United Liberty

“We have become so accustomed to employer-provided medical care that we regard it as part of the natural order. Yet it is thoroughly illogical. Why single out medical care? Food is more essential to life than medical care. Why not exempt the cost of food from taxes if provided by the employer? Why not return to the much-reviled company store when workers were in effect paid in kind rather than in cash?” - Milton Friedman, from “How to Cure Health Care”

H/T: Carpe Diem

Milton Friedman, an economist and Nobel Prize laureate, was born on this day in 1912.He would’ve been 97 today.

Friedman is known for his works on monetary policy, defending the morality capitalism and advancing school choice, among many other things.

He wrote several books, including Capitalism & Freedom and Free to Choose, which was turned into a video series of the same name that was broadcast on PBS.

I was forwarded this video by a friend of mine who is left of center. At first, I thought it was a scientology video given the crticism of psychiatry but soon saw that it was a disorganized criticism of American economic and foreign policy.

It’s too bad that Milton Friedman, who is unfairly portrayed here as the Devil himself, is not present to defend himself against slandarous attacks. Friedman was not against government and social programs altogether but favored programs (such as vouchers) that would help raise the poor out of poverty and into self-sufficiency. He favored marijuana decriminalization and was a self-described “liberal.” He was not solely responsible for nor the mastermind of Reagan, Clinton or either Bush’s policies, for better or worse.

In a book review by Clive Crook in todays Financial Times, we read about the new work Getting Off Track by John Taylor, creator of the “Taylor Rule” for monetary policy. According to Taylor, if the Federal Reserve had followed his famous Rule instead of their own discretion over the last decade, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today.

Taylor’s Rule gives a mathematical formula for the calculation of monetary policy. As Crook describes it:

There has been a lot of reaction in the blogosphere about a new Rasmussen poll which shows that 53% of Americans believe capitalism is better than socialism:

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

Where is a person of a classically liberal inclination to go in today’s political media jungle?

The last four years have been somewhat of a storm for people like us. The unpopularity of George W. Bush tainted conservatism for at best a couple years and at worst a generation. Ron Paul only got a fraction of the Republican primary vote in 2008, not enough to bite into the doomed-to-fail John McCain. William F. Buckley died, as did Milton Friedman.

Glenn Beck, a pseudo-libertarian-inclined talk radio and cable news personality who showed promise by giving airtime to libertarian activists and having constructive dialogues with disagreeable people like Rev. Al Sharpton, has gone completely bat-sh!+ crazy in exchange for good ratings.

While searching through the comic book section at a Barnes and Noble in Emeryville, California, I was unsurprised to see that there were about five shelves dedicated to manga (the term for Japanese comic books) compared to only three for American graphic novels.