# Milton Friedman **Milton Friedman** (1912–2006) was the **most influential American economist of the second half of the 20th century** — a leader of the [[Chicago School]], a Nobel Laureate (1976), the popularizer of monetarism, and a key intellectual architect of the late-20th-century neoliberal turn. For the Right Wing KB, his most durably consequential contribution was the **introduction of the school voucher concept** in his 1955 essay "The Role of Government in Education," which planted the intellectual seed that the modern school-choice movement (see [[School Choice Ecosystem]]) would spend the following 70 years operationalizing. Friedman's broader policy agenda — flexible exchange rates, monetarist Federal Reserve policy, the negative income tax, all-volunteer military, marijuana legalization, and the privatization of state functions — was implemented in substantial part through the [[Mont Pelerin Society]] network of free-market think tanks and through his direct advocacy on the Reagan and Thatcher transitions. In 1996 Milton and Rose Friedman founded what became the **Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice**, which rebranded as [[EdChoice]] in 2016 and remains one of the **central nodes of the school-choice movement**. Friedman lived to see the founding but not the full universal-ESA wave (16 states by 2026) that his 1955 essay set in motion. ## Biography **Milton Friedman** was born **July 31, 1912** in **Brooklyn, New York** to Hungarian Jewish immigrants. He earned his **B.A. from Rutgers University** (1932), **M.A. from the University of Chicago** (1933), and **Ph.D. from Columbia University** (1946, dissertation on professional income). After positions at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Columbia, Friedman joined the **University of Chicago economics faculty** in **1946** — where he taught for **31 years** until retirement in **1977**, becoming the intellectual leader of the **Chicago School of economics**. ## Chicago School and Monetarism Friedman's academic work established **monetarism** — the theory that the money supply is the primary driver of economic activity and inflation, and that the Federal Reserve should follow a rules-based monetary-growth target rather than discretionary Keynesian demand management. His ***A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960*** (1963, with Anna Schwartz) argued that the Federal Reserve's contraction of the money supply turned the 1929 crash into the [[Great Depression]] — a revisionist argument that reshaped macroeconomic thinking and was later cited by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke as correct. Friedman received the **Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences** in **1976** and served as **president of the American Economic Association** in **1967**. He was the most publicly prominent American economist of the late 20th century, rivaled only by [[John Kenneth Galbraith]] on the progressive side. ## *[[Free to Choose]]* (1980) Friedman (with wife **Rose D. Friedman**) published ***[[Free to Choose]]: A Personal Statement*** in **1980** — simultaneously released as a **10-part PBS television series**. The book became a **#1 bestseller** and the TV series reached millions of viewers, making Friedman the most publicly visible advocate of free-market economics during the pivotal Reagan-Thatcher era. *Free to Choose* covered school vouchers, the drug war, trade policy, inflation, and the case for limited government — bringing Chicago School arguments to a mass audience. ## Mont Pelerin Society and Hayek Friedman was a founding member of the **[[Mont Pelerin Society]]** (1947) — the international network of free-market intellectuals organized by **[[Friedrich Hayek]]**. The Mont Pelerin network became the organizational infrastructure for the post-WWII classical-liberal / neoliberal intellectual movement, spawning think tanks ([[Heritage Foundation]], [[Cato Institute]], IEA London, Fraser Institute) and policy networks across the Western world. Friedman and Hayek were the two most influential intellectual figures in this network; Friedman was more empirically focused (monetary economics, price theory) while Hayek was more philosophically focused (spontaneous order, knowledge problem, legal framework for liberty). ## Influence on Reagan and Thatcher Friedman served as an **informal advisor to [[Ronald Reagan]]** during the 1980 campaign and presidency, and his monetarist framework influenced the Thatcher government's early economic policy in the UK (1979–1982). The Reagan-era tax cuts, deregulation, and Federal Reserve anti-inflation policy (Volcker's monetarist tightening) all reflected Friedman's intellectual influence, though Friedman himself was critical of Reagan's failure to control government spending. ## Chile / Pinochet Controversy Friedman's most persistent controversy. Several University of Chicago-trained economists (the "**Chicago Boys**") served as economic advisors to the **Pinochet military dictatorship** in Chile (1973–1990), implementing Friedman-influenced free-market reforms (privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization). Friedman himself visited Chile in **1975** and met with Pinochet, delivering lectures on inflation control. Critics (including protest at his Nobel ceremony) argued Friedman provided intellectual legitimacy to a brutal authoritarian regime; Friedman defended his involvement by arguing he was advising on economic policy, not endorsing political repression, and noted he had given similar lectures in Communist China and Yugoslavia. ## School Vouchers (1955) Friedman's most durably consequential contribution to the Right Wing KB's analytical interests. His **1955 essay "The Role of Government in Education"** introduced the **school-voucher concept** — the proposal that government education funding should follow students to any school (public or private) rather than being allocated directly to public-school systems. The essay argued that competition among schools for voucher-funded students would improve educational quality through market mechanisms. In **1996**, Milton and Rose Friedman founded the **Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice** — which rebranded as **[[EdChoice]]** in **2016** and remains one of the central institutional nodes of the [[School Choice Ecosystem]]. Friedman lived to see early voucher programs (Milwaukee 1990, Cleveland 1995) but not the universal-ESA wave (16+ states by 2026) that his 1955 essay set in motion. ## Other Policy Positions Friedman advocated positions that crossed conventional left-right lines: the **[[Negative Income Tax]]** (a precursor to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the direct ancestor of modern [[Universal Basic Income]] proposals — see [[In Our Hands]]), **marijuana legalization**, an **all-volunteer military** (implemented 1973), **flexible exchange rates** (adopted globally after the collapse of Bretton Woods in 1971), and **opposition to occupational licensure**. His libertarian positions on drug policy and the draft distinguished him from the social-conservative wing of the Republican coalition. ## Death and Legacy Milton Friedman died on **November 16, 2006** at age **94** in San Francisco, California. His son **David D. Friedman** (born 1945) became a prominent anarcho-capitalist economist and legal theorist. ## KB Significance Friedman is the **intellectual founder** of the school-voucher concept and the most influential individual architect of the free-market policy framework that the contemporary [[School Choice Ecosystem]] has operationalized. His 1955 essay → the Friedman Foundation (1996) → [[EdChoice]] (2016) lineage is the intellectual-infrastructure backbone of the voucher/ESA movement. More broadly, Friedman's Chicago School / Mont Pelerin network provided the intellectual scaffolding for the late-20th-century privatization and deregulation agenda that the contemporary right-wing policy ecosystem has inherited, making him one of the most consequential individual thinkers in the broader architecture this KB tracks. ## See Also - [[Negative Income Tax]] - [[Universal Basic Income]] - [[Capitalism and Freedom]] - [[EdChoice]] - [[School Choice Ecosystem]] - [[School Choice]] - [[Mont Pelerin Society]]