In 2004, Gilder spoke about Reagan, and these are some of the salient point.
1. Reagans ideas transformed American finance, global economics and world politics. They reverberated through Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China with the power of Joshuas trumpets. They made South Korea a more economically important and promising country than France or Germany.
2. Since 1980, U.S. marginal tax rates fell some 40 percent on income and 75 percent on capital gains and dividends, and the American economy added close to 36 million jobs. During the same time period, Europe and Japan created scarcely any net new employment outside of government. American companies now constitute 57 percent of global market capitalization, and the U.S. commands close to one half of the worlds economic assets. America, responsible for one fifth of global GDP in 1980, produced one third of global GDP in 2003. That is Ronald Reagans legacy.
3. The key to this awesome and unprecedented triumph was Reagans dismantling of the confiscatory tax codes imposed on the capitalist world during World War II. Supporting Reagans tax rate reductions was a movement of economists and journalists called supply-siders.
4. The growth of the private sector is measured not merely by output but also by assets. In the 25 years since Reagan assumed office, U.S. household assets have more than tripled, to a current record of $52 trillion. Driven by a surging stock market, Americas increase in private wealth dwarfs the increases in debt that cause such agony for one-handed economists in Washington, who dutifully gauge the swell of liabilities but seem blinded to the mountainous growth of assets.
5. The key Reagan accomplishment is rarely recognized at all: We are now in a global economy. While economists constantly parse statistics about the U.S., as if our economy were isolated from the world, the real impact of economic policy today can only be gauged by global data. Overall, the Reagan program led to a shift in the global economic balance of power as dramatic as the victory in the Cold Warand vital to it.
6. Beginning in 1980 with a GDP at one fifth of the global total, the U.S. had attained a national output of $11 trillion by 2003, fully one third of a global GDP of $33 trillion. This is an awesome and unprecedented change. In the entire history of the peacetime world economy, nothing like it has ever happened. Coming after President Carters malaise in the 1970s, the American ascent is directly attributable to the program of low marginal tax rates, deregulation of energy prices, collapse of inflation, expansion of trade, and active globalization launched by Ronald Reagan.
7. The reason for tax cuts is not to allow the rich to keep their money. It is to enable entrepreneurs to invest money by making their investments profitable. Through the investment process, entrepreneurs give money to others, in their own or other businesses. By earning the money, they learned how to identify the people best able to increase its worth. They learned how to use the money in ways that respond to the needs of their customers. They mastered the magic of lowering prices in order to increase revenues. And they reached out to the largest untapped markets of the world economy, which are always the domains of billions of currently poor people struggling to gain wealth.
8. High tax rates stop poor people from getting rich. They stop entrepreneurs from supplying new goods and services that generate more wealth and jobs and value and tax revenue. In truth, defending tax cuts as a way to keep more of ones money is the opposite of the case. Tax cuts are good because they allow us to give our money to others in an ever-expanding spiral of economic opportunity. In the end, the rich can keep only what they give awaythat is, what they entrust to others in the ever-spreading process of investment and growth.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2004&month=08
(emphasis mine)
Gilder understood the economic legacy of President Ronald Reagan.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President.
1. Reagans ideas transformed American finance, global economics and world politics. They reverberated through Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China with the power of Joshuas trumpets. They made South Korea a more economically important and promising country than France or Germany.
2. Since 1980, U.S. marginal tax rates fell some 40 percent on income and 75 percent on capital gains and dividends, and the American economy added close to 36 million jobs. During the same time period, Europe and Japan created scarcely any net new employment outside of government. American companies now constitute 57 percent of global market capitalization, and the U.S. commands close to one half of the worlds economic assets. America, responsible for one fifth of global GDP in 1980, produced one third of global GDP in 2003. That is Ronald Reagans legacy.
3. The key to this awesome and unprecedented triumph was Reagans dismantling of the confiscatory tax codes imposed on the capitalist world during World War II. Supporting Reagans tax rate reductions was a movement of economists and journalists called supply-siders.
4. The growth of the private sector is measured not merely by output but also by assets. In the 25 years since Reagan assumed office, U.S. household assets have more than tripled, to a current record of $52 trillion. Driven by a surging stock market, Americas increase in private wealth dwarfs the increases in debt that cause such agony for one-handed economists in Washington, who dutifully gauge the swell of liabilities but seem blinded to the mountainous growth of assets.
5. The key Reagan accomplishment is rarely recognized at all: We are now in a global economy. While economists constantly parse statistics about the U.S., as if our economy were isolated from the world, the real impact of economic policy today can only be gauged by global data. Overall, the Reagan program led to a shift in the global economic balance of power as dramatic as the victory in the Cold Warand vital to it.
6. Beginning in 1980 with a GDP at one fifth of the global total, the U.S. had attained a national output of $11 trillion by 2003, fully one third of a global GDP of $33 trillion. This is an awesome and unprecedented change. In the entire history of the peacetime world economy, nothing like it has ever happened. Coming after President Carters malaise in the 1970s, the American ascent is directly attributable to the program of low marginal tax rates, deregulation of energy prices, collapse of inflation, expansion of trade, and active globalization launched by Ronald Reagan.
7. The reason for tax cuts is not to allow the rich to keep their money. It is to enable entrepreneurs to invest money by making their investments profitable. Through the investment process, entrepreneurs give money to others, in their own or other businesses. By earning the money, they learned how to identify the people best able to increase its worth. They learned how to use the money in ways that respond to the needs of their customers. They mastered the magic of lowering prices in order to increase revenues. And they reached out to the largest untapped markets of the world economy, which are always the domains of billions of currently poor people struggling to gain wealth.
8. High tax rates stop poor people from getting rich. They stop entrepreneurs from supplying new goods and services that generate more wealth and jobs and value and tax revenue. In truth, defending tax cuts as a way to keep more of ones money is the opposite of the case. Tax cuts are good because they allow us to give our money to others in an ever-expanding spiral of economic opportunity. In the end, the rich can keep only what they give awaythat is, what they entrust to others in the ever-spreading process of investment and growth.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2004&month=08
(emphasis mine)
Gilder understood the economic legacy of President Ronald Reagan.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President.
