Why your boss’s boss got a massive bonus while your wages stayed flat?
Two names. Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. Let’s break it down.
Milton Friedman — The Brain
This guy basically wrote the rulebook that Corporate America lived by for 50 years. His big idea? Simple:
“A company’s only job is to make money for its shareholders. Full stop.”
That’s it. No responsibility to workers. No responsibility to communities. No responsibility to the environment. Just number go up.
He also convinced Reagan that the government was the problem, not the solution — slash taxes, deregulate everything, let the “free market” sort it out.
Reagan basically handed Friedman’s economics textbook to his cabinet and said “do this.”
That’s Reaganomics.
Alan Greenspan — The Enforcer
Greenspan was Friedman’s ideas in action. As Fed Chairman for 19 years (1987–2006) he:
Kept interest rates artificially low
Fought ANY regulation of Wall Street
Watched the mortgage/derivatives casino get completely out of control
Basically said “the market will regulate itself”
Then 2008 happened.
In one of the most legendary “oops” moments in economic history, Greenspan sat before Congress and admitted he’d found “a flaw” in his ideology. The man who ran the entire U.S. economy for two decades said the quiet part out loud — he was wrong.
The Legacy — Rogue Capitalism
Between the two of them they unleashed:
Shareholder value above ALL else
Deregulated banks doing whatever they wanted
CEO pay going from 20x worker pay → 350x
The 2008 financial crisis
Wealth inequality not seen since the Gilded Age
Bottom line?
Friedman gave capitalism a philosophy. Greenspan gave it the keys to the car. And then nobody was really held accountable when it crashed.
The ideas weren’t entirely wrong — free markets DO create wealth. But without guardrails? You get rogue capitalism — profits privatized, losses socialized, and regular people left holding the bag.
TL;DR — Two brilliant guys convinced the world that deregulation and shareholder primacy were the answer. Worked great… until it really, really didn’t.