Why We’re Still Living in Milton Friedman’s Neoliberal World.
More than 20 years after his death, we’re still living in the neoliberal world Milton Friedman made. The arc of neoliberalism begins in 1947, gathers steam in the 1970s, and reaches its zenith in the 1990s before breaking into a million pieces and forever out of the control of its progenitors. The story of Milton Friedman rises and falls along with it, and it’s a complicated one of ego, ambition and academic notoriety; a confluence of factors and foibles that came to define the modern economic age. This is the story of Milton Friedman, one of the principal architects of the modern world.
Show Notes
Clips
Episode Timestamp + Link | Clip Link
- 00:06:55 | Milton Friedman: Capitalism
- 00:32:15 | Milton Friedman: Unemployment Rate
- 00:42:00 | Bill Clinton: The 1996 State of Union address - January 23, 1996
Resources
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- Current Affairs: We’re Living In the World That Milton Friedman Made
- Mises Institute: Friedrich A. Hayek
- The New York Times: The Great Liberator
- Ancestry: Jeno Saul Friedman
- Johan Van Overtveldt: The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business
- Britannica Money: Classical Economics
- International Adam Smith Society: About Adam Smith
- Britannica Money: David Ricardo
- Wikipedia: Jeremy Bentham
- Wikipedia: Cesare Beccaria
- Wikipedia: Laissez-faire
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Karl Marx
- Competition and Appropriation: Retrospectives: The Origins of Neoclassical Microeconomics
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: William Stanley Jevons
- Econlib: Leon Walras
- Econlib: Alfred Marshall
- Harvard University: Raising Keynes: A Twenty-First-Century General Theory
- Jacobin: Right-Wing Populism Did Not Kill Neoliberalism
- C.J. Polychroniou: Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists
- Quinn Slobodian: Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, Iq, and the Capitalism of the Far Right
- The Mont Pelerin Society: About
- The Atlantic: The Heritage Foundation
- Current Affairs: Why Libertarians Oppose Civil Rights
- ProMarket: Aaron Director’s Legacy: The Beginning of Doubt is the Beginning of Wisdom
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Karl Popper
- Econlib: Ludwig von Mises
- Chicago Booth: George J. Stigler
- Free to Choose Network: The Power of Choice - Mont Pelerin Society
- Investopedia: Permanent Income Hypothesis: Definition, Function, and Effects
- Wikipedia: Natural rate of unemployment
- Investopedia: Monetarism Explained: Theory, Formula, and Keynesian Comparison
- Harris School of Public Policy: Permanent Income
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: The Fed and the Dual Mandate
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: The Employment Situation – September 2026
- Milton Friedman, Anna Jacobson Schwartz: A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
- Binyamin Appelbaum: The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society
- Freien Universität Berlin: The Methodology of Positive Economics
- Social Science Encyclopedia: Milton Friedman On Economic Methodology
- Economic Reform Australia: The F-twist – realism, economic policy analysis and climate change
- CATO Institute: Who Said TANSTAAFL First?
- Milton Friedman: The Free Lunch Myth
- Milton Friedman: Taxation, Inflation, and the Role of Government
- Investopedia: Market Definition: Economics, Types, and Key Features
- Bernard Harcourt: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order
- Current Affairs: Ralph Nader
- History: Auto safety crusader Ralph Nader testifies before Congress
- The New York Times: A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
- Scholarly Commons: Powell Memorandum: Attack On American Free Enterprise System
- The Heritage Foundation
- The Cato Institute
- The Manhattan Institute
- The American Legislative Exchange Council
- Brookings: What we learned from Reagan’s tax cuts
- PBS News: Column: How Reaganomics, deregulation and bailouts led to the rise of Trump
- Wikipedia: Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996
- Free To Choose: The Original 1980 TV Series
- EdChoice: Milton Friedman on the Phil Donahue Show in 1979
- Investopedia: Stagflation Explained: What We Learned From the 1970s Crisis
- Investopedia: Understanding the Phillips Curve: Inflation and Unemployment Dynamics
- Investopedia: Demand-Pull Inflation: Understanding Causes and Differences from Cost-Push
- npr: Conservative Advocate
- U.S. News: Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis
- C-SPAN: User Clip: Clinton: ‘Big Government Is Over’
- ProMarket: The Complicated Legacy of the “Chicago Boys” in Chile
- Center for the History of Political Economy: Slaves or Mercenaries: Milton Friedman and the Institution of the All-Volunteer Military
- C-SPAN’S American History TV: Milton Friedman debates government intervention
- Amnesty International: Chile: 50 years since the coup d’état, exercising historical memory is vital for the country’s future
- The Guardian: Guess what? Self-interest is bad for the economy
- The New York Times: What Would Keynes Have Done?
- The New Yorker: Covert Operations
- The Progressive: The Politics of Racial Resentment
- Current Affairs: A Trillion Dollars Isn’t Worth It If You Have to Be Elon Musk
UNFTR Resources
Image Source
- Bachrach Studios, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
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