"I define Equality of Opportunity as the following : Equality before the Law. It is a career open to the talents. No arbitary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, colour, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevent characteristic should determine the opportunitiues that are open to a person - only his abilities. Equality of opportunity, like personal equality, is not inconsistent with liberty, on the contrary, it is an essential component of liberty. If some people are denied access to particular positions in life for which they are qualified simply because of their ethnic background, colour, or religion, that is an interference with their right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
- Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman, a great man, a prominent free market economist suddenly passed away today at the age of 94. Milton Friedman, the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976 was the leader of the Chicago School. He emphasized the importance of the quantitiy of money as an instrument by which governments create policy and as the main determinant of business cycles as well as inflation. Milton as well wrote extensively on public policy issues. His emphasis was focused on the preservation of individual freedom as well as of economic and political freedom. Milton wrote several masterpieces including Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose, Price Theory, A Program for Monetary Stability and A Theory of the Consumption Function as well as numerous other books where he wrote excellent theoretical pieces and scientific contributions. Milton was a great Chicagoen, an excellent monetarist, a great empiricist and an outstanding economic theoretician. What Milton believed was the preservation of human liberty, he enjoyed promoting the concept. Milton was a man who stepped up to the plate, who believed in liberty and who was willing to fight for it. Friedman's premises and ideas about economic policy and economic freedom hugely influenced Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They tramsformed Friedman's ideas into the course of successful leadership as well as of impressive results. The economic thought of Milton Friedman simply spreaded across the globe. The establishment of economic policy of such thinking had, in many places, produced a "Chicago Miracle". In general, the ideas of Milton Friedman have been the most productive export in the 20th century. They flourished everywhere. Milton Friedman has been the pillar of inspiration to Mart Laar, a remarkable leader of a small country of Estonia, who acknowledged Friedman's book and used it as a guidline in making decisions about economic policy. Today Estonia is widely considered as the most successful European economy in terms of performance, progress and economic growth. On this day, an excellent economist as well as a great man left us, but his the influential impact of his ideas is a great challenge to apply the thought of Milton Friedman to the course of free society, a society for which professor Friedman always fought and never got despaired. Those of us who have admired professor Friedman, continually believe in his powerful ideas and inspiriation. He left us a rich legacy of economic thinking, a legacy of excellence and a legacy of perfection.
We will never forget.
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