The Spectator Interview: Goerge Gilder
1 our list of people whose ~deas are worth a nill lion times more than the paper they're printed on. George walks the leading edge as 5 conlfortably as most people pedal an exercise bike. He...
...tries and poor people in them to be able to perform this work which Americans used to perform but from which we've graduated to better things...
...revenues, not just government revenues- down the national debt-in absolute GILDER: Paul Krugman...
...GILDEkThe economics profession has been that wdl reliably happen are in defense...
...TAS: Nevertheless, there is a growing consensus that global warming is real...
...TAS: How nice for you...
...And we just take for granted that their top technical people are going to be very hard to understand because they do not speak English well enough to convey these complex ideas to American journalists like us.We're so surprised when the leading engineer turns out to be an American that we immediately invite him to one of our conferences so he can speak without mystifying the audience...
...Forcing them to return home is perverse and destructive to the United States...
...TAS: Ripon Republicans...
...It has no* to do TA& Is Bush getling pushed around...
...he wouldn't make the argument that rn So the Washiqpa h t and New Yo& Gomez...
...And Reagan GILDER: So-called economists who are Bush is doing in education...
...It's expensive to be an environmentalist...
...Second, if we do not maintain our defenses, we'll lose...
...Close to half of all graduate students in engineering and science at MIT are immigrants...
...So the sacrifice of leaving the home will diminish...
...He should put out a shingle as accountant...
...The scientific consensus is just the opposite: Human activity has insignificant impact on climate...
...GILDER: Zero would certainly be preferable to our current rates...
...although they do that in fairly short terms-has become a hallowed goal of Micawber of economics and has just order-but revenues across the whole American politics...
...So to restrict trade with China, while at the same time contemplating actual reductions in defense spending, is as dangerous a thing as we could do...
...G1LDER:That wealth will grow faster in their Democrats to allow us to have tax cuts...
...There is no real tax-rate reduction...
...GILDER: There are two issues in China: First, trade with China is crucial to the future of the U.S...
...So do you see any effective Republican or conservative leadership around...
...After the Reagan years there was a large nominal debt in the public sector, but the private sector was flourishing and was dominating the world economy...
...But Applied Materials and Intel have increased a hundredfold or more since then, and the semiconductor and personal computers market ended up a trillion-dollar wealth creator by 1996...
...All the real estate, the equities, the bonds, all the various assets of the economy, whlch increased in value massively during the Reagan adrmnistration largely as a result of the tax-rate reductions...
...TAS: Did studying the way economies and companies succeed affect your faith...
...GILDER: Polls work for Democrats...
...GILDER: That's right...
...For Democrats, polls are like menus...
...unfair-because he imagines them as least important effect...
...GILDER: Seriously, we bought the Spectator to have a vessel for the views of the investor class, which spearheads the economy...
...enue5.h R a p s h d the one way to is to cut...
...Far and away...
...They have no choice...
...N 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 June 2001...
...GEORGE GILDER: I think he has been polled...
...GILDER: Right...
...total national wealth of the United States...
...But I think that generosity is also the key to his success...
...TAS: So we are stuck with a perpetual arms race...
...Polled politi- ducts the U&hd of ~ar.But to cut number of jobs, to accelerate the pace of cians are incapable of leading, th& in subdies for perfwmanee &. - ~ a ~ p i e imavation...
...Feminism has spread all sorts of distress and despair in families across the country, with divorces wreaking havoc on the lives of further generations and the population explosion turning around into a drastic population collapse...
...Is it over...
...about as clear a grasp of the way to proseconomy and thus the value of assets GILDER: It's almost always a disaster...
...The virtue of debt worse than ma&la-pli&lly they are a oap...
...Whenever I actively debated anybody, they didn't have any interesting arguments THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 June 2001 41 anymore, so I thought I should learn something I didn't know about...
...ative destruction and innovation and all the energies that in fact they go on spending binges...
...So supply-side economics really has a moral source: It's based on freedom...
...Remember the surprises of Sputnik and the Soviet hydrogen bombs...
...Enjoy...
...TAS: I feel proud...
...What they should not do The Reagan adrmnistration cut tax ply-siders who are capable of appreciating is start new spending programs, thus cre- rates, and as a result they were able to the dynamics of the real economy...
...Not merely superior, but unchallengeable, to render the idea of using force against the U.S...
