Inexhaustible Capital

The United States must overcome the materialist fallacy: the illusion that resources and capital are essentially things, which can run out, rather than products of human will and imagination, which in freedom are inexhaustible. This fallacy is one of the oldest economic delusions, from the period of empire when men believed that wealth was land, to the period of mercantilism when they fantasized that it was gold, to the contemporary period when they suppose it is oil; and our citizens clutch at real estate and gold as well.  But economists make only a slightly lesser error when they add up capital in quantities and assume that wealth consists mainly in machines and factories.  Throughout history, from Venice to Hong Kong, the fastest growing countries have been the lands best endowed not with things but with free minds and private rights to property.  Two of the most thriving of the world’s economies lost nearly all of their material capital during World War II and surged back by emancipating entrepreneurs.  The materialist vision, by contrast, leads merely to newer versions of the fate of Midas.

From the new edition of Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder.

HKO

Redistributionists can only focus on redistributing the wealth that they can see and measure.  True wealth is untouchable.  The best political and tax policy is to remove limits and roadblocks from the unlimited source of wealth; the energy and creativity of the human mind.