The First Neo-Liberal or the Last Conservative?
Jennifer Burns on Milton Friedman, the most controversial American economist of the 20th century
Just as Marx probably wasn’t a militant Marxist, so Milton Friedman might not be a flaming bFriedmanite. That’s at least according to Jennifer Burns, the Stanford historian whose heavyweight new biography of Friedman is getting a lot of press. If Friedman was around now, she told me, the old supply-sider would be shocked by our ever yawning inequalities.
Interesting, if not entirely convincing. Still it’s an interesting interview, especially in what she says about Friedman’s dodgy record on race and gender. And then, of course, there’s the Pinochet question and his attempt to turn Chile into a laboratory for hardcore monetarist policy.
The First Neo-Liberal or the Last Conservative? Who knows. But he certainly is no less controversial now that we can see the full ramifications of his economic revolution.