George Gilder in the Wall Street Journal Provides Great Laughs for Holiday Weekend

No Comics in the WSJ; With This Hilarity Who Needs the Funnies

George Gilder is one of those long forgotten right wing wacko’s who often end up on the opinion section of the Wall Street, where they can produce their silly thoughts without fear of examination or condemnation, because nobody really pays attention to them.  But because everyone needs a little comic relief after the Republican National Convention and during the Democratic National Convention this Forum will briefly turn its attention to Mr. Gilder.

Who is George Gilder?  Well here is his brief biography from the WSJ piece.

Mr. Gilder is a founding fellow of the Discovery Institute. His books include "Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century" (Regnery, 2012).

As for hilarity, well try to savor this statement without giggling uncontrollably.

 In the perverse feedback loops of "free," free health care comes to mean hypochondria, illness caused by needless exams and treatments, queues for an ever-expanding portfolio of mediocre services, and ultimately euthanasia under government bureaucracy. 

Yep, just like in Canada and Europe and a bunch of other countries.  Of course Mr. Gilder can be forgiven for being confused.  See apparently what he read was that access to health care was producing stronger "youth in Asia" and he naturally misread that phrase as euthanasia.

Or this one

Free money, manifested in the near zero-interest-rate policy of the Federal Reserve, diverts the wealth of savers to favored governments and crony capitalists while creating shortages for everyone else.

Shortages?  Well this is a shortage of rational thought in Conservatism.  Is that caused by zero interest rates?

Need more, try this

Ultimately the Reagan boom would raise private-sector assets by another $60 trillion over 20 years, not halting until 2007.

Okay, a small confession here.  We didn’t know the Reagan economic policies from 1981-88 were responsible for the Clinton economic boom of 1993-2000.  Glad to learn that fact.

But the most hilarious statement from the piece is this.

Mr. Romney might also embrace Mr. Ryan's suggestion that the world's highest corporate rate eventually be replaced with an 8.5% business-consumption tax applying to the difference between costs and sales.

Uh George, the difference between costs and sales is taxable income.  A tax on that amount is a corporate income tax, not a business consumption tax.  And we already have a corporate income tax.   Really, we do, you can look it up in all the tax books.  And no, the U. S. does not have the world's highest effective corporate tax rate, because we have a bunch of provisions in the tax laws that prevent that.  (Ever hear of accelerated depreciation George?).

But don’t worry,  knowledge of basic business principles is not required to opinionate in the WSJ.  We are sure they will have you back.