By Wayne Pac
There have been many people in our society that have fought for Liberty, and have been strong proponents of liberty. Some people have been part of the Abolitionist movement that helped end slavery. Some people have been part of the early Feminist movement that allowed women to vote. Others have been part of Academia and the fiscal sciences. This list of top five liberty-friendly economists is based on the messages that they conveyed and the things they accomplished during their time. The list is in no particular order.
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an amazing economist who received a Nobel Prize in the economic sciences. Friedman accomplished many things, and he said his proudest achievement was helping to eliminate the military draft in the United States. Friedman wrote Capitalism and Freedom. In this book, he advocated for many things, including the fact that he thought the Military should be all volunteers.
His book also talked about an income tax that could essentially eliminate all welfare and benefits, instead replacing the income tax with a Negative Income Tax. His works provide many perspectives that Libertarians think are very liberty-friendly. It’s no wonder that a lot of Libertarians praise Milton Friedman.
F. A. Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek was an economist who was a stalwart defender of Classical Liberalism. He received a Nobel Prize in the economic sciences, as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George H. W. Bush. Hayek was an economist who wrote many works, one of which was a scholarly article titled The Use of Knowledge in Society. This article was made as a rebuttal to another economist who was a strong proponent of a planned economy, rather than a free economy.
In this work, Hayek talked about the nature of price fluctuations and how they benefit the economy. He argued that this is due to the fact that the economy runs off the actions of many different individuals, and that to have a singular or a few government officials trying to run the economy themselves would be preposterous: the intelligence of many different individuals is much more likely to be larger than the intelligence of a few individuals. Hayek’s article The use of Knowledge in Society was selected as the top 20 all-time articles published at The American Economic Review in 2011.
Ludwig von Mises
Of course Mises is on this list, as he is an obvious example of a libertarian-friendly economist. Mises, as well as Hayek, were of the Austrian School of Economics, which is a school of economic thought that pertains to the individuality of the market. Hayek had said that Mises was “one of the most educated and informed men I have ever known.”
Like Hayek, many economists of his time that were from the Austrian School of thought didn’t have mainstream respect from other economists. It wasn’t until the 70s and 80s that the Austrian school gained popularity within many economic thinking circles. Mises was a speaker most of the time, and went to colleges to speak to students that had heard of his reputation in Europe.
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is a more contemporary economist. He publishes works from a libertarian conservative perspective, and is a strong proponent of supply-Side Economics. Supply-side gives the perspective called the “Laffer curve.” It essentially explains that lowering tax rates across the board can generate more government revenue due to the fact that less taxed money can generate more economic activity. This in turn opens up vastly more different opportunities for revenues. Sowell, as well as being a libertarian, is also a National Humanities Medal recipient.
Sowell dropped out of high school and served as a Marine in the Vietnam War. Sowell worked at a civil service job in Washington D.C. and attended night classes at Howard University. He had high scores on the College Board exams, as well as recommendations from two professors, which helped him gain admission to Harvard University. He then graduated from Harvard magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He then earned a Master’s degree from Columbia University the following year. The interesting thing about Sowell is that he openly admits he was a Marxist during his 20’s and wrote a few publications about Marxism and Marxist-Lenin practices. Sowell is a major proponent abolishing minimum wage, explaining that it adversely affects poor people negatively.
Walter E. Williams
Williams has been a professor at George Mason University since the 80s. Williams has written 10 books and countless articles. Williams is a proponent of free market economics and opposes socialist systems of government intervention. It is of Williams belief that laissez-faire capitalism is the most moral and productive system that humans have ever devised. Williams, like Sowell, believes that minimum wage negatively impacts minority employment. He states that minimum wage laws, as well as affirmative action laws, inhibit freedom, and are detrimental to the exact people they are proposed to help.
He conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. He published his findings in a book called The State Against Blacks. In this book, he argues that laws regulating the economy are far greater obstacles for blacks to overcome than racial bigotry and discrimination. He has also spoken out that minimum wage eliminates opportunity for minorities to gain employment. Williams is also a strong proponent of the 2nd amendment, and has repeatedly said that gun control laws do way more harm than good. Bruce Tinsley once launched a campaign in his comic strip Mallard Fillmore to draft Williams as a presidential nominee for the Republican party, to which Williams decided not to run, and instead endorsed Ron Paul for the nomination.