Center on Wealth & Poverty
Washington’s role in the housing crisis still hasn’t hit home We’re nearing the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis boil-over, but Washington is still in denial about its role in the meltdown. The numbers, which weren’t well known in 2008, now tell the real story. As a result of Washington’s arduous efforts to expand homeownership for lower-income Americans, by Read More ›
Just a generation after the collapse of the Soviet socialist system, a recent Pew poll reports that 49% of Americans 18-29 years old have a positive view of socialism, while only 46% have positive views of capitalism. The ambivalence toward capitalism is due in part to the influence of the information and entertainment class — the mainstream media, Hollywood and Read More ›
Just a generation after capitalism triumphed with the collapse of the Soviet socialist system, a recent Pew poll reports that 49 percent of Americans 18-29 years old have a positive view of socialism while only 46 percent have positive views of capitalism. The ambivalence toward capitalism is due in part to the influence of the information and entertainment class — Read More ›
We’re not doomed. At least not according to George Gilder’s challenging and insightful Knowledge and Power.
Plenty of nations have lost their way, and this present distress is not the first time we’ve gotten off course. But according to Gilder, although human beings are wired to receive information, we are currently starved of new ideas because our current ruling class in politics and media is basically just transmitting the same old noise. According to Gilder, when politicians try to match their message to ‘public opinion’ they stultify the political process. The job of leaders is not to reflect back ghostly images of the already spectral enough phantom known as public opinion. The job of leaders is to teach the public something they don’t already know. The third and final installment of our interview with Gilder follows below:
Jerry: “I kind of imagine you speak this signal into the current intellectual milieu and the libertarians say, “Wait, what’s all this stuff about family?” And the sort of nostalgic right say, “Wait, what are all these new jobs from overseas? They’re going to mess up American culture.” I mean, you’re at odds, to some degree, with the sort of religious right nostalgists, “let’s keep everything 9-5”, lunch bucket kind of thing. You’re also at odds with the libertarians who want to redefine family and redefine the traditional moral code—“
George: “Those are fair statements.”
Jerry: “On the other hand, you are, I think, creating a new intellectual structure in which those divergent elements can be reunited, almost reuniting the Reagan coalition on information theory.”
George: “Yeah, I think so. That’s really the purpose of it; it’s to show that both sides are right, it’s to put freedom on a more secure foundation and to put constitutional government and political leadership on a better foundation. I mean, all the heroic inventions of entrepreneurs on the frontiers of science are ultimately dependent on the discipline, moral codes, and leadership by politicians and leaders and ministers and priests, and the whole body of people defending the low-entropy carriers are also indispensable to the high-entropy creators.”
Jerry: “So, we await a new political entrepreneur not to wait for the public to understand this on his own, but to take this message that reunites the Reagan coalition and go out and actively teach it and create a demand for the supply of these answers in the political sphere.”
George: “I think that’s right. And I’m very optimistic. You know, the good thing about a knowledge economy, an economy of mind, is that it can change as quickly as people’s minds can change. In my book, Knowledge and Power, there’s a whole chapter full of examples of countries that have radically transformed their economies in weeks once policies have been changed. From the United States, we’ve reduced government spending 61% in two years after the second world war, with the Republican Congress of 1946. We cut tax rates all over the place through the joint tax return. We dismantled all the regulatory apparatus of the wartime, and much of the new deal. All Keynesian economists thought that the result would be a catastrophe, Paul Samuelson said it would be the worst disruption and disaster and depression in the history of economics. Instead, we launched what’s now looked back on as a golden age of American economic progress.”
Read More ›Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder talked about his book Knowledge and Power at Freedom Fest with Book TV. The video of the interview can be found here.
This article, published by Forbes, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder: I recently had the pleasure of a delightful hour-long conversation with George Gilder, the influential supply-side economist who helped launch and shape the Reagan revolution with his book Wealth and Poverty, the tech revolution with his books Microcosm, the connectivity revolution with his book Telecosm, and perhaps a Read More ›
The New York Times pre-publishes its best seller list and there it is, for “August 25”, Infiltrated by Discovery Senior Fellow Jay Richards is Number 4. Infiltrated (McGraw-Hill Education) provides riveting revelations of hypocrisy by extremely well-founded pseudo-reformers who helped collapse the housing economy with unsupportable below-grade loans. The pseudo-reformers made a killing for themselves, then used their money to fund attacks on the Read More ›
In this short clip, bestselling author and famed economist George Gilder answers your question about Capitalism and what sets it apart from other economic theories. Read More ›
This article, published by Forbes, contains an interview with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow George Gilder: George Gilder made a name for himself with his instant classic Wealth and Poverty. Published in 1981, it appeared at precisely the right moment, explaining the principles of supply side economics, while revealing that the left didn’t have a monopoly on intellectuals. It also showed that Read More ›
August 5 (Bloomberg) — Chairman of George Gilder Fund Management George Gilder discusses cable innovation and the future of technology with Cory Johnson on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)
America: be warned. A new wave of financial reformers has infiltrated our public institutions at both the state and national levels. A growing army of self-proclaimed activists, philanthropists, and politicians has infiltrated not only the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but the FDIC, the Treasury, and other regulatory agencies. This explosive new book from New York Times bestselling author Jay W. Read More ›
Why in the world do we need yet another “new” economics? Jamming the libraries and the bookstores of the world are avatars of what must be every variation on the great themes of market and managerial economics. Scores of Nobel Prizes have been awarded for various nugatory refinements of the prevailing ideas. All these schemes, however, fail to answer the Read More ›