Transcripts For CSPAN Life 20240703 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN Life July 3, 2024

Charm. Tonight, i think we will see definitive proof of that assertion when he presents his third Kansas City Public Library talk and barely more than 18 months. This time, he is offering an original treatise on economist Milton Friedman, the nobel prizewinning intellectual architect of the free market reforms of the postworld war ii era. Today, as it happens, would have been dr. Friedmans 102nd birthday. I have no doubt it will be marks best presentation yet. So you might ask, why am i willing to go out on a limb this way . As an economist might put it, on the one hand, according to the website, superscholar. Org, mark is one of the top 20 living economists in the world. I guess that designation is a gentle way of reminding us that as the no longer living economist John Maynard Keynes famously said, in the long run, were all dead. But i digress. Marks topranked status was echoed by a columnist for scientific american, who recently wrote that he has emerged as one of the clearest writers on all matters economic today. The next, Milton Friedman. On the other hand, mark comes by his knowledge of Milton Friedman on a firsthand basis. As he will reveal, they had a dear, but occasionally prickly relationship. The two of them constantly argued over a variety of issues, but always remained cordial. Mark was probably the last person to go out to lunch with Milton Friedman before he died of a heart attack on november 16, 2006. Mark will recount their friendship and discuss their differences over money, education, taxation, the nobel prize, religion, and host of other topics. Only once, apparently, did things get a tad out of control, a moment when mark tore up Milton Friedmans 20 bill. I will let him regale you with the details of that story. He is a jack of many trades and a master of most of them. With a phd in economics from George Washington university, he has been a university professor, an economist, an investment expert, entrepreneur, and the author of more than 25 books. Incidentally, his book vienna in chicago is for sale, and he will be signing copies after this presentation. Mark has taught economics and finance at columbia business school, columbia university, mercy college, and rollins college. He has been a president ial fellow at chapman university. He has been a consultant to ibm, and other fortune 500 companies. In honor of his work in economics, finance, and management, Lansing University renamed it business school. I think the most interesting thing to me about his examiner a pedigree is that his extraordinary pedigree is that based on one of his works of scholarship, it was published by nyu in 1990 and then again in 2007, because of that come the federal government began issuing a more accurate measure of the economy. Every quarter, gross output along with gdp. That is quite a distinction. Tonights program is funded by a grant from the Friedman Foundation of educational choice. Ladies and gentlemen, these welcome please welcome mark. We have all heard the old song,. Mark you set me up very well. This is the 102nd birthday of Milton Friedman. I did have lunch with him right before he died in 2000 i guess it would be 2006. He was frail, this is a picture of us together, he was unshaven, he had forgotten about our luncheon. Rose, his wife, reminded him. I was having some fun with him. I did ask him he was 94, 95 at the time. I said, it looks like you are going to live to be 100. Are not you excited . He said, i hope not. He had hearing problems, and a lot of problems and a lot of us face as we get older, but wonderful fellow. I had my very first luncheon with Milton Friedman in the early 1980s. I met him a couple of times before, but he really did not know who i was. I called them on the phone and i said listen, can we have lunch together . And he said yes, that would be fine. This was then this was at the ritz carlton. A Beautiful Hotel overlooking the ocean. There we were the two of us for a couple of hours, just the two of us, talking about anything we wanted. Here i was talking with a Nobel Prize Winning economist, the premier advocate of free Market Economics in the 20th century. We were having a wonderful time together. Lunch ended and the bill came and i grabbed the bill and paid with a credit card. I said to him, all my life, i have heard your statement, there is no such thing as a free lunch. He had actually written a book on the subject. There is no such thing as a free lunch. I said, i dont want to hear ever again your statement, there is no such thing as a free lunch, as i am paying for years. He said, oh, no, that was not a free lunch. I had to listen to you for two hours. [laughter] yeah. Anyway, here is the picture that i was showing Milton Friedman that he got a real belly laugh out of. This is George Stigler who worked with Milton Freeman for many years. Taught at the university of chicago. Milton friedman in the middle. George had a very wry sense of humor. He said all economists are tall. There are two exceptions. [laughter] John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. I mean, that is just a classic line. I showed this to ben bernanke once and he did not have a sense of humor. The man said, that is not logical. That was his answer. Anyway, i had a lot of fun times with Milton Friedman over the years, but our debates got heated from time to time. He was a tough debater. It has been said that Milton