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I am pleased to see that we are in agreement for many economic ideas. I believe a government should limit its role in controlling the economy. I also propose a negative income tax that would simplify the bureaucratic process today.

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Economic freedom is very important, and the government should limit intervention to allow economic growth. Furthermore, I believe a negative income tax would intensely simplify the bureaucratic process in American society today. Though your ideas may make sense at first, on a closer examination, it is apparent that the negatives of overusing government intervention out weight the positives it bring, and thus it should be limited and monetary policy should be used instead.

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We do share a number of views. But I do not agree on your views on monetary policy. I believe using ideas such as the k-percent rule will indeed make an impact on the economy. I also think you should use more statistical methods as opposed to philosophical ones when coming up with economic theories.

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I appreciate the different view you bring, but I must disagree. The role of the government is to provide basic things like security and not to control the economy. Therefore, the government should not use fiscal policy and the Federal Reserve should instead use monetary policy.

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I am glad to see that you are on the same page with me on the importance of money supply to controlling inflation in the economy. It is also good to see you applying these principles as the chairman of the Federal Reserve. I also think that the nominal interest rate should be at zero because of the Friedman rule.

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Hi Mr. Friedman, I am pleased to see that we are on the same page for own beliefs of monetary policy. The control of the supply of money in the economy is the most important to controlling inflation. Having the role as the chairman of the federal reserve I am a firm believer in this doctrine. It is also with this current belief that I am raising interest rates to combat the expansionary fiscal policies created by Donald Trump who is trying to over stimulate the economy in the short term so it looks politically better.

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Mr. Friedman,
I'm pleased to see how similar our monetary theories are. I'm glad my Fisher Effect was the foundation to your monetary policy. I believe that markets should be free but in times of crisis government intervention is essential. I also agree with the quantity theory of money supply times the rate of money spent each year equals to the nominal expenditure of the economy. I also agree that increase taxes do not prevent consumption, rather it hurts low-income household more. I propose taxing on unnecessary goods, meaning taxing more on goods rather than income.

Sincerely,
Irving Fisher

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Dear Mr. Friedman,
I acknowledge you as one of the most influential economists, but I can't agree with some of your theories. Through your support in the monetary policy and limited government, I see that you value economic freedom on a great scale. Although I do think there could be personal economic freedom, I think the intervention of government is very important in the economy. We need the fiscal policy because we need the government to collect tax and use that money on things that are crucial but are not covered by individual investors. Another one of your ideas that I beg to disagree is the idea of negative income tax. This idea is contradictory to the Laffer curve from my studies. In my theory, I believe we need to find the optimal location where the maximum revenue can be collected without bringing down people's incentive to work.

Sincerely,
Arthur Betz Laffer

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Mr. Friedman,

I agree with a number of your views, the main one being your support for the free market and economic freedom. I too, believe that an economy will function best with minimal government intervention and taxes. However, I disagree with your views on monetary policy. Controlling the supply of money in the economy through using things like the k-percent rule will not have impacts on the inflation of a nation. There is a very small chance that a business will be able to identify the growing supply of money, let alone figure out the rate of economic growth as the money supply increases. In addition, I also disagree with your ideas on a negative income tax. Although it may seem simple, I do not believe that it will have any positive impact on the economy. It is always the best to have minimal government intervention so that the economy can follow its own path.

-F.A. Hayek

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Dear Mr.Friedman,

Your economic theory of free-market monetarism is very impressive. However, I am a believer in the Keynesian views. I stand the same viewpoint as to how Mr. Keynes viewed macroeconomics. You criticized Keynes' policy proposals and instead argued for a more measured monetary policy. From my perspectives, Keynes’ theories gave rise to a new dominant paradigm in economic thought. I also do agree with what Mr. Keynes argued in his "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" that an interventionist government could help smooth out recessions by propping up. Strategic government spending could spur consumption and investment and help alleviate unemployment. Which are all ideas that you opposed.

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Dear Mr.Friedman,

Your own economic theory of free-market monetarism is very impressive, however I am a believer of the Keynesian views. I stand the same viewpoint as how Mr. Keynes viewed macroeconomics. You criticized Keynes' policy proposals and instead arguing for a more measured monetary policy. From what my perspectives, Keynes’ theories gave rise to a new dominant paradigm in economic thought. I also do agree wtth what Keynes argued in his "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" that an interventionist government could help smooth out recessions by propping up aggregate demand. Strategic government spending could spur consumption and investment and help alleviate unemployment.

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Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1976) - I was awarded this for my work on monetarism, price theory, and economic policy.

John Bates Clark Medal (1951) - My early talent in economics for rejecting some of the most commonly held beliefs of my contemporaries earned me this prize in 1951.

Presidential Medal of Freedom (1988) - I was given this honor, the highest medal attainable by a civilian citizen of the United States.

National Academy of Sciences Member (1973) - I was selected and joined the National Academy of Sciences. It was originally an organization founded to advise the government on different affairs.

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The current system of welfare in the United States encourages people to not work as they are entitled to welfare benefits because of their unemployment. I propose a negative income tax. If you make more than a certain amount of money, you are taxed accordingly to the amount of money another person may need who is below that level. This would simplify the intensely bureaucratic process we have today.

