Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Friedman proposed a negative income tax to replace the existing welfare system. Friedman's essay "The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953) provided the epistemological pattern for his own subsequent research and to a degree that of the Chicago School. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.

He theorized there existed a "natural" rate of unemployment and argued that governments could increase employment above this rate (e. by increasing aggregate demand) only at the risk of causing inflation to accelerate. His ideas concerning monetary policy taxation privatization and deregulation influenced government policies especially during the 1980s.