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Wealth & Poverty Review What is the Best Way to Spur the Economy Now?


Discovery Institute co-founder George Gilder is one of a number of writers asked by the Wall Street Journal (on its 125th anniversary) to give advice for the economy. His is to sunset regulatory regimes, following the sage opinion of the late Peter Drucker:

The key problem is the same one that Drucker identified in 1966–a glut of regulations and programs that no longer serve their purposes but which constitute a nearly insuperable barrier for creative new enterprise . . . Most efforts focus on making regulations more efficient. But efficient performance of futile or obstructive functions makes the problems worse. What we need is what Peter Drucker recommended: expiration dates for regulations.

Wouldn’t this keep Congress preoccupied deciding what regulations to cut and which to continue? Well, yes, and what would be wrong with that?

Bruce Chapman

Cofounder and Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute
Bruce Chapman has had a long career in American politics and public policy at the city, state, national, and international levels. Elected to the Seattle City Council and as Washington State's Secretary of State, he also served in several leadership posts in the Reagan administration, including ambassador. In 1991, he founded the public policy think tank Discovery Institute, where he currently serves as Chairman of the Board and director of the Chapman Center on Citizen Leadership.