Brad DeLong: Milton Friedman's Legacy

"Lord, enlighten thou our enemies," prayed 19th century British economist and moral philosopher John Stuart Mill in his"Essay on Coleridge.""Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom: their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength."

For every left-of-center American economist in the second half of the 20th century, Milton Friedman (1912-2006), Nobel Prize winner, founder of the conservative"Chicago School" of economics and advisor to Republicans from Goldwater to Reagan, was the incarnate answer to John Stuart Mill's prayer. His wits were sharp, his perceptions acute, his arguments strong, his reasoning powers clear, coherent and terrifyingly quick. You tangled with him at your peril. And you left not necessarily convinced, but well aware of the weak points in your own argument.

Gen. William Westmoreland, testifying before President Nixon's Commission on an All-Volunteer [Military] Force, denounced the idea of phasing out the draft and putting only volunteers in uniform, saying that he did not want to command"an army of mercenaries." Friedman, a member of the 15-person commission, interrupted him."General," Friedman asked,"would you rather command an army of slaves?" Westmoreland got angry:"I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves." And Friedman got rolling:"I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries." And he did not stop:" If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general. We are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher." As George Shultz liked to say:"Everybody loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he isn't there."

Thinking as hard as he could until he got to the root of the issues was his most powerful skill."Even at 94," wrote"Freakonomics" author Steven Levitt, currently a professor in the same University of Chicago economics department where Friedman taught from 1946 to 1976,"he would teach me something about economics whenever we talked." ...