...And this seems like a ridiculous piece of advice, human beings have to constantly solve problems, that's what we do, what a silly idea...
...It was just too profitable around here...
...GILDER: They show up in Ths is sirmlar to what growth companies do all the time.They don't pay &vidends or pay down their debt.They keep adding more debt and issuing more shares...
...There's been a continual and beneficent recovery from that cold period...
...So no program forbidding"technology transfer" will actually be effective...
...No competition...
...new entrepreneur, every venture capitahst, size of the national debt is not GDP, it's GILDER: For the government...
...Secrecy chefly prevents Americans from using technology rather than possible adversaries from acquiring it...
...cuts Hrill k t growth and increase rer- Tima will solemnly agrte that this is a Thme pbacks am uttcrly trivia corn- enues, because his advisers did not deslgTl First Amendment issue and there will be a pared to tt~e vast expamion of the econ* the mx cut prunady hr growth, he now memendous up~oar.Advoca~ of spendmg my enrichmg millions and dons of peo- has to appear at least to pay Ebr the tax cuts will be, as David Smkrmn w s in the ple that mx-rate reduceions can accomplish, cues by d g spendmg...
...Seventeen thousand scientists, many of them experts in climate and atmospheric studies, signed a petition launched by CalTech chemist and inventor Arthur Robinson dewing humans cause global warming and that carbon dioxide is a pollutant...
...With smaller, less rule-bound companiesmand family companiesmproliferating, I believe that the natural propensity of people to live in families and raise children, entailing some of the deepest gratifications in human life, will prevail...
...If we won't trade with the Chinese, or if we crush Third World growth through other absurdities like the Kyoto treaty and the myth of human-caused global warming, then war becomes their best option.The Chinese have to rebel against any international order that restrains their growth...
...I think people will see this and these ideas will be rejected...
...Also the Grand Canyon...
...Because port that is m i W e ir mdy w! but it is wry d money to Mr...
...Christie Whitman comes from one of the richest places on the face of the earth, the horse country of New Jersey...
...excmmt will fight rn the last ditch to wilh m h g money h spendmg p m 61- He's being caddy h d d into retain chkr subsidies.They have no choice...
...get more tax menue out of the rich long You an cut d&nse qen- which swDa To expand the whole economy, to term is to cut their tax mm...
...Rush is like a supply-side monument...
...TAS: With both India and China rapidly developing vigorous native high-tech sectors, young Asian engineers and programmers increasingly do not feel compelled to leave home to seek their fortunes.We could soon be struggling to attract the same immigrants we now routinely send home...
...Last fall's best-selhng Eiecosm looks to the new century already upon us, and ~ t s b~t-filled globdl river\ of fiber and air-home turf for readers of the monthly Glldcr T~clznolo'qy Report Lots of people understand the power of free markets, entrepreneurs, and r~ck cap~tal...
...The semiconductor industry was then supposedly moving massively to Japan...
...And he has done it in a way that completely contradicts the image elite liberals try to pin on him and conservative ra&o generally...
...That's very generous...
...This is a religious belief ultimately, hearkening back to our own creation as free creatures...
...As a result they are unprincipled, ineffective, and indefensible, and imperil his presidency...
...TAS: But isn't there another element...
...In Bush's case they aLeady have done this...
...American high-technology companies are overwhelmingly dependent on immigrants, as Americans are increasingly Rush Limbaugh is the most important and effective conservative leader today and also the most interesting...
...it's inevitable that it spreads around the world...
...He has done far more to help conservatives win arguments and elections than any other person or institution in the country...
...TAS: Generous...
...the new economy increases the opportunity costs of childbearing...
...George conlniands both, along w ~ t h a fearlessness about saylng what he thlnks rooted in a fierce regard for human freed0111 as the ultlnlate englne of wealth...
...TAS: Any top political operative will argue that polls are crucial...
...Environmentalism is a luxury of wealthy people...
...Of course the government spending did not increase significantly as a share of total output because Hong Kong was growing so fast...
...GILDER: To drop our defenses...
...TAS: In the late 1970s and early '80s, you led the intellectual debate on sexual issues from the conservative side...
...The usual recourse throughout the history of the human race for young men without women was for the men to conquer neighboring tribes and take their women...
...Life was per- small business, every large business, every The proper measure for the relative fect in every way...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001 TAS: Character is destiny...
