Search Results for: "Milton Friedman"
Relevance | DateJimmy Carter's 'Malaise Speech' of July 15, 1979: An Energy Moment to Remember
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 15, 2011 4 Comments[Editor Note: Carter’s April 1977 energy speech was also reproduced and commented upon at MasterResource.]
Thirty-two years ago today, President Carter and his energy advisor James Schlesinger got it all wrong in an emergency television address to the nation. Their neo-Malthusian, government-as-engineer moment should never be forgotten but stand as timeless warning about the anti-market, anti-energy mentality.
In the summer of 1979, many Americans were stuck in the gasoline lines. There was a lot of lost time and nervousness. There was fighting and worse. The market as a buffer of civility was gone. Americans were not used to such a predicament and had the common sense to know that something was very abnormal and not to be tolerated. They were mad.
Here is the background of his energy speech, considered as the most important speech of his presidency:
… Continue ReadingOn June 30, 1979, a weary Jimmy Carter was looking forward to a few days’ vacation in Hawaii, as Air Force One sped him away from a grueling economic summit in Tokyo.
Wisdom from T. Boone against Rent-Seeking Pickens (remember when you said ….?)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 27, 2011 9 Comments“The two greatest enemies of free enterprise in the United States … have been, on the one hand, my fellow intellectuals and, on the other hand, the business corporations of this country.”
– Milton Friedman. “Which Way for Capitalism?” Reason, May 1977, p. 21.
Special government favor. A little something for nothing at the other’s expense…. Sure, a particular business or industry can gain in the short run. But when everyone is getting the booty, almost all lose.
Just look where government is today. The chronic, gargantuan federal budget deficit is testament to the Enrons then, GEs now receiving government subsidies from either the U.S. Treasury or the tax code. The rest of us pay (or will pay) what the rent-seekers are getting and not paying for (outside of their lobbying costs).…
Continue ReadingRemembering the Birth of Conservationism (Part I: President Nixon's price controls, not Arab OPEC, produced energy crisis, demand-side politicization)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 2, 2011 3 Comments[Editor note: Part II on energy conservationism tomorrow examines the energy conservation faddism of Amory Lovins.]
Richard Nixon (1913–94) got on the wrong side of economic law three years before his Watergate-related resignation from the U.S. presidency. In August 1971, in a surprise decision, Nixon imposed the first peacetime wage-and-price controls in American history.
Businessmen reined in their surprise to pragmatically offer support. John Kenneth Galbraith and Paul Samuelson offered quick congratulations. There was public approval of the ‘temporary’ action that was intended to just quell inflationary expectations (as if the problem was psychological and not the inherent consequence of expansionary money). The inflation rate was then running at about 4 percent per year.
Free-market economist Milton Friedman, knowing that shortages lay ahead, lambasted the move. So did Ayn Rand in the Ayn Rand Letter.…
Continue ReadingAtlas Shrugged: The Philosophy and Its Energy Implications (Part IV: The Moral Obligation of Capitalists)
By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 21, 2011 6 Comments“In [Atlas Shrugged], I glorify the real kind of productive, free-enterprise businessman in a way he has never been glorified before…. But I make mincemeat out of the kind of businessman who calls himself a ‘middle-of-the-roader’ and talks about a ‘mixed economy’—the kind that runs to government for assistance, subsidies, legislation and regulation.”
– Ayn Rand (1949) (1)
As the public face of capitalism, business leaders are well positioned to explain the logic of free markets from a moral and economic viewpoint—and to demonstrate by example the non-coercive nature of trade by eschewing the political exploitation of consumers, taxpayers, and rivals.
The words and deeds of corporate executives are quite different, however. Rand was very disappointed in what she saw–and she would be more disappointed today, particularly in the energy industry.…
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