Posted on 07/31/2009 4:06:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
Charles Murray, no slouch among public intellectuals, described him as the most underrated public intellectual in America today. Murray offered this assessment of George Gilder at a recent American Enterprise Institute colloquium to discuss Gilder's newest book, "The Israel Test." Murray explained: From Gilder's national debut with "Sexual Suicide" (later reissued as "Men and Marriage"), to his seminal "Wealth and Poverty," to his farsighted "Microcosm," Gilder makes being ahead of his times look easy. And, Murray noted with admiration, Gilder has always been right.
Is Gilder underrated? Yes, because his gifts and contributions deserve more or less full-time celebration.
After the probably trillions of words that have been devoted to the Israel/Arab conflict, it is no small achievement to approach the matter from a unique vantage point. Gilder's thesis is this: Today's hatred of Israel is feeding off the same poison that has nourished anti-Semitism throughout history -- envy, resentment, and misunderstanding of economics. Gilder asks: "Are you for civilization or barbarism, life or death, wealth or envy? Are you an exponent of excellence and accomplishment or of a leveling creed of troglodytic frenzy and hatred?"
Jewish accomplishment is an undeniable fact of history. Many (Murray included) have speculated about the disproportionate number of Jewish intellectuals, musicians, millionaires, scientists and others. Gilder (a Gentile) is interested less in the why of Jewish excellence than in its consequences. A society that is organized to permit individuals to flourish and to realize their potential (like the United States and post-1980s Israel) will broadly share in the increased prosperity those individuals help to create. A society (or a global system) that misunderstands wealth creation and wishes to level society by penalizing success will make life poorer for everyone.
Gilder boldly declares that Jewish genius laid the foundation for winning the Second World War and for the post-war prosperity that followed. Jewish refugees from Hitler's Europe provided much of the brainpower for the Manhattan Project. And Jewish geniuses including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Heinrich Hertz, John von Neumann, Richard Feynman, and entrepreneurs like Andy Grove made indispensable contributions to the information technology that forms the scaffolding of modern prosperity.
Israel has only recently become a technological and economic powerhouse. It got there after a protracted dalliance with socialism that gave Israel high unemployment, anemic growth, and inflation rates that reached 1,000 percent in early 1985. Three catalysts changed everything: 1) the influx of 1 million vehemently anti-socialist immigrants from the former Soviet Union; 2) the addition of a far smaller but still consequential cohort of American Jewish immigrants who had business experience and expertise; and 3) economic reforms urged by Natan Sharansky and Bibi Netanyahu. The results, Gilder writes, were "incandescent." He cites a 2008 Deloitte & Touche survey showing that in six key areas -- telecom, microchips, software, biopharmaceuticals, medical devices, and clean energy -- "Israel ranked second only to the United States in technological innovation." Israel's high-tech research and development puts it at the center of the information revolution. Intel's microchips, Gilder notes, might as well be tagged "Israel Inside."
But what has this to do with the Palestinians? In addition to his guided tour through Israel's equivalent of Silicon Valley, Gilder also provides a taut and clarifying economic and political history of the modern Middle East. The economic piece is key, because Israelis have created prosperity wherever they have touched ground in that otherwise listless part of the globe. And Arabs have responded by flooding into areas they previously disdained after Israelis made them habitable, even desirable. It was so in the Yishuv (the new Jewish settlements in the Holy Land starting in the 1880s). And after Israel reluctantly took control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the economy in the territories became one of the most dynamic on earth, posting 30 percent annual growth. The Arab population, along with per capita income, tripled.
Arabs are and have always been in a position to share in the wealth created by Israel -- and to create their own. But they have flunked the "Israel Test" by choosing envy and hatred. It's a test the outcome of which, Gilder persuasively argues, will determine our own future as well. Gilder has always been right. Read the book.
bttt
Can you make take the next step and note that the effluorescence of Jewish genius awaited and ripened only in the context of Reformation political genius , namely that each man is born with equal standing before God?
Yeah, except when he told his clients to invest hundreds of millions in Global Crossing.
And single handedly almost destroyed the American Spectator.
If Gilder tells you it's gonna rain, grab the Coppertone.
