He defines "liberal" in European Enlightenment terms, contrasting with an American usage that he believes has been corrupted since the Great Depression.

Among other concepts, Friedman advocates ending the mandatory licensing of physicians and introducing a system of vouchers for school education.

Capitalism and Freedom was published nearly two decades after World War II, a time when the Great Depression was still in collective memory.

Under the Kennedy and preceding Eisenhower administrations, federal expenditures were growing at a quick pace in the areas of national defense, social welfare, and infrastructure.

Some of Friedman's suggestions are being tested and implemented in many places, such as the flat income tax in Estonia (since 1994) and Slovakia (since 2004), a floating exchange rate which has almost fully replaced the Bretton Woods system, and national school voucher systems in Chile (since 1981) and Sweden (since 1992),[5] to cite a few prominent examples.