David Brooks on Milton Friedman

David Brooks: The Smile of Reason (NY Times):

[Friedman] was proudest of his contributions to technical economics, but he also possessed that rarest of gifts, a practical imagination, and was a fountain of concrete policy ideas. During World War II, he helped draw up plans to withhold people’s income tax and then worked with mathematicians like Jack Wolfowitz (Paul’s father) to calculate how many pieces artillery shells should burst into to produce maximum damage.

In the ensuing years, he developed ideas like the volunteer army, the negative income tax (which evolved into the earned income tax credit), post office deregulation (which gave us FedEx), the flat tax and floating exchange rates.

...

His passing is sad, too, because classical economics is under its greatest threat in a generation. Growing evidence suggests average workers are not seeing the benefits of their productivity gains — that the market is broken and requires heavy government correction. Friedman’s heirs have been avoiding this debate. They’re losing it badly and have offered no concrete remedies to address this problem, if it is one.

Walter Block also writes a nice tribute on mises.org.
From the WSJ is a collection of Friedman's views on various issues.
[AF]