Gale Pooley

Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & Poverty

Gale L. Pooley is an associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. He has taught economics and statistics at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho.

Dr. Pooley earned his BBA in Economics at Boise State University. He did graduate work at Montana State University and completed his PhD at the University of Idaho. His dissertation topic was on the Knowledge Acquisition Preferences of the CEOs of the Inc. 500.

In 1986 he founded Analytix Group, a real estate valuation and consulting firm. The Analytix Group has performed over 5,000 appraisals in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Pooley has held professional designations from the Appraisal Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, and the CCIM Institute.

He has published articles in National Review, HumanProgress, The American Spectator, FEE, the Utah Bar Journal, the Appraisal Journal, Quillette, and RealClearMarkets. 

Dr. Pooley is a Fellow with the Discovery Institute and serves on the board of HumanProgress.org. He also serves on the Foundation for Economic Education Faculty Network and is a Scholar with Hawaii's Grassroot Institute. He is also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He has presented at FreedomFest and the COSM Technology conference.

His major research activity has been the Simon Abundance Index, which he co-authored with Dr. Marian Tupy.

 

Archives

Bicycles on Sale: 95.4% Off

Gale Pooley
August 1, 2021
In 1910 it took 66.4 hours to earn the money to buy a bicycle. Today it takes only three. The time price has fallen by 95.4 percent. You get 22 bicycles today for the time price of one in 1910.

Life Has Gotten Sweeter – Literally!

Gale Pooley
July 1, 2021
Trade benefits humanity in a myriad of ways. It allows us to discover the true value of goods and services. It promotes cooperation by building trust between contracting parties. And, most obviously, it enables us to buy goods and services that we would not be able to produce ourselves.

The Changing Cost of Thanksgiving Dinner

It's not as bad as you might think.
Gale Pooley
November 26, 2020
On this Thanksgiving Day, let us be thankful for all the American inventors and innovators who enrich our lives with plentiful food and, hopefully, a cure for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Revisiting the Simon-Ehrlich Wager 40 Years On

Gale Pooley
October 13, 2020
And so, as you listen to the purveyors of doom on the television and the radio, and read apocalyptic predictions of humanity’s future on Twitter and in the newspapers, bear in mind that with every hungry mouth comes a pair of hands and a brain capable of thought, planning, and innovation.

Revisiting the Simon-Ehrlich Wager 40 Years On

Gale Pooley
October 13, 2020
And so, as you listen to the purveyors of doom on the television and the radio, and read apocalyptic predictions of humanity’s future on Twitter and in the newspapers, bear in mind that with every hungry mouth comes a pair of hands and a brain capable of thought, planning, and innovation.

Discovery Research Fellow Gale Pooley: Are We Doomed to Run Out of Resources?

Gale Pooley
February 11, 2020
Are humans using up Earth’s scarce resources too quickly, posing an existential threat to humanity itself, as the chief villain in the popular movies “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” believed? No, says Discovery Research Fellow Gale Pooley, an economist and associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, who more fully explained his answer Monday, Sept. 9th at a luncheon on Maui sponsored by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Pooley recently co-authored with Cato Institute senior policy analyst Marian L. Tupy a study, “The Simon Abundance Index: A New Way to Measure Availability of Resources,” showing that Earth’s resources are actually becoming more plentiful.

The Simon Abundance Index

A New Way to Measure Availability of Resources
Gale Pooley
February 11, 2020
Are we running out of resources? That’s been a hotly debated question since the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb in 1968. The Stanford University biologist warned that population growth would result in the exhaustion of resources and a global catastrophe. University of Maryland economist and Cato Institute’s Senior Fellow Julian Simon, in contrast, argued that humans would Read More ›

New Discovery Fellow Gale Pooley’s Simon Abundance Index Cited in Wired

Gale Pooley
October 31, 2019
Excerpt: Researchers Gale Pooley and Marian Tupy calculate the “Simon Abundance Index,” which takes into account both global population and the prices of 50 commodities important for human welfare — everything from sugar to salmon to iron ore to natural gas — expressed in terms of how long the average person in the world has to work to afford one unit of each. Every one of the 50 has become more affordable since 1980, even as global population has exploded, and most have become several times more affordable. The aggregate Abundance Index was set equal to 100 in 1980; by 2019 it had climbed to almost 620. Continue Reading …