Friedman and Reagan

As I was reading Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom," I could not help but notice the striking similarity between his words and the public rhetoric of Ronald Reagan. Economic freedom for Friedman is "an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom." Political freedom and economic freedom are linked: Friedman can find "no example in time or place of society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity" (pp. 9).

Now consider this excerpt from the Economic Report of the President, February 1982 (p. 27):

"Political freedom and economic freedom are closely related...All nations which have broad-based representative government and civil liberties have most of their economic activity organized by the market...The evidence is striking. No nation in which the government has the dominant economic role...has maintained broad political freedom."

Government is necessary for the protection of freedom, Friedman continues, but concentration of power in political hands is also a great threat to freedom. To achieve the benefits of government while checking its threat to freedom, Friedman suggests government must be limited and political power widely dispersed.  Where government power exists, it is better that it be done "in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington." If a citizen object to the actions of their city, county, or state, he "can move to another"; if power is centralized in Washington, he has "few alternatives in this world of jealous nations" (pp. 5-6, 13-18).

Here's Reagan again (pp.5-6, 36):

"We should use the level of government closest to the community involved for all the functions it can handle...One constraint on the power of any government to impose costs on its citizens is the ability of those citizens to move elsewhere. Thus, one argument for reliance on state government is essentially that it restricts the power of the government, since any state which passed laws which were sufficiently inefficient would probably find itself losing residents."

The consonance should not be surprising: Reagan was as open in his admiration for Friedman as Friedman was lavish in his praise of Reagan. Friedman served as an economic adviser to the Reagan administration. But further comparison of the economic philosophies of President Reagan and Professor Friedman yields so many startling similarities -- not just in substance, but in style -- that the Economic Report's discussion of the proper role of government almost reads like a spark notes version of Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. If someone switched out a few lines from the book with lines from the report, I probably wouldn't notice.