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I do think that there are certain goods that private firms and entities may not willingly provide to the public. In these very particular instances, governments should in fact provide these public goods. But this ought to be much more limited than it is today. If we were to privatize many government run industries, we could see much greater efficiency in the market. Even if the state wants to have a monopoly over some industries, this should not mean that private corporations are unable to provide these same goods.

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"The Role of Government in Education" (1955)

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"The Role of Government in Education" (1955)

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We ought to privatize schooling education, this could greatly increase the quality of our schools. I believe governments should provide the money and funding required for these schools to exist in the form of a voucher system, but state intervention when it comes to their operations is inefficient. In 1996, I founded an organization to promote these vouchers.

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"The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates" (1953)

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"The Case for Flexible Exchange Rates" (1953)

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I argued that government intervention in exchange rates is too much involvement in the free market, and that floating exchange rates provide significant benefits like protecting an economy from outside shocks and better enabling governments to fulfill their economic agendas.

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We ought to make floating exchange rates! Government intervention should never happen in the form of a fixed exchange rate. When you make them floating, economies are protected from shocks that may come from other economies, and governments are able to better fulfill their economic agendas to their own people.

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The Federal Reserve has done a horrible job at using monetary policy as a tool for the benefit of the nation. Despite the importance of monetary policy, their failed decisions, like contractionary monetary policy during the early 30s, led to economic ruin! I believe we should replace the system with an automated one. Even a computer could work. Imagine, at the moment at which money supply changes, an automated computer system could adjust inflation rates or purchase/sell government bonds accordingly!

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"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)

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"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)

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No value should ever be put towards certain parts of the economic science. It must be objective in nature, with the metric of validity for theories being how hypothesis are compared to actual results.

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I believed in economic freedom, which I thought was needed for political freedom, and argued for a laissez faire market. Specifically, I argued for ideas such as free floating exchange rates and negative income tax. Furthermore, I was passionately against military conscription (I supported a volunteer military instead), and also argued for education vouchers and the abolition of doctor licensing.

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Economists generally believed in a stable long-run tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. myself, along with Phelps, challenged this view in the 1960s by arguing that when people adjusted to higher inflation rates, unemployment rates would rise again. I believed that a permanently accelerating inflation rate would be needed to keep unemployment lower, and this is later supported by the stagflation of the 1970s, which is rising inflation and unemployment.

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I argued for "monetarism," an alternative macroeconomic policy to opposing Keynesianism. I also thought of the concept of a "natural rate of unemployment," the lowest rate of unemployment an economy should reach. My thinking also supported the idea that central governments could not micromanage the economy, as people tend to change their behavior to negate the policies of the government.

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A recognized contribution I made to economics is the theory of monetarism, which is the idea that the quantity of money in an economy is the most significant determinant of economic growth and that central bank should control inflation by controlling the money supply. I argued that the central bank should expand money supply each year for economic growth but steadying its supply. I believed that monetary policy should be used to boost growth rate of money supply to maintain a stable price level and economy. I also argued for the k-percent rule that fixes the rate of growth of money supply as a percentage that relates to the growth in nominal GDP. I believed that this would control the levels of inflation by allowing businesses to know the rate of economic growth as the money supply is increasing steadily. I also argued for the quantity theory of money, stating that the money supply times the rate of money spent each year equals the nominal expenditures in the economy. Because monetarism thinkers think that money velocity, the rate of money changing hands, is constant, it suggests that money supply is a major factor of growth. This is in opposition to the view that money velocity is unstable, which is a Keynesian view. Another Keynesian view that Monetarism objected to is that aggregate demand is vital to economic growth, and thus supporting the increase of demand by central banks injecting money, as monetarism states that this causes inflation. Monetarist thinkers also did not agree with excessive government intervention through fiscal policy, and instead favored a laissez faire economy.

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I proposed the use of a negative income tax, essentially calling for a basic income for those that do not have income that would be funded through a proportionate tax on those above a certain income. I also opposed conscription, a devastating policy which takes away the youth of free men.

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"A Monetary History of the United States"(1963)

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"A Monetary History of the United States"(1963)

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I argued that the poor monetary policy of the Federal Reserve in the US was responsible for the 1930s economic crisis, not the free market. Through analysis of historical business cycles in the United States, I believed that the contractionary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve that began in 1929 and ended in 1933 meant that instead of naturally surviving the crash of 1929, the US was left in economic collapse.

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"Studies in the Quantity of Money (1956): 'The Relative Stability of Monetary velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States'"

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"Studies in the Quantity of Money (1956): 'The Relative Stability of Monetary velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States'"

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I argued that the Keynesian multiplier was not as important or effective as it seems. This is because the multiplier prioritized government spending above that of investment by consumers and firms. The problem with this is that as governments go into deficit in order to enact expansionary fiscal policy, it creates a future need for inflation to pay back loans. There is also the crowding out effect where government bonds have high interest rates, forcing other interest rates to be high too. In my mind on this matter, the most important thing was the deficit and the implications it would have in the long run.