...GILDER: It's meaningless...
...Llke Micawber he is imprisoned by across the economy...
...TAS: Spurred by technology and tax cuts, productivity has been on a tear...
...The investors don't want their they like bribes...
...All it would do is reduce the rate of tax increases now taking place through "bracket creep" as productivity expands and people move into higher tax brackets...
...We got the Russians out of the race by winning it...
...what do you put out...
...Are there still opportunities out there...
...universities...
...TAS: Where are the good economists...
...Now it threatens to render the nuclear forces of other nations obsolete through million-fold advances in computing power and in optics, with SDI...
...American politicians who argue that some new, revised Kyoto treaty would be better if it restricted Third World energy use with the same severity that it restricts ours are dangerous...
...America has the best technology sector, but not the best technologists...
...Our advantage is that we're an open, creative, innovative, entrepreneurGILDER: Immigration policy should be about attracting people...
...Republicans who try to beat the Democrats on their own turf of interestgroup politics are doomed...
...Giving is redemptive, but the key property of a gift is that whatever returns it secures are not mandated or required...
...nomic failure with double-digit inflation suaded hmself that tax cuts are either GILDER: Right, but that was the smallest, and interest rates, sdaring unemployment...
...Market labor makes money, children cost money...
...They have made big sacrifices to come here and have gained all sorts of extraordinarily valuable skills, and they should be encouraged to stay...
...Hong Kong had a top rate of around 16- kind of short-term payout represented by TAS: And everyone takes their proper role and-two-thirds percent, and increased dividends or paying down debt...
...GILDER: Just the opposite...
...By the only measure that matters, over the past 14 months we have increased national debt significantly, measured as a proportion of total national assets...
...China is about to realize it has a disastrous overabundance of young men because of the extermination of millions and millions of female children...
...GILDER: He is a genuine intellectual, in the best sense of the word...
...It shows up in birth rates which are already dangerously low...
...But in business, solving problems means that you get pollednlike Bush.You end up feeding and error rates 10 billionfold better than the then-dominant copper technology...
...He believes that he can change the country, change people's minds, just by tahng to them, very patiently, every day...
...Changes in solar activity are 70,000 times more significant for Earth temperature than all the global emissions of industry...
...mnarkably little sup* in elle msaying rhmp like 44$1.600 in tax s m IN& He's not cutting spmding enough...
...you strip the hillside in order to keep warm in the winter...
...TAS:Yes, I remember the '70s...
...The details of the core administration policies-the tax cut, the budget, education-were designed by pollsters, or people who take polls seriously...
...I believe that the combination of optics and the Internet represents at least tenfold as great an opportunity as computers and semiconductors in the '80s and '90s, provided we don't, you know, make terrible political errors like protecting trade or going to war, or inviting others to go to war by disarming...
...GILDER: Right...
...So you don't have to be so obsessed with evil that you close off the future of freedom...
...economy is being gutted...
...It was alleged that a nuclear cloud, the Vietnam War, the devastation of the environment, and most of all the population explosion, as it was called, endangered the planet.According to this diseased set of ideas, it was somehow irresponsible to bear children...
...What he really wants to do is persuade them, regardless of whether doing so makes "good radio" in conventional lowest common denominator media terms...
...We were taught to disdain commerce, which is the animus that really drives environmentalism, and to be uninterested in science which, though a higher calling than commerce, is earthy and empirical rather than creative, or so we imagined...
...An intellectual who believes in the ultimate triumph of good...
...Educated American women can earn so much money in this economy that the opportunity cost of having children grows every year...
...It should be working to attract people who want to learn English and come to U.S...
...GILDER: Right, every other department in a business is a cost center...
...Semicon went broke...
...There's no way to keep American technology from foreign countries...
...ial economy, and we have to use that advantage.We have no particular advantage in secret programs where countries that specialize in secrecy like Russia and China easily surpass us...
...He is the most important and effective Republican leader today and also the most interesting...
...the Carter adrmnistration, acknowledged fears of debt because he has no notion of TAS: Under Reagan federal revenues rose even by most Democrats to be an eco- entrepreneurial productivity...
...Goodness and freedom will triumph over evil...
...And he cares about his audience...
...GILDER: Rush Limbaugh...
...Capitalists are givers rather than takers...
...But these people are disdainful of science and they Christie Whitman comes from one of the richest places on the face of the earth...
