The Three Faces of Milton Friedman

That Milton Friedman was the most influential thinker in the profession of economics in the last half of the 20th century is hardly in doubt. Following his demise in November 2006, a large number of obituaries and other tributes were generated and most were not only largely laudatory but extremely deferential in a way that would perhaps have embarrassed the great thinker. His accomplishments were numerous and indeed distinct and this was covered in an earlier post by this blogger who only met his thinking from his publications.

What has been lacking so far is a concise and systematic review of his accomplishments and perhaps faults as a human irrespective of his gigantic intellectual stature. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman has written a very elaborate and more incisive piece than I have encountered since Milton Friedman's demise. Krugman not only writes in style but also analyzes Milton Friedman's intellectual life as an Economist's economist, as a policy entrepreneur and a free market ideologue. For those who believed in the departed man as an absolutely clear thinker without academic or other blemish, this is one piece to read again and again. Krugman is in my view quite dispassionate in the sense that he not only elucidates the elder professor's singular accomplishments, but also states inconsistencies that emerged in proclamations as a public intellectual.

This is a piece to file because it makes me have even higher regard for the minds and intellectual ability of both men even if I detect that they would not agree much on policy prescriptions. Krugman writes with respect for the departed as any decent intellectual should. The subject of economics lives.