George Gilder on the Materialist Superstition

[Geee]

American Spectator:

I WAS AT THE WATERGATE THE OTHER EVENING for a book party, held in the apartment of John Wohlstetter. He has a grand piano, a beautiful view over the Potomac River, and a book to sell. Actually there were two books: Wohlstetter’s Sleepwalking with the Bomb (see TAS, October 2012) and a new edition of George Gilder’s best seller Wealth and Poverty (Regnery Publishing). Gilder’s original text is augmented by a new prologue and epilogue and a section on monetary policy.

 

 

With Wealth and Poverty (1981), Gilder, who would go on to co-found the Discovery Institute, became one of the leading supply-siders. This is a school of thought that aims to revive the economy by reducing income- and capital-gains tax rates. Also regulations. President Reagan agreed, and by 1983 the U.S. economy had improved dramatically. In contrast, Gilder writes that under Obama we have experienced

a morbid subversion of the infostructures of its economy. The public sector has become a manipulative force, aggressively intervening in the venture and financial sectors with guarantees and subventions that attract talent and debauch it. At the same time the government provides constant downside surprises of taxation, currency devaluation, and multifarious regulation.

 

This in turn has lead to “real estate depreciation, disinvestment, capital flight, skilled emigration and contraction of private employment.” Obama has been so “drastically negative” toward the private economy that the right changes could release “huge positive energies.” That happened in Canada, New Zealand, and Israel. Here, we need a “full supply-side solution.”