...unwilling to endure the enormous disciplines required to excel in science and math.We go to SiliconValley to visit these companies all the time...
...She takes wealth for granted, and thus panics over chimeras of the environment...
...TAS: Old economy publicatiom~Barron's sticks out, there are a few others~are virtually gloating over the collapse of technology stocks.What's going on here...
...So solving problems orients you toward the past...
...more damaging to developing nations, would only make it worse...
...Peter Drucker said once: "Don't solve problems...
...GILDER: I was brought up on a farm, with cows...
...A decade or so ago, Keith Marsden, a Paul Krugman is the Mr...
...They typically cover out-of-date technology, or technology that is widely available from other sources, so the restrictions punish American companies exclusively and thus tend to retard our efforts to stay ahead...
...I spent my life, quite happily, in the very pleasant company of such women, and almost none of them have any comprehension of the environment...
...spending more than any other country...
...TAS: If we don't care about the absolute size of the national debt, but only the national debt as a proportion of total national wealth, doesn't that make the ideal tax rate zero...
...Republicans have to win by being leaders...
...It's absolutely our key responsibility to maintain our defenses, it's the only way to prevent war...
...The kinds of data that are adduced regularly to show that PCBs or cell phones or global warming are serious perils would not survive the most routine analysis by somebody with a vague understanding of statistics and random clustering, or the normal apparatus of the scientific approach...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR: So what do you think of Bush so far...
...Everything else is cost...
...You have to invest in an unknown future and gain returns based on the voluntary responses of others.You can't force your customers, employees, or investors as you can under socialism...
...Lots of people understdnd the prod~gal technolog~es that are re-making our world...
...TAS: How do these core beliefs that you can't mandate the future, that you have to invest in the hope but not surety of return, help you pick the right optical company...
...In the first place, most of these restrictions are just as inept as any other government regulations...
...But the Democats are right...
...captured by accountants...
...If you learn English and come here, gain critical capabilities, you should automatically get a Green Card...
...This campaign was translated into policy and billions of dollars were expended in propagating it across the face of the globe...
...Bring on the Gildered Age r ~ h y k t h ? 81- Because regdcss of the popularing cosmetic families of politically comet immediate s u h t i a l reduetions in the top ity of spending restraint in general the codgumtion who wnuld meive @- ate, which now appmaches 50 percent in particular beneficiaries of spending will cant diFea +'giving the people's some sates, and in capital gains, bolh of fight to the last ditch to retain their jobs...
...GILDER: How do you mean...
...Just this week a team at the National Bureau for Economic Reaserch published a study showing that the reductions in the top U.S...
...A much more important positive force than Bush or Cheney or any elected official...
...interests without inflicting any substantial damage on China, assuming for some reason we wanted to damage China...
...showed that Krugman and Lindsey, CPAs-it has a ring to it...
...I love the way he treats sincere liberal callers...
...grams and awarding it to worthy families...
...Because you can't know the future, and if you don't have faith, the pursuit of bodily pleasure and preoccupation with obstacles to it become your entire life and the horizons darken...
...The key property of a gift is not that it doesn't in some way benefit you, it does...
...Plus they renamed National Airport after hm...
...GILDER: And most of these jobs were jobs that Americans would not perform because they had better options...
...power across the whole economy...
...Human life is just perilous...
...There's a myth about the Reagan administration that is being wielded against the Bush administration: that Reagan cut tax rates in order to starve whole private sector was deep in the red...
...This campaign triumphed...
...GILDER: I thought I had won those debates...
...Perhaps Larry Lindsay could join up as a partner...
...This myth was actually TAS: Why doesn't anybody focus on this...
...W h a t d o e s t h i s ~ t o d o with @Is...
...GdLpat: Po119 routinely show that the public wan& to cut back - excess government spending, balance the budget, and so forth...
...Look at perity...
...TAS: So let me see if I have this straight: odd places...
...I think it was Veblen who said that while epidemics of physical disease can be readily combated by antibiotics and medication, psychic epidemics, diseases of the mind, can sweep across the planet, meeting no resistance, and can be reversed only with the most persistent long-term efforts...
...Technology is globalizing...
...in the order of nature...
...He believes in the ultimate triumph of good...
...So we bribe them, so spending most during a 30-year period money back, they want the companies to they're happy, then we get tax cuts so we through the mid-'90s was Hong Kong, keep building wealth...
