David Brooks laments the passing of Milton Friedman and observes...
"...the distinction between intellectual movements and political parties broke
down. Friedman was never interested in partisan politics but was deeply
engaged in policy. Today, team loyalty has taken over the wonk’s world, so
there are invisible boundaries that mark politically useful, and therefore
socially acceptable, thought.
His death is sad, too, because classical economics is under its greatest threat in a generation. Growing evidence suggests average workers are not seeing the benefits of their productivity gains — that the market is broken and requires heavy government correction. Friedman’s heirs have been avoiding this debate. They’re losing it badly and have offered no concrete
remedies to address this problem, if it is one.
I saw Friedman a few times over the past decade, and he would always bring up school vouchers, his unrealized idea. He still brimmed with his faith — which must have been there
when he was a young boy — in average people, making their own decisions, running
their own lives, and doing it pretty well. "I don't know Friedman's views on globalization, but I expect he was a free market, open trade advocate. It seems to me that free markt capitalism is the best system, but that an inevitable consequence is the massive readjustment of the jobs that Americans do. This is why Bill Gates is calling for an overhaul of the K-12 public education system which does not produce the teaching and learning needed for this century and the jobs needed.
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