Friedman never lost a debate in his entire career. His wife would dispute that, but nevertheless, i saw friedman in action and i never wanted to debate with him. Last year, i was in the London Underground with paul krugman. Keynesian economist, New York Times columnist, and krugman has quite a high opinion of himself. At one point, i said, paul, have you ever lost a debate . He paused for a minute and said, you know, i really dont think so. I said, it is too bad Milton Friedman is not alive because he you would lose. He humbled himself enough to admit that was probably true. Anyway, just for those of you who may not know much about Milton Friedman, let me go over a brief career about his life. He was an academic, he has written some bestselling books, and he was probably the best wellknown economist of his age. Born in 1912 in brooklyn, attended rutgers university, took a parttime job to pay his way through school, from immigrant parents. He was dirt poor and worked as a waiter. Can you imagine . Milton friedman coming up to you, can i have your order please . Just amazing. Went to university of chicago as an undergraduate. Married Rose Friedman. They had two children, david and janet. In the 1940s, worked for the u. S. Treasury department. His claim to fame, perhaps infamy, is that he is the one who proposed to the treasury that to pay for the war, we must begin withholding. Tax withholding started with a Milton Friedman suggestion. One that he seemed to regret after that, being such an antigovernment type of person. If anyone is responsible for the high level of taxation, it is Milton Friedman because withholding allows a very high level of taxation. Prior to the 1940s, you pay taxes only on april 15. You sent in the full amount. If you are going to become a large government where government is taking 20 , 30 of your income, you will have to have withholding. He made that government more efficient as a result. In 19461977, most famous for being an economist, a professor of economics at the university of chicago. That is where he did all of his work. In 1947, the year of my birth, he was a Founding Member of the Mount Pellerin society, which is a group of economic thinkers from all around the world to gather every year or so to discuss and present papers and so forth. Ive been a member since 2002. It is by invitation only. We are meeting in hong kong in august. He was the one who not made me he was the one who nominated me to be a member of the society. I consider that a real honor. He started writing books. His two most famous books are capitalism and freedom that is this book right here. This is my own copy that i bought in the 1960s, read it as an undergraduate. Was enamored with the stuff. If you look at this book you can look at it afterwards it is a wellworn copy. One of my major one of my pet peeves is academic books that do not have an index and this one did not have an index. My claim to fame, i got the university of chicago to put an index in here because i complained. Milton, you have to have an index for this book. How am i supposed to find things . So he got the university of chicago to do that. That is my claim to fame. Then a year later, he came out with a book that really set him on the map. A monetary history of the United States. From 1860 at the civil war all the way through after the civil war, 1867 through 1960, he did an exhaustive study of Monetary Policy, Federal Reserve when it got started in 1913, lots of notes and comments and stuff like that in this book. I will tell you that what made him famous in this book and i would love to write a book like this there is one chapter. One page one paragraph one sentence in this book that changed forever the way people think about the Great Depression and the Federal Reserve. Want me to read it . All right. Nah, maybe i shouldnt. [laughter] you have to go out and buy this book just to turn to page 292. All right, i will read it to you. Monetary from the cyclical peak in august 1929, to the cyclical trough in march 1933 that is the Great Depression, right . The stock of money fell by over a third. The money supply declined by over a third. Prior to 1963, prior to the publication of this book, nobody knew that. Do you know why . If you heard of m1 and m2 definitions of the money supply, prior to this book, nobody compiled money supply figures. Nobody brought them together until Milton Friedman and his coauthor put these together and then discovered that despite all the efforts by the Federal Reserve to do whatever they could to keep the Great Depression and keep banks from failing, the money supply collapsed by a third. This is what ben bernanke learned in his 2002 they had this big meeting honoring Milton Friedman at the dallas fed and ben bernanke wrote an article about that meeting and said, we want to apologize on behalf of of the fed for the major blunder that we committed and causing the Great Depression. We have learned our lesson, mr. Friedman. We will never let it happen again. But they came close, didnt they . You do not know how close they came to having another Great Depression in this country. It was not necessarily caused by the Federal Reserve. I think they pushed the economy over the cliff. And then held out a lifeline. Very interesting experience there. The impact of this book. You cannot discount the impact of this book has had on the way we view dealing with crises in the future. And then this other book, capitalism and freedom, those are the two books if you go into any