Thursday, July 31, 2008

Happy birthday, Uncle Milty!

Here's a recent invitation (not to Spot!) from the Minnesota Free Market Institute:

Spot is sure there will be decorations for the holiday, carols, and toasts, too! Just like Christmas! Here's the legacy being celebrated:

Milton Friedman, Nobel Economics Prize winner, has left a trail of death and destruction wherever he, his students or admirers advised countries to implement his plan that involved privatization, government deregulation and deep social spending cuts. Advocating a free market economy, he thought that an unregulated market would maximize freedom and prosperity. Although he wrote a book in 1962, Capitalism and Freedom, he found no democratically elected government, including President Richard Nixon’s administration, would implement his program. The Keynesian model including a safety net, unions, workers protections and government spending helped the United States and other countries recover from the Great Depression and continue prosperity after the Second World War. Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys (former students at the University of Chicago economics department) found that they could only persuade dictatorships or democracies in crisis to adopt his planned misery program.

That's what the Viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer, and his young acolytes from the Heritage Foundation tried too, boys and girls, with disastrous results.

If, however, you have no especial desire to venerate the Maven of Misery, Spot suggests you swing by Drinking Liberally, meeting tonight from six to nine at the 331 Club in Minneapolis.

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