administration), and out of which our well-functioning, prosperous postwar political economy grew, was, in his view, America’s great wrong turn.

The New Deal, enacted when Friedman was in his 20s (and working for the F.D.R. The thrust of a 1964 Times primer on him was summed up in the quotes from a single anonymous economist: Friedman was “brilliant” and “enormously articulate,” sure, but also an “utterly irresponsible” zealot who “doesn’t give advice that anyone would follow.” He thought unions were bad, business shouldn’t be regulated, the Federal Reserve should be phased out, the proposed Medicare program would be a socialist nightmare. Only after the Republicans’ right-wing 1964 presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, recruited him as an adviser did Friedman become newsworthy, an intriguing weirdo suddenly vaulted into the vicinity of power. As a young University of Chicago professor in 1951, he was awarded one of the first John Bates Clark Medals that biennially anointed a young economist as a star of tomorrow, but his extreme free-market libertarianism remained outré. Until the 1960s, when Milton Friedman was in his 50s, pretty much the only people who’d heard of him were other economists and a few of his fellow right-wingers. Here, Kurt Andersen considers how a wonkish 3,000-word essay on economics altered a country’s course - and its character. To mark its 50th anniversary, DealBook and the Times Magazine assembled experts including chief executives, Nobel Laureate economists and top think-tank leaders to debate and dissect the legacy of Friedman’s ideas. On September 13th, 1970, the New York Times Magazine published an essay by Milton Friedman entitled “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” which turned out to be one of the most influential economic arguments of the century.

Friedman 1962 capitalism and freedom