George Gilder

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How Do Tax Rates Affect Revenue?

_{George Gilder author of Knowledge & Power}_{George Gilder
September 3, 2013}

In this short clip bestselling author and influential thinker George Gilder discusses how tax rates affect revenue and, as a result, affect you. In his new book Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World, Gilder synthesizes his analysis of technology and economics to build a new theory of …

Surprise and Creativity

_{Notes toward a new economics}_{George Gilder
August 5, 2013}

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 key questions about any economic theory, which were posed by Irving Kristol nearly 35 years ago. Can the theory provide a moral or “transcendental” justification for its results, so that it is politically acceptable? And can it explain growth and creativity? Kristol was cofounder and editor first of Encounter and then of the Public Interest, two of the world’s most eminent and influential publications, which had served to …

The Scandal of Computer Security

_{George Gilder
July 25, 2013}

How are companies and consumers supposed to feel confident in their cyber-defense systems when security giants themselves fall victim to attacks? This pattern of ever-increasing expenditures with ever-deteriorating results bespeaks a failed technological paradigm and calls for a new approach to the problem. Fortunately such a new approach is readily available.

Kentucky Telecom Law Needs Update

_{Hance Haney and George Gilder
January 1, 2013}

To view this article in its entirety, please click here to download the PDF …

Romney, Bain, and Me

_{George Gilder
August 31, 2012}

Across from the oldest cemetery in Boston under chandeliers at the Parker House, the Bain meeting brought together, as I recall, perhaps 100 men in suits. Notable in the group were Bain himself, a spruce young man with blond hair brushed straight back, and an Israeli woman, Orit Gadiesh, who within 10 years would rise to the top of the organization. But Bain seemed more eager to introduce me to one Mitt Romney.

George Gilder: The Real Reagan Lesson for Romney-Ryan

_{Follow Peter Drucker's advice: Don't solve problems, pursue opportunities. Like unlocking America's entrepreneurial value.}_{George Gilder
August 30, 2012}

How can Messrs. Romney and Ryan escape the Stockman fate? By grasping the Peter Drucker wisdom: Don't Solve Problems. When you solve problems, you end up feeding your failures, starving your strengths, and achieving costly mediocrity. You become a Stockman. Instead of solving problems, pursue opportunities.

Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century

_{George Gilder
August 21, 2012}

Hailed as “the guide to capitalism,” the New York Times bestseller Wealth and Poverty by George F. Gilder is one of the most famous economic books of all time and has sold more than one million copies since its first release. In this influential classic, Gilder explains and makes the case for supply-side economics, proves the moral superiority of free-market capitalism, and shows why supply-side economics are more effective at decreasing poverty than government-regulated markets. Now, in this new and completely updated edition of Wealth and Poverty, Gilder compares America’s current economic challenges with her past economic problems–particularly those of the late 1970s–and explains why Obama’s big-government, redistributive policies are doing more harm than good for the …

Unleash the Mind

_{George Gilder
August 13, 2012}

Capitalism is the supreme expression of human creativity and freedom, an economy of mind overcoming the constraints of material power. It is not simply a practical success, a “worst of all systems except for the rest of them." It is dynamic, a force that pushes human enterprise down spirals of declining costs and greater abundance.

The Economic Case for Supporting Israel

_{America needs the Jewish state's technology and innovation as much as it needs us.}_{George Gilder
July 5, 2011}

America's enemies understand deeply and intuitively that no U.S. goals or resources in the Middle East are remotely as important as Israel. Why don't we?

High Tech Will Rebuild Our Economy

_{George Gilder and Bruce Chapman
June 19, 2011}

The restructuring of our economy is as significant as the recession. Tech writer George Gilder (Microcosm, Telecosm and, most recently, The Israel Test) will describe the way new technology can rescue the US, and the world, from the present slump. Some think the high tech revolution is exhausted; Gilder says, “Not so …

The Economics of Settlement

_{George Gilder
June 8, 2011}

The root cause of Middle Eastern turmoil, according to a broad consensus of the international media and the considered cerebrations of the deepest-thinking movie stars, is Israeli settlers in what are described as the “occupied territories” on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Even such celebrated and fervent supporters of Israel as Alan Dershowitz and Bernard-Henri Lévy put the settlers beyond the pale of their Zionist sympathies. Remove the settlers, according to these sage analyses of the scene, and the problems of the region become remediable at last. Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute adds to these political concerns a coming environmental catastrophe, also presumably aggravated by the Israeli settlers and their hydrophilic irrigation projects. He sees the …

The California Green Debauch

_{George Gilder
February 1, 2011}

California’s Treasurer Bill Lockyer has a bridge he wants to sell you. No, he is not putting the Golden Gate on the market. That would actually find buyers. He is trying to foist a “bridge loan” on the country that in effect would require us to buy the entire state. Shuffling off the streets of Sacramento into the bond market a few weeks ago seeking to raise some $14 billion in so-called “revenue anticipation notes,” Lockyer is offering notes that can be repaid only by future revenue anticipation notes, in a delusional statewide recycling binge of bonds on bonds. Since the state at the same time officially projected $20 billion annual deficits for the next six years (Governor elect Jerry Brown says $28 billion in 2011), the end of this road is another of those bridges to …

Wisconsin Telecom Policy Needs Update

_{Regulation hampers ability of telecom providers to create and maintain jobs and opportunity in Wisconsin}_{George Gilder and Hance Haney
November 30, 2010}