...GILDER: Generous and optimistic...
...His is actually an increlbly generous vocation...
...TAS: Let's get specific...
...It's actually extraordinarily beneficial to those counby the perverted illusions of the environmental movement...
...I don't believe the world has become a fundamentally safer place...
...Social changes take long periods of time...
...Every assets increased by several trilhon more...
...I was brought up this way...
...GILDER: Because tax cuts always increase TAS: But balancing budgets and paying TAS:Any favorites...
...He should be mortified and made to return to his university in humiliationmasked in green eye shades-for betraying his calling as an economist...
...name except for a few lonely, derided supdate Democrats...
...I could see that this was effectively infinite opportunity, so people who pursued it aggressively, and with faith, in conditions of freedom were going to achieve great results...
...TAS: So when we measure debt against GDP, it's apples and oranges-national debt against national income, rather than national assets...
...TAS: But they worked at home...
...The right Republican model is to pay off tries with high tax rates...
...But supply-siders understand that investing in response to the needs of others who voluntarily purchase your goods generates all the wealth in the world...
...She represents this class perfectly...
...And he is an optimist...
...Perhaps Larry Lindsey could join up as a partner...
...GILDER: First, it makes me focus on abundance, on opportunities, rather than on the problems...
...And then you wandered off to study transistors...
...Environmentalism is a luxury of wealthy people and wealthy countries...
...GILDER: I needed a cost center...
...But if you make the very reasonable assumption that the money not absorbed in taxes would be invested much more powerfilly "Your table ~ y r r YW& MI...
...I come from that milieu...
...He is the Mr...
...GILDER: We were brought up this way...
...GILDER: I obviously don't believe so...
...appeased, which of course is exactly what and win the Cold War...
...You can't constrain good...
...That's an excellent way to persuade, say, the Chinese that war against Western hegemony is actually necessary...
...your failures, starving your successes, achieving costly mediocrity...
...The death of taxes...
...TAS: A shmgle...
...Computer research, by contrast, was almost totally open, and advanced hundreds of times faster than our nuclear research...
...The nuclear industries were as secret as they could be made, and our nuclear weapons program was never conspicuously better than our adversaries...
...growth of a company that they demand the GILDER: That's right...
...polls help Democrats take orders to ensure the crucial interest groups are satisfied...
...And the work that went into Wealth and Poverty persuaded me that the crucial factor in economic progress is innovation, which comes from new technology, so I wanted to understand the processes of technological advance...
...Krugrnan and Lindsey, CPAs-it has a ring to it...
...Religious faith, I mean...
...And eventually the computer industry became the crux of American defense as was manifested in the Gulf War...
...even when they we= Gomezes than S 1,600...
...But human beings really do like to have families and like to stay home as much as they can.The emergence of the Internet and all the associated technologies allows the disaggregation of production through the homes of the world to a degree almost never before possible...
...He has perabout 30 percent...
...The best the dvnamics of ecotechnologists are in India and China waiting for visas SO they can be the nomic' growth and crebest technologists over here...
...We persuaded countries around the world that human beings were not minds, but merely mouths whose increase ultimately doomed us to famine and failure...
...ating new constituencies that have to be increase government spendng massively TAS: "Accountants...
...G1LDER:You've got it...
...It's a very typical, entrepreneurial, capitalist story...
...Ahmom, until somcone umz atpractive a d serf=twd cam along...
...He should put out a World Bank economist, shingle as accountant...
...He is principled and he cares about ideas...
...If you're in Kenya you can't afford it...
...You have to pursue opportunity...
...GILDER: This is a supreme moment when people can actually get rich, get huge THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 June 2001 43 multiples from purchasing the right technology stocks, because prices have collapsed...
...In 1985, the semiconductor industry collapsed and personal computers seemed to be a bubble as key PC companies~ Commodore, Coleco, Atari, Osborne~all went broke...
...What matters is not our posture toward China, what matters is our capabhties...
...It's based on a recognition that you can't constrain the outcomes...
...So while government debt exactly the Nirvana current economists because he ignores their reverberating increased under Reagan, total national are pursuing...
...40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001 GILDER: Edward Teller made the point very compellingly a few years ago when he compared the computer industry with the nuclear weapons industries...
...TAS: You don't buy the argument that in the new economy our economic dominance is so profound we don't need dtary hegemony...
