Friedman: Market offers poor better learning.

According to Friedman, low-income parents should get tax-supported vouchers to send their children to private or religious schools.



Opponents say that there will be no separation of the church and the state anymore. Friedman reacts by saying that most parents will have limited choices of schools as long as the government controls public education and his idea will reduce this drastically. Others say that vouchers could eliminate public education, which is payed by taxpayers and runned by locals , and could create ‘a system that essentially will be ‘every man for himself’. When the government asked parents in polls about the idea they replied ‘they would prefer to see improvements in existing schools’. The debate continues..

Ellen Noé

Stop taxing addicts

Milton Friedman suggested to legalize all drugs.

Friedman thinks that there is a big possibility that the legalisation of drugs would reduce the number of addicts and that people should have the right to decide if they want to use drugs or not. This shouldn’t be a governmental decision. Drugaddicts have to accept the consequences and pay for their own medical issues caused by their drug addiction. The government shouldn’t provide special medical treatment for addicts who’re paid with the taxes of nonaddicts. Even the economy of several countries could have a boost because of the legalisation of drugs.

Ellen Noé

Banking:it’s the taxes stupid!

To save the World economy of a huge recession , the US government should cut income taxes and stop the International Monetary funds interfering the devellopment of currencies.

The US economy has been the most important economy of the past several years and if it would slow down it will have an enormous impact on the World economy. That’s why the government should stimulate it by reducing taxes so that the purchasing power will increase which will push the economical growth .

The IMF destabalizes the world economy by encouraging people to speculate on currencies. That’s how they created the Asian crisis. Instead they should distribute the assets to each country and let the market take care of the rest.

Ellen Noé

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice is a non profit organization established in 1996 by Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose D. Friedman, in accordance with their idea of liberty and free markets for the education system. The Foundation’s objective includes the improvement in the quality of the education for children whatever his social class or income is. It makes no different whether that education is provided in public or private schools or even at home. In the Foundation’s opinion, parents have to be able to choose the perfect, suitable school for their children. In the beginning, only five school choice programs were in operation, but nowadays 24 programs in 14 states and the District of Columbia are started.

Sanne Tuybens

source: http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/

Milton and his helicopters

The last few months it became clear that life was expensive. The price of oil was very high and everyone was talking about inflation.
But suddenly the oil- and raw material-price began to fall quickly and every country’s biggest fear no longer was inflation but deflation.
Deflation is a general price fall during a longer period and everyone aspects that the prices will fall permanently. It’s very dangerous because spending will be put off and the economy will shrink.
Milton Friedman once said that a central bank has to do everything to avoid deflation, even let helicopters drop money across the country if necessary.
Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve, used this metaphor in a speech with his solutions for battling deflation.
This earned him the nickname “Helicopter Ben”.


Hanne Leus


Sources: Trends, Cash, federalreserve.gov

Friedman in Iceland

A few months ago, Iceland was declared bankrupt after its government took over three major banks. Some economists blame Milton Friedman for this pitiful event. As a matter of fact, most of the Icelandic socialists support this accusation. According to them, Friedman’s visit to Iceland in 1984 and his ‘lively debate’ on national television had an enormous influence on the Icelandic economy. With his presence, he inspired a lot of young conservatives. During the decade, the country became gradually ran by neoconservative economic policies, although it used to came under Nordic social values. These values stand for high social security, a rather socialistic policy and a Keynesian vision. Many economists are convinced that Iceland couldn’t handle this rather liberal way of thinking… The bankruptcy of a whole country is the result.

Herbert Spanhove

Sources: alternet.org
agoracosmopolitan.com
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1107486496526618897

Why Milton won a Nobel Prize

Milton Friedman receives the 1976 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976 "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."
The Economist even described him as “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it.“

One of his biggest achievements was constructing a new economic theory/policy known as monetarism. This new “economic school” was born when he criticised the Keynesian consumption function. He also criticised the role of the government. The only thing that the government should do in Friedman’s vision is to supply the economy with the money that it needs.

Hanne Leus


Sources: wikipedia.org, nobelprize.org, achievement.org

Friedman’s theory applied: The Miracle of Chile

Milton Friedman described the economic reform of Chile under Augusto Pinochet (1973-1983) as ‘The Miracle of Chile’. Inspired by Milton Friedman and other free market economist, Pinochet established an era of economic deregulation and privatization by abolishing taxes, privatizing the pension system, state industries and banks and other measures.

Supporters of Friedman’s theory argue that the economic development in Chile is a prove of the rightness of the theory of Milton Friedman, because Chile is economically stronger and more advanced than the other Latin American countries.

Critics use the term ‘The Miracle of Chile’ in a sarcastic way, pointing out that the miracle started a dictatorship that would be responsible for a lot of Human Rights crimes, including the political murder on a couple of thousands Chileans.

Sanne Tuybens

source: http://www.economicexpert.com/

David D. Friedman, son of a Nobel Prize Winner.

David Director Friedman, son of Milton Friedman en his wife Rose Director, is a boy who grew up into a well-known libertarian writer. David Friedman’s bestseller was named ‘The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism’, where-in he described his anarcho-capitalist ideas. Free-market anarchism, the individualist anarchist political philosophy that David supports, is based on the elimination of the state and his government. David Friedman developed a theoretical society where all goods and services (including the law) can be produced by the free market.

To learn more about anarcho-capitalism, visit the Santa Clara University, where he teaches law nowadays.

Sanne Tuybens

Free to Choose

In 1980, after he won a Nobel Prize, Milton Friedman decided to make a television program together with his wife, who was an economist too. The main goal of the ten-part show was to bring an educational series, which had to increase the awareness of the dangers of the free market. Free to Chose became the most popular show on PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, and was rebroadcasted several times. Each show, Friedman and his wife tried to explain a successful or failure economic event in history. Afterwards, publisher Hartcourt printed ‘Free to Chose: a personal statement’… It became a bestseller.

Herbert Spanhove

Sources: freetochose.net

Pbs.org

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU

Who are you Milton?

Milton Friedman is known as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and I wondered how he was able to get that far.

His life story began on the 31st of July 1912 in Brooklyn, New York.
He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary.
Although they didn’t have a lot of money, they decided that Milton would go to college because he was a gifted student.
He graduated from Rutgers University in 1932 with a degree in mathematics and earned a master’s degree at the University of Chicago. There he met his future wife: fellow economics student Rose Director.
Milton worked in several universities and he obtained his Ph.D after the war.
He received international recognition in 1976 when he won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
He even was an economic adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan!
So Milton clearly had an impressive résumé….
Milton Friedman died in San Francisco in 2006 at the age of 94.

Hanne Leus

Sources: achievement.org, britannica.com