Milton Friedman: A Conservative Economist

Born July 15, 1912 in New York City, Milton Friedman received his B.A. from Rutgers University (1932), M.A. from the University of Chicago (1933), and Ph.D. from Columbia University (1946). An advocate of market capitalism, Friedman's early work argued against government controls. He has advocated abolishing welfare, Social Security, graduated income taxes and licensing of professionals, including doctors. A laissez-faire proponent, Friedman views government's role as limited to national defense, enforcing contracts between individuals and domestic law enforcement.

Friedman earned his reputation criticizing John Maynard Keynes' theories on consumption, price theory, inflation, distribution and the money supply. His conviction that the free market is the best device ever conceived for allocating society's limited resources and for ordering human affairs made him America's best-known monetarist. As leader of the Chicago School of monetary economics, he argued that the quantity of money, rather than government fiscal policy, was the most crucial factor affecting economic trends. Opposed to Federal Reserve discretionary monetary policy to achieve economic stability, Friedman advocated a money-supply rule -- an expansion of the nation's money supply at a steady rate in accordance with the economy's growth and capacity to produce.

His most famous empirical work, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, co-authored with Anna J. Schwartz (1963), charts the relationship between general prices and manipulation of the money supply. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976 and was an adviser to the Reagan administration in the 1980s. A prolific writer, Friedman wrote Capitalism and Freedom (1964), Politics and Tyranny (1985), and Monetarist Economics (1991). With his wife, Rose, he wrote Free to Choose (1981), The Tyranny of the Status Quo (1984), and Two Lucky People: Memoirs (1998). He was a columnist for Newsweek (1966-84) and a frequent television commentator.

He was a staff member at the National Bureau of Economic Research (1937-46, 1948-81), a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught (1946-1976). A member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research (1937-1981), in 1988, Friedman received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Science.

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro is not known for planning ahead. However, recently, he has been keeping his eyes on the calendar. When queried about his interest in the passing of days, the Dark One/Ninja/Zorro sighed and remarked, "Grandma, this must be the shortest summer break on record." School starts in less than two weeks.

By Yohannes Sharriff Smith

"I got dreams to remember..."

Blazing electric crescent moon illumes

Wafting waves of burning Nan Champa,

As I sip the slightly aged,

light-year book of my lifetime.

Blood red wine soaks on the closed caption

Of my graduation photo which reads

"Voted most likely to be pointed out in a police line-up."

But, I say f**k the Willie Lynch suspense thriller.

Until this public enemy is number one,

My fire burns Hollywood and Babylon!

Stunned the white winter world when I turned the page.

Changing the picture of this semi-automatic biography,

I figured, all the six day sinners want me to pour sugar...

Should I pour sugar in 400 hundred years of piss

And call it lemonade?

In the universe of bright ideas,

What I perforate births a world of black suns.

Ohm... copper is a good conductor

So I rub my last two pennies together for good fortune.

Cookie cutter, corporate costumes continue to drive

Institutionalized racism up my rear view,

While Co-Intel-Pro plays chicken

With the uninsured vehicle of my future.

Fuel injected computers rule the users

Of this technologically advanced age of wireless control.

Whoo.. maybe.. everything is cordless...

Because the material... was used to build the shackles

Of financial debt around my neck, wrist and ankles.

I know 85 percent want me to pour sugar...

Should I pour sugar in 400 hundred years of piss

And call it lemonade?

How in heaven do I make enough to buy my freedom?

Do we keep traveling in circles,

Around the same 40 green acres and mule?

Fuel prices keep rising, so I dirt bike down back streets

And alongside information super highways.

But sometimes the grind makes me feel

Like I'm pedaling my life away.

Everyday ghetto flowers caught in a shower of debt.

Without the advantage of credit you can BET

Black Star Power will remain locked in prison towers.

Soured by too many hours of solitary confinement,

Underestimated potential throws rehabilitated game

At the parole board like hail Marys.

Now thug anthems pour out liquified instructions

For thousands of housing project soldiers,

Getting ahead in dark allegories.

