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Can you argue with the simple wisdom of Milton Friedman?
President Obama is using an economic model taken from the 1800's to solve our current financial crisis. It did not work for FDR (USC study revealed he kept us in the Great Depression ten years longer than necessary) What he did was the same thing President Obama has tried unsuccessfully to do; use Keynesian economic theory and "workfare"...as opposed to welfare.... to solve problems. He has put a bandaid on cancer. He has created a dependent society. Globalization has made Keynesian economics worthless in solving domestic economic problems.
Government social programs are least effective, least efficient way of solving our problems.
Milton Friedman....a MODERN Nobel Prize winning economist (not outdated like Keynes).... supported "supply side economics" "trickle down economics", "voodoo economics"... rewarding the rich not punishing the rich..... He believed in a free market system ..... and limited government
Here he takes on Phil Donahue....the classic socialist
MiltonFriedman-Greed.wmv (5188KB)
NEYSHAN....How did WW II solve the Great Depression.....by funneling money into the rich business community (military industrial complex) and causing them to seek more wealth .....GREED..... the ten years before the war when money was shoveled into the poor it did not solve anything....
GEE WALLY.... Agree....and yet his social programs did not solve the cause of that poverty.....only made that poverty more tolerable.....created dependence....
prolonged the problem did not solve the problem
wealth redistribution (socialism) stagnates society ;reduces social mobility (the poor stay poor)
LEN.....FIRST your link conflicts with reality....Obama is using Keynesian economics....your link says Friedman economic is influencing Washington.... and it is a link to a radical site
SECOND Friedman was NEVER an advisor to the Chilean government ....in fact gave seven lectures warning the Chilian people AGAINST the military government of Pinochet. The only advice he gave Pinchet was in a private letter which he suggested the "Shock Treatment " to halt inflation but warned him it would produce unemployment.....In his book " Free to Choose", he said the following: "Chile is not a politically free system and I do not condone the political system ... the conditions of the people in the past few years has been getting better and not worse. They would be still better to get rid of the junta and to be able to have a free democratic system."
During the 2000 PBS documentary The Commanding Heights, Friedman continued to argue that criticism over his role in Chile missed his main contention th
at freer markets resulted in freer people, and that Chile's unfree economy had caused the military government. Friedman suggested that the economic liberalization he advocated caused the end of military rule and a free Chile.
CHRIS....What point..... for ten years FDR pumped money into the poor....NOTHING HAPPENED......He starts giving money to the rich manufacturers of war materials....the depression ends.....he proves Friedman is correct not that he is wrong
7 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
Milton Friedman was a genius who definitely understood the inner workings of the world economy.
- StregaLv 71 decade ago
Yes I can argue that wisdom. Look what happened when Friedman's policies and his Chicago boys got involved with Chile in the 1970's and implemented those policies. Inflation soared to 375%, the economy contracted by 15%, and unemployment went from 3% under Allende to 15% under the new regime, but Pinochet and the Chicago Boys persisted, cutting social services even more, further privatizing national industries.
"“In 1982, despite its strict adherence to Chicago doctrine, Chile’s economy crashed: its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent—ten times higher that it was under Allende.” Had Pinochet earlier hewed completely to Chicago School doctrine and privatized even the state copper mine that generated 85% of Chile’s export revenue, Chile’s economy would have collapsed utterly. Ultimately, even Pinochet retreated from the orthodoxy, renationalizing many of the companies. Still in 2007 the United Nations ranked Chile one of the most unequal societies in the world … hardly an economic miracle."
- Don MLv 71 decade ago
Dr. Friedman was a great economist, and his ideas would serve us well today.
@ NEYSHAN: Your response reflects the kind of economic ignorance Dr. Friedman sought to dispel. FDR did not practice supply side economics--quite the opposite.
And letting people keep more of what is already theirs is not "giving" them money.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
Yes I can argue with Friedman, cause trickle down also didn't work for FDR. What saved the country was WWI i.e. rampant government spending. Not giving a bunch of money to the rich.
- Bern_CHLv 51 decade ago
No argument here. What if Obama was put in power to keep things they way they are? Fiscally he is just the same as Bush. He continued the fiscal trend that Bush started.
