Milton Friedman, born on July 31, 1912, in Brooklyn, New York, was a groundbreaking Nobel Prize-winning economist and steadfast advocate of free markets. His contributions to economic thinking continue to resonate today with policymakers and students of economic freedom worldwide.
Friedman had a strong relationship with Young America’s Foundation, addressing eager student audiences and translating important economic lessons into digestible content for almost 40 years. With regard to YAF’s work to challenge leftist bias in academia, he once remarked that there was “no more effective comeuppance to the pretensions of our left-wing gurus than Young America’s Foundation.”
Friedman and his writings—particularly his seminal book, Free to Choose—were highly influential in shaping President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies in the 1980s. Free to Choose, which YAF recommends to our students and often provides for those attending our student programs, highlights the importance of limited government, deregulation, and privatization in creating a freer society. These ideas became a cornerstone of Reagan’s economic policies, helping lead to the largest tax cuts in American history and a focus on returning more freedom to Americans while reducing the size of government.
Friedman, for his part, developed an admiration for Reagan and his pro-growth, pro-freedom policies and later credited him for pulling the American economy out of the doldrums of the 1970s. “To Mr. Reagan, of course, holding down government spending was a means to an end, not an end in itself,” said Friedman in the Wall Street Journal. “That end was freedom, human freedom, the right of every individual to pursue his own objectives and values so long as he does not interfere with the corresponding rights of others.” He concluded, “Few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom than Ronald Wilson Reagan.”
On Friedman’s birthday, we celebrate his transformative contributions to economics, his partnership with Young America’s Foundation, and his unwavering commitment to equipping the next generation with the tools and knowledge needed to defend free enterprise.
Click here to watch a short-video series that Dr. Friedman recorded with Young America’s Foundation in which he discusses the importance of teaching free market principles, his relationship with President Ronald Reagan, and why—as he famously put it—“there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
