Milton Friedman: American economist and statistician (1912–2006)

He believed in monetarism. Monetarism is the theory that how much money the government prints each year has a huge effect on the economy. He supported the government printing the same low rate of money each year rather than a different amount each year.

Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Hungarian-Jewish family. He was raised in Rahway, New Jersey. Friedman studied at Rutgers University, at Columbia University, and at the University of Chicago. He worked thirty years in Chicago with George Stigler as a leader of the Chicago school of economics.

During the 1970s, Milton Friedman's idea of monetarism gained popularity and he became an economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan.

Friedman believed that the government control over the economy should be limited. He supported cutting taxes, lowering government spending, getting rid of government rules that limited the economy and letting parents choose which school their taxes paid for. His political views were libertarian. He was against forcing people to join the army, and said that getting rid of United States military conscription was the thing he was most proud of doing.

Throughout several decades, Friedman made many documentaries, books, and interviews to express his views to the public. The main books he wrote were Capitalism and Freedom and Free to Choose.

Friedman married Rose Director in 1938. Together, they had a son and a daughter. He was agnostic.

Friedman died of heart failure in San Francisco, California, aged 94. He was survived by his wife and his two children. His remains were cremated and scattered over the San Francisco Bay area.