Capped knees prepare for the rally,

'Cause Sally the hard-time ho' will do

"Anything for a nickel!"

This business transaction is built on pimping

Men, women and children of color

Caught beneath the collapsing ceiling of paying rent.

I know all the hypocrites want me to pour sugar...

But sugar in 400 hundred years of piss

Doesn't make it lemonade.

Claiming to be thirst quenching,

Slave-masters serve 40's of NutraSweet religion.

Pawning this toxic beverage off as Powerade,

Reverends man the poverty pimp stands

In the middle of crack vigil cop flooded auctions blocks,

Exchanging faith for potpourri cut-outs of Jesus Christ.

Overseers keep burning the common in sense

To aroma-therapy the stench of crucified bodies

That lie buried behind the elementary.

Having a May field-hand day,

Gray thoughts recess, as my pre-school spirit runs free.

Screaming, no more back pedaling,

No Steppin' Fletcher, Electric Boogaloo routine for me.

In my 1975 dream, I'm a 1968 black glove,

Olympic medallist, old school, cool cat

Wearing football socks and a black fist pick

In the back of my blown out 'fro.

Smoking a purple spliff, I ten-speed thru the redlines

Of my bank abandoned community.

Since ain't nothing new under the sun, I re-cycle hope

Around rat race tracks of ho's and hustlers.

To obstruct the likelihood of me robbing the big game,

Shady pasties raise the stakes and charge me

40% of my income to play. In the game with no sponsor

And constantly monitored by security cameras,

How in heaven do I make enough money

To purchase my freedom?

Needing to make ends meet,

I stand at the Pearly Gates, locked outside the stadium,

Peddling my dreams for change.

Mama, they got me peddling my dreams.

But, I refuse to pour sugar in piss and call it lemonade.

John Burl Smith

Yohannes Sharriff Smith's poem Lemonade captures the bittersweet reality of black life in the US. Its grim obtuse hip hop perspective is absent from George W. Bush's neocon vision of America. Dissing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), while embracing the National Urban League, served the same purpose as pulpit photo opportunities in black churches. Lecturing blacks, Bush typified the poem's reference to pouring sugar into 400 years of piss and calling it lemonade.

Affordable healthcare and putting the Social Security surplus in a "lock box" were Campaign 2000 promises. Instead, Bush robbed the "lock box" to give tax cuts to the rich. Pissing away billions in Medicare and Social Security funds, Bush helped companies operating offshore and in foreign countries avoid paying taxes after sending jobs overseas. The elderly will have to drink red ink like lemonade paying the US balance of trade deficit and more than $7 trillion debt.

Scheming votes in 2000, Bush promised to turn back the clock on civil rights and end affirmative action by appointing judges that strictly construct the Constitution. Federal agencies have repealed, dismantled or stopped litigating to enforce Brown v Board of Education and its edicts. If president, Bush left no doubt he would re-segregate the US by ending state mandated desegregation and affirmative action programs.

Without dialogue regarding black children's educational needs, Bush developed "No Child Left Behind." His policies forced traditionally black colleges to give scholarships to increase white enrollment, while forcing elite white universities to eliminate programs designed to make up for past discrimination. Bush used executive orders and the Justice Department to open new loopholes for public and private graduate and professional schools to discriminate against blacks.

Adding more sugar to the piss of 400 years of denying slave descendants equal education opportunities, Bush policies and rules will change "Head Start" from a "needs-based" to a "skills-based" program. The change opens up Head Start to children from families with higher incomes that have other alternatives and take away already limited slots from poor children, who have no other opportunity to get early childhood education.

Addressing the Urban League, Bush bragged about creating jobs, increasing home and small business ownership. Sweet enough to cause sugar shock, this pee green putrid patina is a sickening slime made up of 2 million jobs lost, skyrocketing foreclosures in black communities, record bankruptcies and business failures. The last hired and first fired, blacks pay more for credit, regardless of socioeconomic status. Part of the dialogue on race, Dot M. Smith's research established that the median family income gap between blacks relative to whites is a function of the 3/5 Compromise, Article 1 Section 2 of the US Constitution. Like nonexistence WMD, Bush refuses to discuss institutionalized racism as a causative link to income and employment disparities.

