George Franklin Gilder | |
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 Gilder in April 2005 | |
| Born | (1939-11-29)November 29, 1939 (age 86) New York City, U.S. |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
| Occupations | Author and economist |
| Known for |
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| Notable work | Wealth and Poverty |
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| Spouse | |
| Parents |
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| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States of America |
| Branch |  U.S. Marine Corps |
| Signature | |
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George Franklin Gilder (/ˈɡɪldər/ ⓘ; born November 29, 1939) is an American investor, author, economist, and co-founder of theDiscovery Institute. His 1981 book,Wealth and Poverty, advanced a case forsupply-side economics andcapitalism during the early months of theReagan administration. He is the chairman of George Gilder Fund Management, LLC.
Gilder was born in New York City and raised inNew York andMassachusetts.[1]His father, Richard Watson Gilder II, was killed flying in theUnited States Army Air Forces in World War II when Gilder was two years old.[2]He is a great-grandson of designerLouis Comfort Tiffany.[3][4]
He spent most of his childhood with his mother, Anne Spring Denny (Alsop), and his stepfather, Gilder Palmer, on a dairy farm inTyringham, Massachusetts. Palmer, a college roommate of his father, was deeply involved with his upbringing,[1] as was the family ofDavid Rockefeller, his godfather.[2]
Gilder attended Hamilton School in New York City,Phillips Exeter Academy, andHarvard University, graduating in 1962.[1] He later returned to Harvard as a fellow at theHarvard Institute of Politics, and edited theRipon Forum, the newspaper of the liberal RepublicanRipon Society.
Gilder served in theUnited States Marine Corps.[a][5]
In the 1960s Gilder served as a speechwriter for several prominent officials and candidates, includingNelson Rockefeller,George W. Romney, andRichard Nixon. He worked as a spokesman for theliberalRepublican SenatorCharles Mathias, asanti-war protesters surrounded the capital; some eventually scared Gilder out of his apartment. Gilder moved toHarvard Square the following year, and he became a writer who modeled himself afterJoan Didion.
With his college roommate,Bruce Chapman, he wrote an attack on theanti-intellectual policies of the 1964 Republican presidential candidateBarry Goldwater,The Party That Lost Its Head (1966). He later recanted this attack: "The far Right — the same men I dismissed as extremists in my youth — turned out to know far more than I did. At least the 'right-wing extremists', as I confidently called them, were right on almost every major policy issue from welfare to Vietnam to Keynesian economics and defense — while I, in my Neo-Conservative sophistication, was nearly always wrong."[6]
Supply-side economics was formulated in the mid-1970s byJude Wanniski andRobert L. Bartley atThe Wall Street Journal as a counterweight to the reigning "demand-side"Keynesian economics. At the center of the concept was theLaffer curve, the idea that high tax rates reduce government revenue.
Gilder wrote a book extending the ideas of hisVisible Man (1978) into the realm of economics, to balance his theory of poverty with a theory of wealth.[7] The book, published as the best-sellingWealth and Poverty in 1981, communicated the ideas of supply-side economics to a wide audience in the United States and the world.[8][non-primary source needed]
Gilder also contributed to the development of supply-side economics when he served as Chairman of the Lehrman Institute's Economic Roundtable, as Program Director for the Manhattan Institute, and as a frequent contributor to Laffer's economic reports and the editorial page ofThe Wall Street Journal.[9]
In the 1990s, he became an evangelist of technology and the Internet. He discussed emerging trends in several books and his newsletter, the Gilder Technology Report.[1]
The first mention of the word "Digerati" onUSENET occurred in 1992 and was referred to an article by Gilder inUpside magazine. His other books includeLife After Television,[10][11] a 1990 86-page book that predicted microchip "telecomputers" connected by fiberoptic cable would make broadcast-model television obsolete. The book in theLarger Agenda series,[12] was also notable for being published byWhittle Direct Books[13] (Whittle Communications),[14] featuring full-page advertisements for theFederal Express company on every fifth page.[15] Federal Express was the sole advertiser in at least the first 10 books of the under-100-pages book series.[14]
