The late Robert Heilbroner, author of the 1953 classic The Worldly Philosophers, wrote about a "handful of men with a curious claim to fame." These men wield no political or military authority, and yet, by no more than the force of their arguments, "shaped and swayed the world". These men "left in their train shattered empires and exploded continents; they set class against class and even nation against nation—not because they plotted mischief, but because of the extraordinary power of their ideas."
Milton Friedman's creeds read like an advertisement for the American dream: Free choice, capitalism, and limited government. Born in New York City to a working class family of Jewish-Hungarian immigrants, Friedman has benefited from the system of individual liberties he has so vocally championed, springing from his humble upbringings to become one of the world's greatest economists. His ideas have inspired an entire generation of conservative economic thinking, from the Federal Reserve to the White House, and propelled his public persona to a level virtually unmatched in all of academia.
Read the whole profile of this amazing man. More than anyone, he's the one who inspired me to go into economics.
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