by Henry Oliner Deidre McCloskey in Bourgeois Equality and Joel Mokyr in Culture of Growth examine the incredible growth in human betterment since 1850. Thomas Malthus predicted a dismal future for human kind from the very logical prediction that food
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from Deirdre McCloskey at The New York Times, Equality, Liberty, Justice and Wealth: You may object that ideas are a dime a dozen and that to make them fruitful we must start with adequate physical and human capital and good institutions.
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Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek quotes from Deirdre McCloskey’s outstanding Bourgeois Equality in his Bonus Quotation of the Day: Members of the left clerisy, such as Tony Judt or Paul Krugman or Thomas Piketty, who are quite sure that they
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What amazes me in reading twentieth century history is how much incredible progress we made in spite of two horrific wars, massive failures of authoritarian utopian schemes, several major economic collapses, and the rise of tribal violence. Perhaps the difference
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Reich’s reasoning supposes that the point of an economy is jobs, jobs, jobs, and that spending assures jobs. The writer Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry calls such a view “productionist,” as against “creativist,” and admits (as I do) that in the very short
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The internet gave rise to Google and Facebook. The iPhone gave rise to Uber. The ideologies are important only to the extent that they facilitated ideas. Our current development is less dependent on assets and physical capital than ideas. We
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