 |
The University of Chicago
Rose & Milton Friedman
A Celebration
June 18, 1998,
San Francisco, California
excerpt by Casey B. Mulligan |
An Exceptionally Familiar Tale
As a representative of the latest generation at Chicago, it is my
privilege to say a few things about how I ’ve been influenced
by Milton and Rose Friedman. What’s so exceptional about my
tale is how familiar it is. The stories I’m going to tell
could and have been told by classmates, colleagues, students, and
neighbors of the Friedmans. But I’m generations too late to
have been any of those. Indeed, by the time the Friedmans had reached
normal life expectancy, I had yet to attend high school or even
know that there was a University of Chicago.
Free To Choose
And high school brings me to my first prop—a golf ball. You
see, Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose acquired an
enthusiastic fan in a high school student who liked to play hooky,
and thought it was immoral for the government to compel a kid to
attend school during weather that was better suited for golf. And
while they baited me with opposition to compulsory schooling, they
hooked me with critiques of the AMA and so-called consumer advocates.
Even decades after the Friedmans’ retirement, the typical
high school and college lecturer still falls prey to some of the
fallacies pointed out in Free To Choose. So I made it a hobby, in
the middle of their committing one of them, to ask, “What
about the Friedmans’ argument against this quota, that tax,
or that regulation?” Although during my undergraduate studies
I posed such questions to at least twenty Harvard professors, I
never heard a decent answer.
Monetary History
One professor’s attempt at an answer is pretty amusing. He
told me to go read Milton Friedman’s Monetary History [second
prop] (a book written by another very important character in Two
Lucky People, Anna Schwartz), find the errors in the analysis, and
report back. I’m sure he was making the sensible forecast
that, when I got to the library and saw the sheer size of the book,
I would never bother him again. Unfortunately for him, I opened
the Monetary History and was again hooked. This was how economics
ought to be done, I thought. I read it cover to cover like it was
one of Stephen King’s latest, and prepared a few hours worth
of notes for the evasive professor.
Capitalism and Freedom
Those of you who are a bit closer in age to the Friedmans may be
surprised that I read Capitalism and Freedom [third prop] after
reading Free to Choose. While intrigued and largely agreeing with
the relatively contemporary Free to Choose, I and many others felt
that the Friedmans had a bunch of ideas that were politically infeasible
at best and plain crazy at worst. And clearly, Capitalism and Freedom
was viewed in much the same way at the time of its first printing.
But, when reading Capitalism and Freedom thirty years later, one
realizes that many of these crazy proposals became reality: flexible
exchange rates, a permanent departure from the gold standard, a
volunteer army, a negative income tax, trucking and airline deregulation,
competition for the Post Office, and a broader-based income tax.
Such a reading of Capitalism and Freedom suggested to me that the
apparently crazy ideas in Free to Choose might in fact be future
policy and, more important, that years of scholarship at a place
like Chicago might be the best way to influence economic policy
despite the heavily beaten paths between Washington and some other
universities.
Old Wine in New Bottles
My fourth prop illustrating today’s influence of the Friedmans
on Chicago is our audience. A number of them are both Friedman students
and Chicago faculty. I have always suspected that Milton Friedman’s
words were occasionally coming out of their mouths, and Two Lucky
People finally provided me with a little proof. You see, Gary Becker
often advises dissertation writers saying, “Nine times out
of ten, sloppy writing reflects (and advertises) sloppy thinking.”
(I believe I was one of the students so advised.) To my delight,
I read on page 76 of Two Lucky People that Gary received the same
advice on his dissertation from Milton Friedman!
Personal Communication
When I arrived at Chicago as a graduate student, I was, and continue
to be, impressed by the Chicago faculty who used the latest economic
tools to derive the government policies that are optimal from the
consumer’s point of view. I had written a few amateur papers
along these lines and wholly intended to write such a dissertation.
But a co-author and I mailed one of these papers to Milton Friedman.
We received a letter back [fifth prop]. I was surprised by the detail
with which he examined the paper but even more surprised at his
punch line. We were naïve, he said, to expect any policy maker
to use our analytical and empirical results to adjust policy and
that we ought to familiarize ourselves with public choice theory.
I threw my first drafts of a normative dissertation in the trash
and have never thought the same about public policy issues since.
Withholding
My last prop is a pay stub. It represents both a positive and a negative
influence of Milton Friedman, but one I could not resist mentioning.
Let me draw your attention to the small print on this stub. There
are two lines denoting monies withheld by the Federal Treasury. The
Treasury erected this pillar of tax collection during World War II.
And guess who was advising the Treasury on these and other ways to
improve tax collection—Milton Friedman. So this is an influence
that I feel at the end of every month, but I’ve drawn a slightly
more cheerful lesson: Don’t go to Washington and, if you must,
leave your good ideas at home.
Back to "Tributes" Page |