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"A Theory of the Consumption Function"(1957)

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"A Theory of the Consumption Function"(1957)

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I talk about my "permanent income hypothesis", my belief that propensity to consume and save are determined by perceived permanent income, not temporary income changes. This helped explain why Keynesian fiscal policies that increased taxes sometimes did not reduce consumption, but rather meant that less money was taken out of savings. If this tax policy was seen by taxpayers as only being temporary, then this would be the case, I argued.

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John Maynard Keynes released one of his most important books in 1936: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Keynes' central clam was that in response to the 1930s economic crisis (the Great Depression), strong use of expansionary fiscal policy could raise output and create jobs. These beliefs quickly gained popularity amongst economists in the 1930s and 40s.

i rejected these beliefs, instead arguing for the opposite. In my mind, a deregulated free market was essential to the stability of an economy. I wanted an increase in trade and a rise in money supply to bring national output up. I prioritized monetary policy over fiscal policy, and cited examples like large deficits as evidence for the problems of Keynesian views like expansionary fiscal policy solving recessions. When stagflation hit in the 1970s after years of governments using Keynes' policies and prioritizing the works of his followers, it appears as though I had overwhelming evidence to support my case against Keynes. Keynesian economics, which taught (as shown in the Philips Curve) that inflation and unemployment had an inverse relationship, seemed to justify inflation (as it was taught that if inflation was high, then unemployment was low) because demand-pull inflation would increase output, causing firms to hire more. However, stagflation meant that both unemployment and inflation was happening at the same time. Public support had begun to shift away from Keynes' policies.

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I have made many contributions to the field of economics. However, my most reputable work has been on price theory and monetarism, dealing with money supply and how it affects markets.

I believed that contrary to Keynesian economic theory, it was money supply that determined price levels. I believed that changes in monetary growth would never have substantial effects on the national output of a nation in the long run, but would still affect price levels. Nowadays, this can be seen by the Long Run Aggregate Supply (LRAS) line on AS/AD diagrams. However, growth in the money supply can cause both national output and employment to increase in the short-run. This belief was primarily outlined in my 1956 book Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money. I also rejected the view (held by Keynes) that fiscal policy is the best type of policy to respond to business cycle volatility, instead proposing that monetary policy is more important.

On the topic of inflation, I also heavily differed from my contemporaries. I believed that the Federal Reserve (and by extension central banks) ought to raise the money supply of a nation to combat inflation, but that this rise in money supply should be proportionate to the real GNP increase over time. In my mind, inflation was heavily connected to money supply. In addition, I denounced expansionary and contractionary fiscal policies like heavily investing into new infrastructure building in order to control demand. Instead, I believed that governments ought to let markets be almost completely free, with very minimal control and regulation.

My book Monetary History of the United States discussed his beliefs in monetarism. I argued that it was the Federal Reserve's policies that resulted in the economic crisis of the 1930s. I believed that the Federal Reserve's reduction of the US money supply was to blame. Like many of my other works at the time, this argument was heavily reprimanded by my fellow economists, with the Federal Reserve itself preparing an entirely new book to be written just to rebut my case.

I also challenged the commonly held view that changes in consumption and savings are determined by how income changes (marginal propensity to consume/save). Instead, I proposed in 1957 that permanent changes to income are the largest determinant.

While my views were not accepted by many other economists early on in my career, they eventually gained prominence as the years progressed. Critiques of my work, like Paul Samuelson of MIT, would eventually acknowledge the significance of my economic contributions, albeit after a few decades or so.

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https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/milton-friedman.asp

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Friedman.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Milton-Friedman

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/milton-friedman.asp

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/negativeincometax.asp

https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/objects/57537/price-theory-a-provisional-text
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monetarism.asp

https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/springsummer-2018/milton-friedman-case-flexible-exchange-rates-monetary-rules

Photos:
https://www.cato.org/special/friedman/friedman/index.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Milton-Friedman

https://www.azquotes.com/author/5181-Milton_Friedman

https://www.pinterest.com/luzukomsele3/milton-friedman-quotes/

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https://www.azquotes.com/quote/351906

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I, Milton Friedman, (1912-2006) was one of the most prominent economists of the 20th century. I supported free-market policies and challenged many of my contemporaries (such as John Maynard Keynes) who argued for interventionist policies of government regulation.

I was born in New York City to a Jewish family. I graduated from high school at the age of 16 before studying at Rutgers University, where I was mentored by Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones, both economists. From them, I affirmed my belief that the Great Depression was something that economic research could end. Afterwards, I attended the University of Chicago and Columbia University. After my studies, I worked at the University of Chicago, served as American Economic Association president in 1967, advised US President Nixon during his short tenure as president, before eventually moving to Stanford University's Hoover Institution to work as a senior research fellow. Besides this, I also held several notable positions on different federal boards like the National Resources Planning Board, National Bureau of Economic Research, and the University of Cambridge. I have also received several awards, including the John Bates Clark Medal in 1951 and the economics Nobel Prize in 1976.

I am widely regarded as one of the most important economists in history. My work on the free-market, price theory, and more sparked a heated debate in the mid-20th century about the merits of government intervention in the economy, before the eventual arrival of the neoliberal era.