Читать книгу Milton Friedman - Eamonn Butler - Страница 6

This book is consciously written for the intelligent layperson who is interested in the debate on how our social and economic lives should be organised.

It is perfect for anyone who wants to understand, or learn more about, the free-market, liberal (in the European, not the American, sense) side of the argument. After all, Milton Friedman, the book’s subject, himself laid out most of that case at one point or another in his various books and articles. This book organises all that material into a short, structured guide.

The book aims to explain Friedman’s ideas straightforwardly, without distortion and in plain language. Hence there are no academic-style footnotes or bibliography – just an essential reading list of Friedman’s most significant books and articles.

It should also interest school and university students of economics, politics and social philosophy, giving them a concise insight into a set of radical ideas and opinions that are frequently dismissed or ignored in orthodox economics and social science teaching. There is plenty in here to challenge those teachers!

There is also a political interest to the book, in that Friedman was one of the greatest intellectual inspirations behind the rise of the New Right in the 1980s and 1990s. His ideas had huge influence on policy makers such as Reagan, Thatcher, the US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar, the Czech Prime Minister and President Václav Klaus, and many others. This book explains how Friedman’s ideas came to shape the views of such leaders all round the world, from America to China.