Milton Friedman’s 100th: Exploring His Wisdom for the Ages (Part II: Energy)

[Ed. note: Milton Friedman's views are also explored in Part I of this series (worldview) and in Part III (political capitalism).]

“Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail…. Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.”
       – Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), pp. 219.
“It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.”

- Milton Friedman, “Why Some Prices Should Rise,” Newsweek, November 19, 1973.

Milton Friedman is best known for his monetary economics,  Monetarism, a school of economics that challenged and largely defeated Keynesianism. “By century’s end, stated Paul Krugman in the New York Review of Books, “classical economics had regained much though by no means all of its former dominion, and Friedman deserves much of the credit.”

Read more:http://www.masterresource.org/2012/08/milton-friedman-energy/