Month: October 2025

Who Protects the Worker? – The Myth of the Pro-Labor Union The eighth major argument in Free to Choose challenges the widely held belief that labor unions and government intervention have been the primary forces behind the dramatic improvement in the economic condition of the American worker. The Friedmans argue that this narrative is a myth. The true source of rising wages and better working conditions, they contend, has been the enormous increase in productivity driven by capital investment and technological innovation within a competitive free-market system. Far from being the worker’s universal protector, labor unions are, in this view, a form

The Cure for Inflation – Inflation as a Monetary Disease The ninth major argument in Free to Choose is a direct and uncompromising diagnosis of the causes and cure of inflation. The Friedmans argue that inflation is not a complex, multifaceted problem with a dozen different causes, as politicians and commentators often suggest. It is, in their famous formulation, “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Substantial, sustained inflation has one and only one cause: a rate of growth in the quantity of money that is more rapid than the rate of growth in the output of goods and services. Understanding this simple but profound

The Tide Is Turning – Reclaiming Freedom Through Constitutional Limits The final and culminating argument of Free to Choose is both a hopeful diagnosis of the present and a radical prescription for the future. The Friedmans contend that the intellectual and popular tide that has for fifty years favored ever-bigger government—the philosophy of the New Deal and the welfare state—is finally turning. A widespread and growing disillusionment with the failures of government has created a historic opportunity to change course. However, this change will not happen on its own. The political system as it is currently structured contains a fundamental, self-perpetuating bias