Posted on 08/31/2005 11:20:21 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Jude Wanniski, 1936-2005
By James K. Glassman Published 08/31/2005
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TCS
Jude Wanniski, one of America's great contrarians and polemicists and the man who turned me -- and thousands more -- on to free-market economics, died suddenly Monday afternoon of a heart attack. He was 69.
Wanniski was always cheerful, always provocative, always spoke his mind. His writing was innovative, surprising and confident in a manner largely unknown in journalism today. Wanniski, a disciple of the Columbia University economist Robert Mundell, who won a Nobel Prize in 1999, valued history and -- at least until the final years -- logical clarity.
Wanniski was no shrinking violet. The preface to the fourth edition of his influential book on supply-side economics began:
"When I sat down at an electric typewriter to write 'The Way the World Works' on January 2, 1977, I felt absolutely confident it would be a great book, perhaps one of the most influential of the twentieth century."
In fact, he turned out to be right. I read "The Way the World Works" (a title which Wanniski's brilliant editor, the late Irwin Glikes of Basic Books, called "mildly megalomaniac") in 1978, essentially by accident, as editor of an alternative weekly newspaper in New Orleans.
I had taken economics courses at Harvard that solely stressed the Keynesian view that the well-being of citizens was shaped by government interventions to increase or lower demand. I had voted for McGovern and Carter, but, as a young entrepreneur, I was troubled by a model that held that, if the feds extracted more money from business owners and spent it on government projects, the beneficial economic effect would be multiplied many-fold.
Wanniski painted a different picture. By lowering taxes, government could get out of the way of people's normal propensity to create, work hard, and produce -- that is, boost the supply of goods and services. This idea is at the heart of classical economics, which Wanniski resurrected when he and economist Alan Reynolds coined the term "supply-side fiscalism" (later revised to supply-side economics) and popularized the notion as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal.
Eventually, as Bloomberg.com noted in an obituary on Tuesday, Wanniski persuaded "then-California Gov. Reagan to make supply-side economics the centerpiece of his 1980 campaign for the presidency." Today, classical or supply-side ideas are taken for granted, even by economists and politicians on the left.
SNIP SNIP SNIP
But as time went on, Wanniski's views became more rococo, and, falling victim to his desire for attention, he strained so hard to be provocative that he alienated many of his original acolytes (including me; I wrote him numerous times asking to be taken off his e-mail list, his opinions had become so sadly loopy) and poisoned good relations with important figures in government.
The epitome of this nonsense was his political romance with Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam and anathema to most conservatives. Wanniski became a severe critic of Israel and a fierce opponent of both the original Persian Gulf war and the current war in Iraq.
One of his last pieces, published on his website, Wanniski.com, was titled, "When Do Pundits Apologize?" It was a memo (he was fond of this form of literature) addressed to Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. It began: "At some point, Bill, aren't you going to have to look back and say you really goofed, in the myriad articles you wrote…promoting the war in Iraq?"
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He's in a better place.
How true is it that he actually advised Ronald Reagan in his economic policies ?
Reagan was a fiscal conservative long before the 1980 campaign.
The epitome of this nonsense was his political romance with Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam and anathema to most conservatives. Wanniski became a severe critic of Israel and a fierce opponent of both the original Persian Gulf war and the current war in Iraq.
That was it. I remember being on the Polyconomics email list. I enjoyed the economic lessons. But with that Farrakhan nonsense, I had to let that go.
I'd always associated him with being the guy behind Kemp. I don't know why Kemp got any attention at all, but he did, and JW was his principle educator on economic issues.
Laffer was personally much tighter with Reagan than Wanniski, as far as I know.
President Reagan nicknamed his book "The bible of supply side economics".
It may have also been his favorite book.
I would love to see the copy Reagan had, its been known that he used to read and re-read it often and write notes to himself in the margins (President Reagan majored in Economics in college, not "liberal arts" as was rumored).
He was a writer, he may have had a knack for names.
That said, most of those guys credit Wanniski, who, while he may have been a brilliant economist, was also a loon.
"That said, most of those guys credit Wanniski, who, while he may have been a brilliant economist, was also a loon."
He often showed moonbat tendencies, especially when we were gearing up to invade Iraq. He seemed to love Saddam Hussein. What a nutcase.
Witness and TWTWW are the sperm and the egg of Modern Conservatism.
The same could be said of Murray Rothbard, no offense intended to the libertarian contingent here. While Murray was a terrific economist, his promotion of "libertarian anarchy" (or "anarchocapitalism") was one of the strangest ideas that I have heard in a long time.
"often" is an understatement.
He has been in semi-peacenik mode since before the first gulf war (which he also opposed).
The only thing that makes me think he may not have been a total nut, is my cynical feeling that he was a corporatist who would rather sacrifise lives to preserve profits, and hated any kind of disruptions to those things regardless of the reasons.
He makes a good case in theory......but theory is not necessarily reality.
He was actually a journalist, not an economist, who loved to draw attention to himself as the article indicates. But one has to wonder where we would be if he wasn't around in the 1970's.
That's a dangerous thought. I believe prominent Republicans such as both Bush presidents and Bob Dole are more Keynesians than supply-siders.
Yes, and I actually heard David Friedman speak on it while I was in college. Very weird. I kept asking him, so whith your private court system, how will it make its decisions binding? Suppose I simply decide not to follow its injunction. How does it propose to make me do so?
His only answer was that it would send its private police to enforce it. Then I said, so my privat epolice will battle yours, right?
Before long, he was talking in circles.
One of the strangest things I've read coming from his pen is his insistence that there is NO ( as in ZIP, ZERO, NADA ) evidence that Saddam used Chemical Weapons to gas the Kurds. I wonder how he can even say that with a straight face !
Sounds like every other anarcho-capitalist I have ever met.
At least the honest ones admit that their system can be corrupted by the equivalent of gangs and pirates.
There is a reason no one (and I mean no one) likes them.
Sidenote" Ayn Rand was often quoted as being hostile to the libertarian movement and often went out of her way to put down libertarians, based on her quotes and things she said, its pretty obvious that she assumed the libertarian movement was an anarcho-capitalist movement.
2nd Side note: While noting Wakkinski's odd politics aside from his economics, Ayn Rand supported Richard Nixon and yet opposed Ronald Reagan, go figure.
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