George Gilder Wealth is Knowledge. Growth is Learning. Money is Time.

George Gilder

Economist, Technologist, and Futurist

George Gilder  is Chairman of Gilder Publishing LLC, located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A co-founder of Discovery Institute, Mr. Gilder is a Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality, and also directs Discovery’s Technology and Democracy Project.

Born in 1939 in New York City, Mr. Gilder attended Exeter Academy and Harvard University. At Harvard, he studied under Henry Kissinger and helped found Advance, a journal of political thought, which he edited and helped to re-establish in Washington, DC, after his graduation in 1962. During this period he co-authored (with Bruce Chapman) The Party That Lost Its Head. He later returned to Harvard as a fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Politics and editor of the Ripon Forum. In the 1960s Mr. Gilder also served as a speechwriter for several prominent official and candidates, including Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and Richard Nixon. In the 1970s, as an independent researcher and writer, Mr. Gilder began an excursion into the causes of poverty and wealth, which resulted in his books Men and Marriage (1972) and Visible Man (1978) — which led to his best-selling Wealth and Poverty (1981).

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The Israel Test

In this timely and courageous book, George Gilder demonstrates that the widespread antagonism toward the state of Israel is based — as is anti-Semitism itself — on self-defeating envy and resentment of its superior accomplishments and moral leadership.

Israel’s stunning rise as a world capitalist and technological power, he argues, stems in part from the Jewish “culture of mind” and in part from Judaism itself, which encourages intellectual curiosity and rational analysis while providing a rigorous moral framework for entrepreneurial creativity. Israel’s critics throughout the Middle East and in Western Europe — all facing socialist decline — have failed the “Israel Test” because they seek to destroy Israel’s capitalist success rather than to emulate it.   

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Articles

Israel: Leader of the Free World

George Gilder
August 14, 2024
5
Israel
For eight decades after the end of World War II, America’s proudest title was “Leader of the Free World.” Today, both on grounds of practical leadership and grasp of what it means to be free, we are yielding the title to Israel.

Life After Capitalism

George Gilder
October 14, 2021
26
Economics
Anyone determined to provide a “new economics” must haul a heavy burden of proof up a steep slope of professional resistance. At the summits of academic prestige, economics presents a Delphic façade of math and marble.

The Fed ‘is a god that has failed’

George Gilder
June 5, 2017
5
Economics
Why does Wall Street keep recovering after recessions but the economy seemingly never does? The reason, as I document in my book, The Scandal of Money: Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does is that Washington and the Federal Reserve together have created a closed loop economy where the Fed creates money for the government and the S&P 500 and Main Street is left out. The Fed decides what money is worth and who receives it and how much. The Fed prices it at zero interest rates, allegedly to stimulate economic growth. But whenever something is free, it’s distributed by queue, and only the privileged, connected people in the front of the line get any, not the innovators who create growth and opportunity for Main Street. Trump voters are wrong if they blame Mexico and …

Leap Before You Look

Reflections on the Mission and "Evolution" of Discovery Institute
George Gilder
January 11, 2017
6
Society
I helped Bruce Chapman form Discovery Institute some 25 years ago and over that period, if I may use the term, it has evolved. Bruce and I believe that this evolution expresses an intelligent design, a unified vision that transcends the various programs at Discovery Institute. We do not only believe in intelligent design in the universe; we believe such a design manifests itself across the sciences and pervades economics and culture. Not only is God the creator; but human beings are creative in his image, in the image of the creator. This is a scientific proposition, following the insights of a great new science called information theory. Information theory upholds the idea of a hierarchical universe and underlies all the programs at Discovery. In his essay “Transposition,” C.S. …

Surprise and Creativity

George Gilder
August 5, 2013
17
Economics
All these schemes fail to answer the key questions about any economic theory. Can the theory provide a moral or “transcendental” justification for its results, so that it is politically acceptable? And can it explain growth and creativity?

Silicon Israel

George Gilder
August 25, 2009
23
Technology
The most precious resource in the world economy is human genius, which we may define as the ability to devise significant inventions that enhance survival and prosperity. At any one time, genius is embodied in just a few score thousand people, a creative minority that accounts for most human accomplishment and wealth. Cities and nations rise and thrive when they welcome entrepreneurial and technical genius; when they overtax, criminalize, or ostracize it, they wither. During the twentieth century, an astounding proportion of geniuses have been Jewish, and the fate of nations from Russia westward has largely reflected how they have treated their Jews. When Jews lived in Vienna and Budapest early in the century, these cities of the Hapsburg Empire were world centers of intellectual activity …

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