...go on the and smear b l w s with acms the population...
...Let no ~acred con7 go ungored...
...TAS: How...
...I had completely forgotten that...
...actually imparts new qabilitics and make evwybody richer, to increase the But Bush can't do that...
...So we should export those jobs to countries that have no better options...
...They are spontaneous...
...He's the most generous talk show host I know of, in the sense of being the most focused on the good of his audience, and he is also far and away the most successful...
...TAS: Do you ever worry that the glorious New Economy which you have done so much to celebrate is killing the family and traditional child-rearing roles that you have also devoted so much of your life to defending...
...TAS: How...
...TAS: But as a high-tech cheerleader you have argued bitterly against "technology transfer" rules that restrict American companies from selling abroad sensitive technologies with potential military applications...
...It has to be freely chosen...
...There are two ways to strengthen these primitive forces that imagine the way to wealth and power is war.The first is to restrict trade, which of course makes their argument more true...
...Almost all of them are averse to science and technology and baffled by it.And they clutch at the pretentious irrationality of environmentalism as their countervailing wisdom...
...The real indeed every state and town government, the overall value of the assets that are ulti- economy was on the verge of collapse...
...TAS: What did you think of the way Bush handled the China crisis...
...But even without the compFomises the Dcmm forced on him, Bush's tax cut war n e u d in advance in a vain attempt to sell it as a padrage of @es and giwbacks...
...Today we're in a time when the entire global communications infrastructure has to be recreated in optical form, through this miraculous technology of glass and light called fiber optics...
...You put out...
...GILDER: No...
...Meanwhile the technology companies in Guang Dong province are growing explosively, and Shanghai is becoming rich, and trade with the U.S...
...But I don't think it's an irreversible effect of capitalism, I think it's an effect of anti-capitalist policy, actually...
...Of course the entire treaty would be a disaster anyway, but making it more "equitable," i.e...
...TAS: "Polled...
...I wanted to be a writer and maybe a politician, but the idea of going into business was far from my mind.We were poets and critics and...
...TAS: It's a class problem...
...TAS: Ford vetoed more spendmg bills than G1LDER:Yes...
...The government would have to engage in what might seem like a Ponzi scheme, paying off the existing debt holders by issuing new debt...
...Thirty years ago we were in the midst of a psychic epidemic of despair and nihilism...
...explain economic activity...
...Was Ford president...
...TAS: One of my favorite Peter Drucker insights is that the only productive factors in a company, and by extension in the economy, are innovation and marketing or sales...
...Are you the capitalist Lenin said would sell the rope to the revolution's hangmen...
...assets of our national economy...
...to become the greatest president in an intelligent way...
...to adopt policies that would seek, however ineffectually, to keep the Chinese out of the vital center of the world economy will justifiably anger the Chinese...
...As a friend of mine tikes to say, "Then Gilder comes along and says not merely that capitalism, rather than being selfish and degrading, is based on generosity, but that entrepreneurial endeavors are redemptive and beloved of God, that microchips are the cathedrals of the modern era...
...economy...
...American history, and there was that great public outcry to change the 25th amendment so he could serve a third term...
...In the 1980s your book Wealth and Poverty transformed the way people thought about capitalism...
...The That's why the investors give them the TAS: Because that's what Democrats like, country that increased its government money...
...But he would have to 3 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001 be a very small-town accountant, with and would unleash overpowering incen- any president in hlstory, and sustained only small businesses as clients, because tives to produce, federal debt would actu- many of them.And of course he went on large businesses have to deal with debt in ally shrink relative to national assets...
...personal tax rate in 1986 increased the revenues of small businesses by 28 percent in three years...
...But for the U.S...
...GILDER: True...
...with low tax rates increased their government spending three times as fast as coun- TAS: Which is...
...GILDER: They grew six times as fast...
...Far more impor- Nonetheless, toward the end they had a nothing more than a static payoff to those tant, Reagan's tax cuts increased the value balanced budget, inclusive of state and who will "get back" $600 or $6 d o n of the assets of the American economy by local surpluses, and even a trade surplus, fiom the Bush plan---or bankrupting, threefold...
...If he wants to be an accountant, maybe he should put out...
...But their relative indebtedness shrinksassuming the key assumption underlying their entire existence in the first place is correct...
...Nevertheless, historic and scientific records from thousands of different sources show that temperatures today are still a little cooler than they have been for most of the last 6,000 years...
