Friedman in Louisiana

Abstract

[Author Affiliation]William Breit, , , , The 2007 Southern Economic Association meetings take place near the first anniversary of Milton Friedman's death. Following an exchange with Jim Gwartney, who thought a tribute to Friedman was in order, I decided to finally take up the task of writing a memoir of the time I invited Milton Friedman to come to Louisiana State University (LSU) to present a lecture. It was during the election campaign of 1964 that pitted Lyndon Johnson against Barry Goldwater. Friedman at the time was an unofficial adviser to Barry Goldwater and one of his strongest supporters.For those of you too young to remember who Barry Goldwater was and why Milton Friedman was a Goldwater fan, I feel it necessary to say a few words about Goldwater. He was a charismatic figure. Barry was the son of the founder of a department store in Phoenix called Goldwater's. After his father's death Barry transformed the family-owned store from middle-grade middle-class to an upscale equivalent of Neiman Marcus. Four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he joined the U.S. Air Force. He had a private pilot license and soon had his wings. He came out of the war a lieutenant colonel and organized the Arizona Air National Guard. By 1962 he was a major general in the reserves with a logbook listing pilot hours in 75 different types of aircraft. He was elected to the Phoenix City Council in 1949 and to the U.S. Senate in 1952 and 1958. Before World War II he had integrated the employees of his family department store, and he enforced integration of the Arizona Air National Guard two years before President Truman ordered desegregation of the armed forces. He desegregated the lunch counters of Phoenix and was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League.But to make his connection to Milton Friedman more explicit I will quote one paragraph from Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative to give a summary of his views:I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I did not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' interests, I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause, I am doing the very best I can.Barry later called for an end to the draft and advocated shifting to reliance on a professional all-volunteer force. He said he would call on the Congress to exact across-the-board tax cuts to stimulate growth in the economy, which would then lead to growth in tax revenues to offset any short-term losses.I was inspired by The Conscience of a Conservative, as were a who's who of conservative leaders of the last third of the 20th century, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William Rehnquist, and Sandra Day O'Connor. And I must mention Hillary Rodham, a Goldwater girl in 1964, who went on to head the Young Republicans at Wellesley.I had recently joined the LSU faculty as an Assistant Professor of economics after receiving my Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1961. At the time I arrived in Baton Rouge I was the youngest member of the economics department and an admirer of Milton Friedman, whom I had met when he came to Michigan State to present a lecture. Since I was then the president of the Michigan State graduate economics club, I had been invited by the faculty as the only student to join them for dinner that evening. Needless to say Friedman was charming and brilliant, and it was obvious to me that the faculty was clearly bested in the stimulating argumentative discourse that ensued that memorable night.A few years after I arrived at LSU, a young man named Edwin Hunter came to my office in some despair. …