Economist on a White Horse

“THERE is but one event, but that is an event for the world-Burke is dead!” wrote Canning, the Tory wit and future prime minister, to a diplomat friend who had asked for the latest news. “He is the man that will mark this age . . . to all time.”

It would be no exaggeration to say the same of Milton Friedman, who died this November. The Age of Friedman began approximately in 1979-80 when his disciples, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, took power in Britain and America-the two great centers of world economic thinking—and began to apply his ideas. It was entrenched more widely following the discrediting of planned socialist economies in the late 1980s and the consequent spread of anti-inflationary and free-market solutions throughout the First, Second, and Third Worlds. And the Age of Friedman will continue until some new economic ills emerge that require a new diagnosis from a new theoretician.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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“THERE is but one event, but that is an event for the world-Burke is dead!” wrote Canning, the Tory wit and future prime minister, to a diplomat friend who had asked for the latest news. “He is the man that will mark this age . . . to all time.”

It would be no exaggeration to say the same of Milton Friedman, who died this November. The Age of Friedman began approximately in 1979-80 when his disciples, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, took power in Britain and America-the two great centers of world economic thinking—and began to apply his ideas. It was entrenched more widely following the discrediting of planned socialist economies in the late 1980s and the consequent spread of anti-inflationary and free-market solutions throughout the First, Second, and Third Worlds. And the Age of Friedman will continue until some new economic ills emerge that require a new diagnosis from a new theoretician.