barnes noble bookstore do they still have those . You go into any bookstore and you will find a copy of capitalism and freedom with my index [laughter] right along with all of the other classics like the communist manifesto and so forth. There is another book 1976, nobel prize in economics. Why do you think you won the nobel prize in economics . Is there any book that you can point to, folks . Perhaps a single chapter question mark perhaps a single paragraph . Perhaps a single line question mark there is hope for any of you in this audience. You can win the nobel prize if you have a sentence that has such an impact like this man did. He won the nobel prize for this work. That catapulted him to a whole new era. Imagine, who would you give the nobel prize to on the bicentennial of the declaration of independence . Of course, you will give it to a person who reflects, who single eyes is the declaration of economic independence from which is the wealth of nations, which was published in the very year that Thomas Jefferson wrote a declaration of political independence. It is all coming together. All of the stars are aligning. 1976, bicentennial celebration of the wealth of nations, a declaration of economic independence and the declaration of independence by Thomas Jefferson, both in the very same year. Who better to give the nobel prize to van this man right here to this man right here . It was a tremendous source of pride to him and that catapulted him to become a very famous person. Certainly among economists. There is a book called bluff your way in economics. I should have brought a copy of it. It is sold in england. Bluff your way through opera, bluff your way through cricket. They have one economics, can you imagine . If you know the five most famous economists today, you can bluff your way through economics. You can pretend to be a phd economist because you know these five individuals of these famous economists. And they are adam smith, karl marx, John Maynard Keynes, number four is John Kenneth Galbraith. 69 economist. You cant miss him. And the fifth one is Milton Friedman. Sorry, George Stigler, you did not make the list. Now you all can become you can bluff your way in economics. You can walk out of this meeting , you do not even have to buy my book, and you can be a knowledgeable person in a comics in economics. Isnt that great . In 1980, he did a pbs program that several Million People it was called free to choose. It in energized both milton and Rose Friedman. It took them all around the world. He began each program with a short 10 minute speech. And then he invited people into disagree with him. Wonderful debates annies panels and this was a great and these panels and this was a great program. Milton friedman holding a pencil and Rose Friedman on the back. Another wonderful book that has an index. I should tell you, if you came to my home in new york, i have a library. There are opposite title books. I will have a book called rising asia and right next to it will be falling asia. The two corners of my books, the alpha strategy. In the one on the other end, the omega strategy. Another one is how to get how to win friends and influence people. But i have one right next to it, how to alienate people. It is a wonderful combination. I put the two books together. I have free to choose and right next to it, free to lose. An introduction to marxist economics philosophy. That is so true. Here is the difference. Look at the difference . Look at the difference. Who was the optimist and who is the pessimist . If you believe in choice, you make mistakes, but most of the time, you will make the right choice according to elton Milton Friedman. He is the optimist. Have you ever met a marxist who was optimistic about capitalism and the world . No. Most people are going to choose the wrong thing. They need government to keep that from happening. There is big difference in philosophy here and personal attitude. The twilight of his life, from 19772006, he was at the Hoover Institution at stanford university. He had this beautiful home on the 17th floor of this skyscraper apartment in the San Francisco and he bought it with the money he got from the nobel prize. I spent some time visiting him there. A wonderful experience. That is a little bit of an overview of Milton Friedmans life. This is a picture of milton and Rose Friedman. I picked this because he had always said he and stigler had some interesting points of view. Stigler was always saying that competition is a tough we, not a tough weed, not a delicate flower. Competition can get you to produce what you want. It is a tough weed. It is hard to get rid of it. Friedman would always say, freedom is a rare and delicate flower. Who did he marry . Rose friedman. [laughter] i said to milton at one point, listen, can you get me a photograph of rose holding a rose . And then underneath it, i would have the quote, freedom is a rare and delicate flower. Can you help me have this happen . Nope. Rose hates roses. But here it is. Somebody gave her roses, so i got the picture, but it is not in color. Maybe i could have it coliorized. I have written this book called vienna and chicago friends or foes. There are two freemarket schools of economics. I mentioned the Mount Pellerin society. His colleague who taught at the university of chicago, he was an austrian economist. You can see this is about the Austrian School of economics and the Chicago School of economics. A

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