Gilder wrote the booksMicrocosm, aboutCarver Mead and theCMOSmicrochip revolution;Telecosm, about the promise offiber optics; andThe Silicon Eye, about theFoveon X3 sensor, a digital camera imager chip. The book cover of the Silicon Eye reads, "How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete." The Foveon sensor has not achieved this goal and has not yet been used in cell phones.[citation needed]
Gilder is an investor in private companies and serves as the chairman of the advisory board in Israel-basedASOCS that he discovered during his research forIsrael Test.[16]
In the early 1970s, Gilder wrote an article in theRipon Forum defending PresidentRichard Nixon's veto of aday-care bill sponsored by SenatorWalter Mondale (D-Minnesota) and SenatorJacob Javits (R-New York). He was fired as editor as a result.[1] To defend himself, he appeared onFiring Line. Gilder also appeared onThe Dick Cavett Show on November 30, 1973. During the interview, female members of the audience interrupted the broadcast by shouting toward the stage; ultimately demanding of Cavett that they be allowed to read a prepared statement in opposition of Gilder's views. ActorRobert Shaw stated that although he agreed with some of Gilder's generalizations of women, it would be beneficial if Gilder were to "learn how to write a sentence."[17]
Gilder moved toNew Orleans and worked in the mornings forBen Toledano, Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1972 and the party's nominee formayor of New Orleans in 1970. He also wroteSexual Suicide (1973), which was revised and reissued asMen and Marriage (1986). The book achieved asuccès de scandale andTime made Gilder "Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year."[1]
Gilder has praisedmass immigration as an economic boon in both theUS andIsrael. Although Gilder's support for mass immigration is framed byhigh tech hubs such asSilicon Valley's need for computer programmers, he sees recent American immigration policy as being vital to American prosperity overall.[better source needed][18]
Gilder bought the conservative political monthly magazineThe American Spectator from its founder,Emmett Tyrrell, in the summer of 2000, switching the magazine's focus from politics to technology.[19]
Experiencing his own financial problems in 2002,[20]Gilder sold theSpectator back to Tyrrell.[21]
Gilder lectures internationally on economics, technology, education, and social theory. He has addressed audiences from Washington, D.C., to the Vatican, and he has appeared at conferences, public policy events, and media outlets.[22]
After completingVisible Man in the late 1970s, Gilder began writing "The Pursuit of Poverty." In early 1981,Basic Books published the result asWealth and Poverty. It was an analysis of the roots of economic growth. Reviewing it within a month of the inauguration of theReagan Administration,The New York Times reviewer called it "A Guide to Capitalism". It offered, he wrote, "a creed for capitalism worthy of intelligent people."[23] The book was aNew York Times bestseller,[24] and eventually sold over a million copies.[25]
InWealth and Poverty, Gilder extended the sociological and anthropological analysis of his early books in which he had advocated for the socialization of men into service to women through work and marriage. He wove these sociological themes into the economic policy prescriptions ofsupply-side economics. In his eyes the breakup of the nuclear family and the policies ofdemand-side economics led to poverty, while family and supply-side policies led to wealth.
In reviewing the problems of the immediate past—the inflation, recession, and urban problems of the 1970s—and proposing his supply-side solutions, Gilder argued not just the practical but the moral superiority of supply-side capitalism over the alternatives. "Capitalism begins with giving," he asserted, whileNew Deal liberalism created moral hazard. It was work, family, and faith that created wealth out of poverty. "It is this supply-side moral vision that underlies all the economic arguments ofWealth and Poverty," he wrote.[26][non-primary source needed]
In 1994, Gilder wrote that the poor in America are "ruined by the overflow of American prosperity" and "moral decay" and that they are in need of "Christian teaching from the churches."[27]
In 1991 Gilder cofounded theDiscovery Institute withBruce Chapman.[28]The organization started as a moderate group that aimed to privatize and modernize Seattle's transit systems.[citation needed] It later became the leading thinktank of theintelligent design movement, with Gilder writing many articles for intelligent design and against thetheory of evolution.[29][30]