...The Gomeres which is always to stop tax cuts by focus- hady cutting spending at A. Gingrich would be kaer OE if the tax cut wre ing the issue on spmdmg cub...
...These polls are The wealth of technology...
...hflrrorosrtr dnd Thc Dcath cf Televt~iorz opened the door on tectonlc sh~fts In technology that erupted ~ n t o the open as the Roaring Nineties and the New Economy...
...GILDER: Well, they worked at home and on the farm and they worked far longer hours...
...By maintaining overwhelming superiority we end the race...
...That's what the pollsters have done to Bush...
...If they kowtow to public opinion polls they become followers, and in the end they arouse the contempt of the public, and they can even be beaten by Democrats...
...Yes, temperatures are warmer than they were 300 years ago in the midst of 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 June 2001 the Little Ice Age...
...The key flaw of socialism is its denial of the ultimate reality of the human condition, which is that we can't control the future...
...GILDER: Right...
...TAS: Meanwhile we've just lost roughly $5 trillion in national wealth through the collapse of the Nasdaq and other reversals...
...has new opportunities as a result of a mately the "collateral" for the debt, the The government was in the black, but the reduction in marginal tax rates...
...TAS: How...
...To halt trade with China is wantonly destructive of U.S...
...And if the was datqed by his wry tentatiw &rts more "'skwed to the rich," if we had isme is spcndmg cutq the Drmma to spenchg If Bush 6 g h ~ for spcndTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 1 June 2001 ing cuts he will destroy his presidency for the government...
...That if I try to force the good, I end up with stagnation and repression and tyranny...
...I've always had a religious orientation, but it grew stronger over the years, and as I came to understand that these sorts of secular alternatives ultimately led to an obsessive immersion in problems and ultimately to futility, it's really faith that is indispensable to almost all positive human activity...
...tor for exerrment mmrkg And the sup may not mean a lot to U%shm@on fat cats 8- He's cu#ing it eoo much...
...An equally widerar~ g~ng talk w ~ t h George will be an annual event, unpred~ctable and cornucopldn...
...major industrial power in the world...
...nothing because the only spendng cuts propounded by Pat Moynihan...
...Reaching for control and certainty, we end up in the embrace of evil...
...These dynamic effects dwarf the utterly trivial little distributive calculations Krugrnan is offering in his fatuous weekly column in the New York Tmes...
...is increasingly desirable, and more and more Chinese have their kids in American colleges...
...There are no On existing worthless government GILDER: And Dave Stockman, completely longer any economists worthy of the programs Republicans should accomo- misrepresenting what actually happened...
...TAS: But the farm economy encouraged high birth rates...
...This happened in the mid-'80s, which turned out to be a huge moment of opportunity...
...We're still on the cusp, but I think that as the damage from this epidemic becomes clear, it will begin to be reversed...
...Instead I urged people to buy Intel, Applied Materials, and a company called Semicon...
...TAS: So after wandering off to transistor land, you came back and bought The American Spectator.Why...
...We can choose the good but we cannot choose the outcome...
...Evoking these spontaneous returns depends on the givers' original and generous responsiveness to the needs of others...
...GILDER: The real supply-side insight is the economy is based on creativity and faith...
...GILDER: No...
...TAS: What's the other way...
...absurd and self-destructive...
...GILDER: ...and liberal Republicans and we took wealth for granted...
...TAS: Is there a direct link between the theoretical insights of Wealth and Poverty and what you do toda3~ helping investors make money in technology...
...There are lots of interests not only related to Chna and Taiwan but around the world, where people, baffled by the new economy, still believe that the way you gain wealth is to take it by force.The only way to discourage them is to make the use of force unthinkable by maintaining unchallenged d t a r y capability...
...Every time we reduce our defense spending we enhance the incremental effect of increased defense spending among our adversaries, whoever they may be.The interest in expanding offensive capabilities by every strange extremist group in the world--or by Chmese hardlinersgreatly increases if our defenses slacken...
...TAS: And yet every time we export a cost center, whether it's a manufacturing plant or a telephone call center, conventional economists sound the alarm that the U.S...
...md Mrs...
...Ai~?evrran Spect~ztor to broaden both our aud~ence and the terra~n we cover-technology, the economy, culture and polit~cs...
...Micawber of economics...