His career as a stock picker has been disastrous for his reputation. Only a handful of people in history have been good at that. Easier for me to overlook that since I didn’t take his advice (I was very tempted though)
His real strength is his astute observations about overall economic trends. His book Wealth and Poverty -- which served as an instruction manual of sorts for Reaganomics -- was one of the greatest works I have ever read and continues to define my approach to business and politics.
People have a tendency to make heroes out of people then the first time they are disappointed they turn them into demons.
“Glider has always been right” Oh please! Gilder was telling people to invest in communications companies right through the collapse of MCI, Global Crossing, etc. He peddled so much nonsense in the dot com era that he bacame a parody of himself. He lost his clients tens of millions of dollars. He believed the hype and failed to apply ANY classic measures. In the futuristic world of Gilder P/E ratios didn’t matter, earning didn’t matter, even revenue didn’t matter.
He is fool, not a prophet.
High Volume.
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True, but when he gets into specifics, he can be a bit knuckleheaded. I remember having a blog discussion, actually an argument with him, back in the early 1990’s on Compuserve, when I noted that life insurance proceeds are most likely included in a federally taxable estate. I cited the revenue code provision, and he still didn’t believe me. I guess that’s because I’m just a CPA, not a famous author.
I know nothing of Gilder, but excellent article, some very good points.
In an "information age" economy, overall economic growth is enhanced by the fact that the cost of increasing a worker's productivity is absurdly low. Doubling the productivity of an auto worker, for example, typically requires an enormous expenditure for new equipment, new tools, and maybe even new facilities.
Doubling the productivity of an engineer like me, on the other hand, can often be achieved through a $5,000 investment in a new computer with a faster microchip, some new drafting/design software, and a new printer with a larger memory card and faster processing speed.
The biggest problem in the latter case, though, is that when it is very inexpensive to increase productivity this way, it's also very hard for companies that produce these things to make a lot of money in the long term . . . which means an investor has to be very careful and knowledgeable when making investment decisions.
I thought life insurance proceeds were absolutely NOT taxable . . . though that may only be if they are paid to an individual beneficiary instead of into an estate trust of some kind.
§ 2042 Proceeds of life insurance.
(2) Receivable by other beneficiaries.
To the extent of the amount receivable by all other beneficiaries as insurance under policies on the life of the decedent with respect to which the decedent possessed at his death any of the incidents of ownership, exercisable either alone or in conjunction with any other person.
“when it is very inexpensive to increase productivity this way, it’s also very hard for companies that produce these things to make a lot of money in the long term . . . which means an investor has to be very careful and knowledgeable when making investment decisions. “
Do you mean the “maturing” of the micro-computer and office software business? It was about 10 or 15 years from the time they started to make big money until the tech bubble burst in 2000.
Can anyone recommend a good book on this how this happened?
It seems to me that government pork barrel lobbying on things like “the information superhighway” and data bases could have led to much of the speculation resulting in stock prices that were unjustified by actual potential earnings.
Related thread. Interview of Gilder by Kathryn Lopez at NRO
Choosing the Chosen People
GEORGE GILDER: Do you admire and emulate excellence and accomplishment, even if it excels your own? Or do you envy and resent it? And try to tear it down?
That’s the Israel Test and it is administered by cosmic law — the law of capitalist success: The good fortune of others is also one’s own. The people who admire and emulate excellence thrive. Those who resent and envy it gnash their teeth and tear their hair and never accomplish anything worthwhile.
You can see the Israel Test play out in the Middle East and in Washington.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2305046/posts
I recall both of those genius moves. Gilder was a total sucker for the Hi-tech bubble. All those tens of thousands of miles of "dark" cable were about to "light up" just as soon as "the next big thing" emerged. As for TAS, he just turned it into something unrecognizable--and unreadable.
I am reading the Israel Test, by George Gilder and finding it one of the most important, true and well written books I’ve ever read. I just searched FR for the name Gilder to see whether there had been a discussion of this awesome book when it came out last year. I had not been familiar with Gilder. Now that I am , I will definitely read his other books as well. This man is such a clear great thinker with such clearly accurate reporting that the hard Left find it their life’s work to try to discredit him. I don’t see that working. Gilder is brilliant and a must read.
Those who still give any credence to the Left’s Marxist narrative would do well to read The Israel Test.
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