FULL REPORT (PDF) SUMMARY In 1994 the Legislature revised Wisconsin’s telecommunications law to permit and encourage competition as a catalyst for delivering new technologies, improved service quality and choice among telecommunications providers and ultimately lower prices for consumers. Although the 1994 act opened the market to competitive entry, it contains significant vestiges of legacy regulation that are no longer necessary to protect consumers. They also are having the unintended effect of preventing full competition which is necessary to stimulate the deployment of new technologies. By advantaging some providers and disadvantaging others, legacy regulation acts as a restraint on competition. Ensuring that consumers reap the full benefits of competition will require the …

California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby

_{George Gilder
November 16, 2010}

California officials acknowledged last Thursday that the state faces $20 billion deficits every year from now to 2016. At the same time, California’s state Treasurer entered bond markets to sell some $14 billion in “revenue anticipation notes” over the next two weeks. Worst of all, economic sanity lost out in what may have been the most important election on Nov. 2 — and, no, I’m not talking about the gubernatorial or senate races. This was the California referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32, the so-called Global Warming Solutions Act, which ratchets the state’s economy back to 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2020. That’s a 30% drop followed by a mandated 80% overall drop by 2050. Together with a $500 billion public-pension overhang, the new …

The Drive to Create

_{George Gilder
August 16, 2010}

In a castle in Newcastle, complete with reflecting pool, dappled woods nooked with marble sculptures, and pastures lowing with cattle, Matt Ridley, dean of British science writers and author of four erudite, Darwinian bestsellers, might seem an intellectual grandee ready for an honorable, bland retirement in a North Country Eden, perhaps readying himself for the House of Lords. But at the end of his lawn, invisible throughout a leisurely walk down its length, is a vast and amazing surprise that offers a vivid portent of this new Ridley book: a tome as unexpected and as ambitious and as contrarian as a massive coal mine under an environmentalist’s lawn. Far below, a visitor can descry the tractors and extractors crawling around in the dirt like yellow-jacketed ants. And like the …

Unnecessary telecom regulations hurting Illinois

_{Hance Haney and George Gilder
March 21, 2010}

The National Broadband Plan presented to Congress on Tuesday by the Federal Communications Commission aims to connect every U.S. household to the fastest broadband as soon as possible, a goal which the agency’s staff estimates could cost $350 billion. Much of that investment will have to come from private industry, agency officials have conceded. This month, the Discovery Institute conducted a study for the Illinois Technology Partnership, the Illinois State Black Chamber of Commerce and the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that found simple updates to the Illinois Telecommunications Act will spur this critical, private sector investment in broadband infrastructure which will lead to job creation and retention in Illinois. Every resident of Illinois and the nation should have …

Illinois’ Incomplete Telecom Report Card

_{Remnant telecom regulation threatens jobs and opportunity in Illinois}_{Hance Haney and George Gilder
March 17, 2010}

FULL REPORT (PDF) SUMMARY In 1985, the Illinois General Assembly declared that “competition should be pursued as a substitute for regulation,” delivering new technologies, improved service quality, choice among telecommunications providers and ultimately lower prices for consumers. The goal of the 1985 act, which was to open the market to competition, has been achieved, but not the task of ensuring that consumers will reap the full benefits of competition – which requires eliminating legacy regulation that is no longer necessary to protect consumers, harms competition and that limits the deployment of new technologies by advantaging some providers and disadvantaging others. By simple reforms of outdated laws, Illinois can ignite a spiral of innovation and revival based on new …

Cap and Trade for the Internet

_{George Gilder
March 16, 2010}

Under Chairman Julius Genachowski, Al Gore’s old friends at the Federal Communications Commission are out to reinvent the Internet. In the name of a bogus crisis in broadband deployment, the FCC is today lathering on an array of network stimuli and subsidies as part of a new “National Broadband Plan” that will transform this current font of U.S. economic growth into a consumer of taxes and a playground for pettifogs. This subsidy plan comes on top of previous ill-defined “network neutrality” requirements that would bar carriers from charging different prices for different forms of Internet content. Whether spam, TV programs, pornography, stolen video, movie downloads, streaming games, cyberwar intrusions or sensitive voice services, carriers of Internet …

The Cut That Heals

_{George Gilder
February 22, 2010}

For the last ten years or so, I have been urging drastic reductions in the U.S. payroll tax, which funds Social Security. If we want to reduce tax rates without falling into the rhetorical trap of “tax cuts for the rich,” then the payroll tax is our best target — and the one that will affect the most employment decisions. Now I am feeling the heat of the herd as bipartisan throngs join me in the cause. An unharmonious choir of politicians and thinkers, most of whom agree on little else, is singing the virtues of cutting the payroll tax. Among them are Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, Massachusetts miracle Scott Brown, Alaskan rogue Sarah Palin, the American Enterprise Institute’s John Makin, economist Russell Roberts of George Mason University, and former Bush advisers Larry …

Future Imperfect

_{George Gilder
February 8, 2010}

In this intriguingly contrarian rework of the Thomas Friedman “hot and flat” motif, Gregg Easterbrook asserts that venture capitalists are no better than lottery players when it comes to choosing new technology companies. He reports that leading stock analysts outperform broad market-index funds only one-third of the time. He adds that the preeminent financial pundits break into two groups — pessimists like Robert Shiller and Nouriel Roubini, who are right during downturns, and optimists like Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs, who are right during upturns. (There are no up-and-down visionaries like Steve Forbes or Ken Fisher visible anywhere on his horizon.) Easterbrook, a writer for The Atlantic and The New Republic, winningly acknowledges that “wonderful …