Wealth and poverty
- New York Basic books 1981
- 306 p.
In this bold and brilliant work, George Gilder a writer already widely known for the originality of his mind and the verve of his prose provides a thoroughly fresh and illuminating discussion of what is perhaps the most critical problem for contemporary society: how to in crease wealth and curtail poverty. We have, Gilder argues, been misled by popular economic theory, and by cultural attitudes in general, into doing exactly the opposite. And he lays out, in a concrete and documented way, the social and political as well as the economic grounding for the increasingly influential new school of thought called "supply-side economics." Gilder demonstrates, for example, how misguided pol icy has undermined the true source of wealth, which is to be found in such nonmaterial forces as creativity, technological adventure, and the motivation to strike out for new territory in economic enterprise; and he documents the ways in which this blighting of incentive has crippled our productivity. Nor do our efforts at achieving a so-called "just" redistribution of the wealth bring benefits to the poor. On the contrary, these efforts only serve to keep the poor in poverty, victims of the devastation of welfare dependency.