). Yes.

What exactly are you going to do in this situation? Run up the debt every year? The fact is, something had to be done to combat the deficit, and old labour didn't have the cajones to do it.

 

No the germans and the yanks were subsidising their coal industries up to the hilt - British coal was superior quality and all the miners demanded was that the government looked after their own instead of choosing to bolster the german economy. Meanwhile even before the strikes the Germans knew the British coal industry would be broken in favour of the German one - yet british taxpayers were paying to subsidise the german industries after the strike as well !!!
It was all about money and screw the unions forget the man who needs money to live off - get with the people who can afford to eat in restaurants

The MI5 agents that infiltrated the miners ranks were partially responsible for causing the trouble - its always the same in Britain they use provocateurs from MI5 to cause all the trouble at demonstrations even peace rallies

 

Subsidizing an industry to the point where the national debt is stagnating the economy is not "looking after one's own".

 

Taken from The Economist. London: Dec 10, 1994.Vol.333, Iss. 7893; pg. 100 (UK, 1 pgs

THE ENEMY WITHIN: MI5, MAXWELL AND THE SCARGILL AFFAIR. By Seumas Milne. Verso; 344 pages; L16.95IF YOU like conspiracy theories, you'll love this book. It is on strong round when it agues that Arthur Scalgill, the leader of the miners' union during the 1984-85 British coal strike, was subject to a succession of smears and that these culminated in an entirely false allegation in the Daily Mirror in 1990 that he used money donated to strikers to pay off his mortgage.

But this book goes on to claim that the security services had penetrated the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and planted the story. According to loose allegations made in Parliament, their top agent was Roger Windsor, a senior manager of the NUM. Those conniving at this character assassination of Mr Scargill included the then leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, the leaders of the Trades Union Congress, the lawyer hired by the NUM to investigate the charges, the media and, of course, "British capitalism".

How much of this does Seumas Milne, a reporter for the Guardian, prove? His evidence is a curate's e. In part, in particular where he is tracing what happened to Russian donations to the miners' cause, he is entirely convincing. In part, he is reduced to unsubstantiated, unprovable assertion. Thus, the security services "are said to have recruited three-quarters of national labour and industrial correspondents." By whom? To whom? When? Where? How? Why? To anybody knowing that particular group of journalists, who were famously friendly to the trade unions, such an allegation is laughable.

Mr Milne's credibility is not enhanced by the naivety of his general political judgments. He describes the strike as "the sacrifice of the greater part of the safest and most advanced coal industry in the world in the single-minded pursuit of private interest and class revenge." The fact that British coal was increasingly and hopelessly uneconomic evidently passed Mr Milne by. And he fails convincingly to fill the glaring hole in his theories. If they are right, why on earth did the security services wait until 1990 to launch their final and nastiest smear against Mr Scargill? By 1990 the fractured NUM could not hurt a fly.

More seriously, Mr Milne distorts the context. Mr Scalgill was and is a revolutionary socialist. His aims were not industrial. They included the destruction of the elected government of the day. In true Leninist style, he called no ballot; and he did everything to avoid negotiating seriously for peace. Both sides in the strike were as bad as each other. The government certainly, and deplorably, went far outside the rules to defeat the strike. But it is utterly hypocritical for Mr Scargill's supporters to cry "foul" about the state bending rules that their man treated with disdain.

The Tories could have saved themselves the trouble of cheating and lying. It was not their dirty tricks that beat the miners. They were defeated in 1985 by stockpiles of coal at the pitheads, by the success of the electricity industry in smuggling in more of it, and by the decision of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers to go on working--a decision rooted in Mr Scargill's fateful, fatal decision not to ballot his members. The state did not need to target "the enemy within" when the mineworkers were led by the ultimate "enemy within": a leader whose political agenda lured him into a strategy that was doomed to fail.

 

THis man did a great job of exposing who REALLY was behind the 1930's depression, I hope his soul rests in peace, he was a good man in many respects.