When Rep. Tom Tiffany reminisced in the Milwaukee Journal (Nov 17, 2025)  about his days studying economics at UW–River Falls, he worried that today’s economics departments no longer teach much about free markets. He can rest easy. The competitive market model remains the backbone of every introductory economics course in the country—from UW campuses to community colleges to the Ivy League.

            Pick up any standard textbook and you’ll find the same core ideas Tiffany encountered in 1980: supply and demand, market equilibrium, price signals, and the efficiency of competitive markets. Milton Friedman, whose work Tiffany credits with “opening his eyes,” is certainly regarded as one of the top economist of the modern era -- especially in the area of monetary policy, free trade, low tariffs and immigration -- and his views are part of a broad and rich discussion of economics.   Most importantly, he was a strong advocate of using scientific method in the theoretical and empirical facets of economics. And, frankly, he would be appalled by current economic policy.

            But here’s the part of economics that often gets lost in political rhetoric: the free‑market model is a benchmark, not a blanket prescription. Economists teach students the conditions under which markets work well—and the equally important conditions under which they don’t. For markets to achieve textbook efficiency, we need enforceable property rights, good information, many buyers and sellers, low transaction costs, and the absence of externalities, among other prerequisites.

            These are demanding conditions. They rarely hold perfectly in the real world. That’s why so many policy debates revolve around cases where markets fail. Childcare has large social benefits that private markets underprovide. Carbon emissions impose costs on others that polluters have no incentive to consider. Health insurance markets break down when some of the people who need care most are priced out. In these situations, “let the market handle it” isn’t an economic argument—it’s a slogan that ignores the  principles of economics.

            The encouraging part of Tiffany’s comments is that they suggest economics might finally take a more prominent role in Wisconsin’s policy debates. Too often, issues with clear economic dimensions are decided without reference to the discipline that studies them.