I read an interview with Milton Friedman (and his wife) in yesterday's Asian Wall Street Journal, titled "The Romance of Economics" (Use E-Newspaper to read it.). He is a brilliant economist, albeit a controversial figure. I learned a few things about him from the article. He is 94 years old (no wonder that I thought the interview was an imaginary one before reading it). He still keeps his office at Stanford. His wife is strong-willed. He and his wife are staunch Republicans.

A couple of snippets from the interview stick out in my mind (edited quotes):

Question: Is there a romantic side to economics?

Answer: No, I don't think so. There's a romantic side to economics in the same way there's a romantic side to physics. Fundamentally, economics is a science, like physics, like chemistry... It's a science about how human beings organize their cooperative activities.

....

Question: Is immigration, especially illegal immigration, good for the economy or bad?

Answer: It's neither one nor the other. But it's good for freedom. In principle, you ought to have completely open immigration. But with the welfare state it's really not possible to do that...If there were no welfare state, you could have open immigration, because everybody would be responsible for himself..you can't have open immigration without largely the elimination of welfare.