In 1967, Milton Friedman took a temporary leave from the University of Chicago to teach for a quarter at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). UCLA was often humorously referred to as the "University of Chicago on the West Coast." Its economics faculty, like that of Chicago, was one of the few in the country that staunchly supported free-market capitalism and opposed the dominant Keynesian school of thought, which advocated for more active government intervention in the economy.
During his time in Los Angeles, Friedman became friends with local businessman Henry Salvatori, an influential figure in conservative politics. Salvatori once invited Friedman to accompany him to dinner at the home of California's newly elected governor, a former actor and rising conservative star named Ronald Reagan.
"I was pleased to discover that he was not only a warm and attractive person but that his views on educational matters were very much in line with my own," Friedman recalled of his first meeting with Reagan in his memoirs.
Over dinner, they discussed Reagan's goal of increasing tuition costs for students attending California's state universities, as well as Friedman's controversial idea of school vouchers, which would provide tax receipts to parents who chose to send their children to private schools instead of public ones. Apparently, Reagan was already familiar with this idea, having read Milton Friedman's manifesto of free-market capitalism, "Capitalism and Freedom," published five years earlier.
A few years after this fateful meeting, Friedman joined Governor Reagan in his statewide campaign for Proposition 1. This ballot measure was Reagan's attempt to amend California's constitution and impose a permanent limit on annual state spending. The governor and the professor traveled from city to city on a private plane, arguing that legislators should no longer spend money like drunken sailors. During one of their stops, a reporter asked Friedman if he would support Reagan in future presidential elections. He enthusiastically answered "yes."
Proposition 1 ultimately failed, but several years later, in 1978, California passed a similar measure, Proposition 13. It significantly reduced property taxes in the state. Furthermore, it marked a new era of tax cuts, deregulation, and "small government" policies that spread across the nation and culminated in Reagan's election as president in 1980, with Friedman serving as an important advisor and advocate for Reagan's revolution.
Rarely does an economist, apart from perhaps Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes, shape and even define an entire era of politics and public policy. Leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan closely aligned themselves with this 5-foot-2-inch Chicago economist who, before the 1960s, was little more than a marginal intellectual counterrevolutionary, opposing the expansion of government size and scope in the mid-20th century.
In her new book, "Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative," Jennifer Burns traces the life and career of this influential economist, from his humble beginnings in Rahway, New Jersey, to his global recognition as a hero on the right and a villain on the left. She also reevaluates Friedman's legacy following the "bipartisan assault" on his ideas in the last decade.
"Last conservative"? Burns acknowledges that she chose the subtitle "The Last Conservative" with some trepidation. First, she notes that Friedman rarely referred to himself as a conservative. He tended to call himself a classical liberal, meaning he believed in individual rights and freedoms, free trade, and limited government. (Interestingly, another recent book about another famous free-market advocate, Friedrich Hayek, is titled "The Last Man of Liberalism." A sign of the times?)
However, Burns is uncomfortable calling Friedman a liberal because in the United States, "that word has become inextricably associated with the New Deal order, which Friedman spent his career opposing."
In Europe and in American academic circles, Friedman became more formally known as a "neoliberal," which is one of those trendy terms that mean different things to different people but is often used to denote a pro-market shift. These days, neoliberalism is almost always used pejoratively, and few people actually identify as neoliberals.
But in a 1951 essay published in a Norwegian journal, Friedman did indeed call himself a neoliberal. The essay was titled "Neoliberalism and Its Prospects," and in it, Friedman offered his own definition of neoliberalism.
In this essay, Friedman criticized the global trend toward "collectivism" and heavy state intervention in the economy that had swept across most industrialized countries in the mid-20th century. However, he also criticized classical liberalism, which dominated the 19th and early 20th centuries. "This philosophy assigned almost no role to the state except to maintain order and enforce contracts," Friedman wrote about classical liberalism. "It was a negative philosophy. The state could only do harm."
Please note that this translation aims to capture the essence of the text in English while maintaining its original meaning. Some terms and concepts may have different connotations in English, and adjustments may be needed depending on the specific context of use.