[14] Friedman promoted a macroeconomic viewpoint known as monetarism and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy, as compared to rapid, and unexpected changes.

[16] After retiring from the University of Chicago in 1977, and becoming emeritus professor in economics in 1983,[17] Friedman served as an advisor to Republican U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Conservative British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

His parents, Sára Ethel (née Landau) and Jenő Saul Friedman, were Jewish working-class immigrants from Beregszász in Carpathian Ruthenia, Kingdom of Hungary (now Berehove in Ukraine).

[43] Friedman was unable to find academic employment, so in 1935 he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, D.C., where Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists.

At the time, the Cambridge economics faculty was divided into a Keynesian majority (including Joan Robinson and Richard Kahn) and an anti-Keynesian minority (headed by Dennis Robertson).

Although this work presented many controversial points of view which differed from existing viewpoints established by Keynes, A Theory of the Consumption Function helped Friedman gain respect in the field of economics.

[76] Friedman talks about the need to move to a classically liberal society, that free markets would help nations and individuals in the long-run and fix the efficiency problems currently faced by the United States and other major countries of the 1950s and 1960s.

Friedman concludes Capitalism and Freedom with his "classical liberal" stance that government should stay out of matters that do not need it and should only involve itself when absolutely necessary for the survival of its people and the country.

[98] According to a 2007 article in Commentary magazine, his "parents were moderately observant Jews, but Friedman, after an intense burst of childhood piety, rejected religion altogether".

[109][111]Friedman also argued for the removal of government intervention in currency markets, thereby spawning an enormous literature on the subject, as well as promoting the practice of freely floating exchange rates.

His close friend George Stigler explained, "As is customary in science, he did not win a full victory, in part because research was directed along different lines by the theory of rational expectations, a newer approach developed by Robert Lucas, also at the University of Chicago.

The dictionary adds, "Like many of Friedman's contributions, in retrospect it seems remarkably simple and obvious to apply basic economic ideas to quality control; that, however, is a measure of his genius.

Friedman believed that only monopolistic corporations could routinely make altruistic expenditures on social responsibility, because in a competitive market such costs would undermine the business.

[147] In a 1995 interview with Reason magazine, Friedman criticized Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand as "cult builders" and "dogmatists", citing this as justification for not joining the U.S. Libertarian Party.

"[149] In a 1962 essay that builds on arguments made by A. V. Dicey, Friedman argued that a "free society" would constitute a desirable but unstable equilibrium, due to an asymmetry between the visible benefits and the hidden harms of government intervention; he uses tariffs as an example of a policy that brings noticeable financial benefits to a visible group, but causes worse harms to a diffuse group of workers and consumers.

[153] Friedman reiterated these arguments 18 years later in Free to Choose, with the additional proviso that such a reform would only be satisfactory if it replaced the current system of welfare programs rather than augment it.

[154] According to economist Robert H. Frank, writing in The New York Times, Friedman's views in this regard were grounded in a belief that while "market forces ... accomplish wonderful things", they "cannot ensure a distribution of income that enables all citizens to meet basic economic needs".

Most economists agree that a far better way to control pollution than the present method of specific regulation and supervision is to introduce market discipline by imposing effluent charges.

[173] In Free to Choose, Friedman wrote:[154] No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek.

"[99] Friedman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the sole recipient for 1976, "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy".

"[196] In a letter to Pinochet of April 21, 1975, Friedman considered the "key economic problems of Chile are clearly ... inflation and the promotion of a healthy social market economy".

[210] Because of his involvement with the government of Chile, which was a dictatorship at the time of his visit, there were international protests, spanning from Sweden to America when Friedman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1976.

In October 1988, after returning from a lecture tour of China during which he had met with Zhao Ziyang, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Friedman wrote to The Stanford Daily asking if he should anticipate a similar "avalanche of protests for having been willing to give advice to so evil a government?

He also strongly influenced Keith Joseph, who became Thatcher's senior advisor on economic affairs, as well as Alan Walters and Patrick Minford, two other key advisers.

[225] However, some journalists and economists like Noah Smith and Scott Sumner have argued Friedman's academic legacy has been buried under his political philosophy and misinterpreted by modern conservatives.

[231] When asked about it during an interview with Icelandic TV in 1984,[232] Friedman said that the criticism referred to a different problem from that which he and Schwartz had tackled, and hence was irrelevant,[233] and pointed out the lack of consequential peer review amongst econometricians on Hendry's work.

[238] Economist Noah Smith argues that while Friedman made many important contributions to economic theory not all of his ideas relating to macroeconomics have entirely held up over the years and that too few people are willing to challenge them.

[252][253] James Tobin questioned the importance of velocity of money, and how informative this measure of the frequency of transactions is to the understanding of the various fluctuations observed in A Monetary History of the United States.

[254] Economic historian Barry Eichengreen argued that because of the gold standard, which was at this point in time the chief monetary system of the world, the Federal Reserve's hands were tied.

This was because, to retain the credibility of the gold standard, the Federal Reserve could not undertake actions like dramatically expanding the money supply as proposed by Friedman and Schwartz.