Bush's plea to the Urban League for votes is a real come down from highs following 9-11. Back then, he was the darling of millions of Hispanics, the "largest minority in the US." Today hat-in-hand, Bush is groveling for black votes, like any other white politician at election time. Poll numbers in the toilet, Bush's trip to the slave pens to pour sugar on 400 years of piss, hoping blacks will swallow it, was no dialogue. Pissed on, disenfranchised in 2000 to put Bush in the White House, blacks are not drinking Bush lemonade.

Heading Where?

On campaign swings across the nation, George W. Bush claims he was right to go war with Iraq, despite overwhelming evidence that fictitious information was used to justify the aggressive action. Equally passionate that the US economy is headed in the right direction, he points to increased home ownership and the creation of roughly 1.2 million jobs over the past eight months.

Like the sexed-up dossier used to justify the war against Iraq, Bush's job creation figures are deceptive. To maintain a stable employment level, nearly 250,000 new jobs must be created each month to absorb new entrants, hence Bush's paltry job creation has left the unemployment rate virtually unchanged. Moreover, the new mostly low wage or part-time jobs with no benefits are poor replacements for the nearly 2 million jobs lost during the Bush administration's first 30 months.

Despite Bush's upbeat assessment, there are indications, including the June Conference Board report, that suggest the economy is not headed in the right direction. Founded in 1916, the New York-based Conference Board has been computing the leading, coincident and lagging indices for the U.S. Department of Commerce since 1995. It has a long tradition of research on US economic conditions.

Of the three indices, leading, coincident and lagging, the leading index indicates where the economy is headed. Based on ten components, the leading index tends to move ahead of overall economic activity. In other words, it generally says something useful about the direction in which the country's economy is going.

While a one-month snapshot does not establish a trend, there are other indications that the US economy is not ambulatory. These include, but are not limited to, a declining per capita income, rising poverty, increased number of persons underemployed, skyrocketing foreclosure rates and historic consumer debt.

Disgruntled wants to know: Worldwide, economists are speculating about the status of the US economy. A number have written erudite essays about the US federal debt, its balance of trade deficit, the declining dollar and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's real estate bubble. There is a consensus that Greenspan easily won reappointment to an unprecedented fifth term because George W. Bush needs him to continue printing money, ensuring the bubble does not burst until after the November election. The question remains, which will come first, a steep rise in interest rates or a steep decline in the willingness of foreign governments, such as Japan and China, to hold worthless US securities?

Disgruntled feels: Dismal! Economics, the study of scarcity, is known as the dismal science for good reason. All too often, even with the best economic arrangement, which we presume to be capitalism, some suffer. In the US, any politician that claims to want to help those less fortunate is labeled a big spending liberal, which has become a dirty word. Ironically, under the control of Republicans that claim to be fiscally conservative, government spending has skyrocketed. Budget deficits and the federal debt have soared to historic highs with no end to the red ink in sight. With welfare reform aimed at "ending the social program as we know it" under former President Bill Clinton, the safety net is threadbare. And, with the Bush administration's stimulus package of tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending creating low paying jobs or employment offshore, the pain of the growing ranks of the poor is guaranteed to become more pronounced. With these new spendthrift conservatives controlling fiscal and monetary policy, there is no question the outlook is dismal.

Disgruntled says: When disaffected voters recall Election 2000, they invariably mention the Supreme Court decision in Bush v Gore and the Florida debacle. In Bush v Gore, the court ruled a recount could hurt Bush and voters have no constitutional right to vote for president. People fail to realize 2000 can happen again. The candidate receiving the most votes may not win, because of the Electoral College system. Already, some states have pre-determined which candidate will receive their electoral votes, regardless of the vote count. In 2000, while blacks across metro Atlanta stood in long lines to cast ballots, Georgia went into the Bush column.