On this day in New York · July 31, 1912
Milton Friedman Is Born in Brooklyn
A Brooklyn baby born to penniless Jewish immigrants from the Hungarian countryside grew up to rewire how the world thinks about money, markets, and the size of government.
The facts
- Born
- July 31, 1912, in Brooklyn, New York City
- Parents
- Sára Ethel (née Landau) and Jenő Saul Friedman, Jewish immigrants from Beregszász in Carpathian Ruthenia
- Raised in
- Rahway, New Jersey, after the family left Brooklyn
- Nobel Prize
- 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
Milton Friedman was born in Brooklyn on July 31, 1912, the youngest of four children and the only son of Sára Ethel and Jenő Saul Friedman. His parents were Jewish working-class immigrants from Beregszász, a town in Carpathian Ruthenia then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, now Berehove in Ukraine. The family soon left the city for Rahway, New Jersey, where Friedman grew up before heading off to college at sixteen. He went on to become an economist at the University of Chicago, and in 1976 he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption, monetary history, and inflation. From that perch he became the century's most influential voice for free markets and a smaller state, shaping the thinking of everyone from Washington economists to Albany budget hawks.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Milton Friedman, 1963
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Friedman's monetarism and his brief for free markets reshaped Federal Reserve policy and deregulation debates for decades, all starting from a Brooklyn household his parents built from nothing.
Sources
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