...GILDER: Probabl3a It seemed to me that the supply-side vision, the vision of technological advance and opportunity, accorded very closely with propensities of the Christian religion.And so studying these things really strengthened my religious faith...
...He defined the '80s w ~ t h I.c+nlth atzd Poverty and The Spirit 1; a o j Eflterprt~c, wen songs to what we now know as the Reagan revolut~on...
...These moments come only so often, and they come always while Barton's and other such publications are gloating about the effervescence of the technology bubble...
...GILDER: But the theory of human-caused global warming is nonsense...
...GILDER: Shngle...
...We at G~lder Publ~shlng jo~ned Tllr...
...Is the ultimate end of the New Economy death...
...He thus falls 1980s, pmyed on the -r of Business and which hold t5r more pmise fbr the victim to the classic Demomitic strategy, W as butchers...
...and in order to succeed you really have to be oriented toward the future...
...Why would any sane woman choose family over market production where you get not only the money but the redemption, too...
...Why did you do that...
...I woke up from 15 years of studying semiconductors and optics to discover that a whole generation of polled politicians had entirely forgotten the lessons of the Reagan era, and that science policy had been incredibly debauched by special government interests and, most critically, are bowled over by panicky environmentalist claims...
...To "poll" a cow you cut off its horns, with the result that it can't really maneuver well or defend itself against its enemies...
...TAS: And Dave Stockman...
...hands than in the hands of their investors...
...Except for the ominous implication of the initials, the Immigration and Naturalization Service should change its name to the Immigrant Recruiting Service...
...So this is a real peril, a change of view that swept particularly the upper classes around the world, and it's related to the environmental movement which continues its essentially nihilistic course...
...2 tA The tax cut was defined by pollsters $ so Bush could go around during the campaign and the State of the Union exhibit- s THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR . June 2001 a h y s win-They h e the issue as "no tax cub without spending cum," then they prevent any spendmg cuts and then use that as an excuse to forestall or A c e tw CUB...
...It's only when can go to work, get rich, and pay off which also had the lowest tax rates of any investors begin to lose faith in the long-run Democrats with the leftover...
...GILDER: Christie Whitman is an upper-class American woman...
...Women work a lot less today than they did when the United States was an agrarian society...
...the spending-cut corral which, for E m in a country as rich as this that is Bush tried to embarns Demoma by Republicam, leads to the slaughterhousc...
...It's very deceptive...
...I recognized that the opposite of the psychic epidemic is the psychic bonanza or the economy of faith, where you assume that ultimately God is good and good will prevail...
...On the other hand, if our strength is 10X, eminently possible with new technologies, then the plans of the dtarists in China to increase their strength to 2X become futile and lund of sdly...
...money back"--which mplecely 6 which have a much more e&a As a matter of fact, the more useless and repmeno the purpose and character of on economic p w d ~ , plus increasing m- unproductive the spending, the harder it tax-rate reductions...
...I immersed myself in the physics of optics for almost a decade, and I grasped Paul Green's insight that fiber optics afforded capacities 10 biUionfold greater In the economy of faith you don't have to be so obsessed with evil that you close off the future of freedom...
...But that's just the economics...
...to open opportunities...
...TAS: Speaking of which, Christie Whitman looks like a potential disaster at EPA...
...Young men unsocialized by women are a threat in all societies...
...TAR Which is...
...The best technologists, the best engineers, or the people who wdl be the best engineers ten years from now, are in India and China waiting for visas so they can be the best technologists over here...
...Market labor makes you more autonomous, childbearing makes you more dependent...
...Democrats essentially buy their way into office, by putting together coalitions of fiercely engaged interest groups who could not survive without governfiament subsidies...
...Of course the Bush administration speaks exactly the same language, so I shouldn't be so harsh on Krugrnan...
...to the back of the herd gcning pushed who haw nothmg e k they can do except mow limik on the horizons of aspiration around by anyldy with horns...
...Christie Whitman was a good governor, she's good at most things...
...became a popular president while deci- incapable of doing anything more than TAS: How can Republicans cut taxes if sively reducing debt in proportion to the adding and subtracting income and outgo in a static way, rather than grasping America has the best technology but not the best technologists...
...What's wrong with, say, the tax cut...
...GILDER: One of the real illusions that underlies much of this movement is that women didn't used to work...
Vol. 34 • June 2001 • No. 5
