Maybe the LiveJournalists should stick to leftovers
The great economist Milton Friedman passed away several days ago, and the Editorial LiveJournalists decided to offer their opinion yesterday.
Unsurprisingly, their editorial missed some of the more important aspects of Friedman's life and work, despite seeming to crib from a well-crafted obituary in the New York Times.
Also unsurprisingly, there were a few missteps in the Chron editorial. To wit,
Known for his love of laissez-faire economics and an adviser to leaders from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher, Friedman perhaps was most influential in his recommendations for government control of the money supply, which he believed was crucial to economic growth.
Compare to this, from the New York Times:
Though he had helped ignite the conservative rebellion after World War II, together with intellectuals like Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr. and Ayn Rand, Mr. Friedman had little or no influence on the administrations of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. President Nixon, in fact, once described himself as a Keynesian.
It was frustrating period for Mr. Friedman. He said that during the Nixon years the talk was still of urban crises solvable only by government programs that he was convinced would make things worse, or of environmental problems produced by “rapacious businessmen who were expected to discharge their social responsibility instead of simply operating their enterprises to make the most profit.”
It's a shame that the newspaper of record in the nation's fourth largest city can't have a better editorial page.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/19/06 02:53 PM | Print | Comments (2)
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