The Benefits of Capitalism and Freedom Will Survive the Financial Crisis and This Seminar

My meeting and subsequent long association with my mentor and friend, Milton Friedman, some of his contributions to economics, public policy, and the Chicago School, are described. The meeting with Friedman was due to a late night passenger in my Checker cab, Abram Lincoln Harris, Jr, a prominent economist whom, I was told, was a founder of the Association of Social Economics that cosponsored the seminar where this paper was presented. I had studied under Abba Lerner at Roosevelt University. Lerner was instrumental in bringing Keynesian economics to the United States. Due to the intervention of Harris and Friedman I was able to study under outstanding economists at the University of Chicago without paying tuition. Descriptions of Friedman's views, including his negative income tax that led to the passage of the largest means-tested anti-poverty program in the United States and some of his other views on the efficient market and rational expectations theories are described. His belief in the benefits of capitalism and freedom will survive this financial crisis under conditions I describe.