Introducing The Schumpeter Club

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I nominate Steve Forbes/Forbes magazine

Schumpeter is all about history - he studied it to develop his theories; however, you nominate people who've mentioned him "recently". The Chairman should be Steve Forbes (and the late Lawrence-Laury-Minard, founding editor of Forbes Global), who introduced Schumpeter to many by devoting the May 23, 1983 cover to Schumpeter ("Joseph Scumpeter: The 20th Century's Greatest Economist"), written by Peter Drucker.

Steve Forbes (Forbes 2001): "Nearly 20 years ago Laury realized that 1983 would mark the centennial birthday of not only the towering John Maynard Keynes but also the obscure Joseph Schumpeter. The result was Forbes' commissioning Peter Drucker to write about these two extraordinary men. The landmark cover story started the process of bringing Schumpeter out of the shadows."

Drucker: "Of all my essays this may have had the greatest impact - and where I least expected it, that is among economists. Schumpeter was of course, all along a very big name in economics. Economists bowed their heads when his name was mentioned. But few actually read him. This essay touched off a 'Schumpeter boom.'"

source: http://cba.unomaha.edu/faculty/adiamond/web/diamondpdfs/schumpcent.pdf

Forbes 75th Annuversary issue in 1992 was essentially devoted to Schumpeter in that every article was written from a Schumpeter viewpoint.

Without Steve Forbes and Forbes magazine, I dare say Schumpeter would still be floundering in obscurity.

Miles Hoffman of GA @ Apr 30, 2009 23:19:09 PM

Other Austrians...

F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray Rothbard.

Aaron of ID @ Apr 01, 2009 15:20:21 PM

Others... Richard Nelson and Michael Crow

All for this club! Others are Columbia University's Richard Nelson and ASU President, Michael Crow. My old post here:

http://bernardmoon.blogspot.com/2003/12/its-not-deficit-stupid.html

Bernard Moon of CA @ Dec 13, 2008 15:02:52 PM

The little problem of evidence

"[M]embers of the Schumpeter Club are those folks who believe a crucial way to strengthen the floundering American economy is by unleashing our free-market, entrepreneurial, innovative dynamism through lower taxes.... Schumpeterarians understand that reinvigorating private enterprise needs to be key to any pro-growth economic recovery plan."

What a great idea! The only little problem is the problem of evidence: there is no definitive research proving that lower taxes leads to innovation/dynamism in the economy. Taxing Ourselves (by Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija), in fact, argues that taxes and economic growth (one stand in for economic health, but not the only) have no obvious relationship.

Indeed: A tax dollar might be used in more innovative ways than the taxed person might have used it--think of Taiwan using that tax dollar to invest in chip fabricator infant industries. A tax dollar might be used less "dynamically" than the taxee would have--think of the Christmas tree display on the Washington State capital. It might be on par--a police department buying a car vs. a corporation buying the same car.

You may like or dislike taxes for various reasons -- you might, like many free-market libertarians consider taxes a form of theft -- but the claim that lowering taxes automatically or in any obvious way unleashes "innovative dynamism" is not supported by any evidence I know. Can you present any?

Sloth of IA @ Dec 13, 2008 12:45:38 PM

nomination

How about Paul Krugman- he has a nobel prize in economics. I don't think either Kudlow or Mankiw has a nobel prize in economics-Ha.

Lee Waldock of CT @ Dec 13, 2008 12:41:23 PM

Another nomination

Another founding member of your Schumpeter Club should be George Gilder. He has been championing the wealth-building effects of those gales of creative destruction for decades now.

Mike Sanders of AL @ Dec 12, 2008 17:01:31 PM

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U.S. News business reporter Matthew Bandyk examines the issues, people, and debates that shape the nexus of political and economic life in the nation's capital.

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