The American Spectator : Taking a Walk on the Supply Side

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Taking a Walk on the Supply Side

By Nick Schulz from the April 2009 issue

The timing of this book's publication is peerless.

The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy— If We Let It Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
(Threshold Editions, 336 pages, $27)

With the advent of Barack Obama's administration and a Congress with strong Democratic majorities, it would be reasonable to assume that the school of thought known as supply-side economics would be so out of favor that it wouldn't even bear mentioning. So it was interesting to see Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman open a column in the New York Times in late January this way:

Old-fashioned voodoo economics—the belief in tax-cut magic—has been banished from civilized discourse. The supply-side cult has shrunk to the point that it contains only cranks, charlatans, and Republicans.

Well. Krugman's assertion was odd for a couple of reasons. First, the article wasn't even about tax cuts (it was about bank bailouts). Moreover, the timing was peculiar. The Obama administration had very recently brought on board an economist, Christina Romer, who has done some significant empirical work on the effects of tax changes, including supply-side effects. And her work shows, if any work can, the magical effects of changes in the tax code.

Romer had taken steps toward solving a puzzle that had long vexed economists: how does one determine the effects of tax changes on the economy when those changes are often made in response to changing economic and policy conditions? Teasing out the effect of the tax change signal from all the other noise (including monetary policy changes, oil price shocks, and so forth) is exceedingly difficult. But Romer and her economist husband, David Romer, have advanced knowledge of tax change effects in a way previous economists had not.

Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter Tanous point out in their book, The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy—If We Let It Happen, how the Romers "found that 'tax increases are highly contractionary. The effects are strongly significant, highly robust, and much larger than those obtained [in earlier studies]. The large effect stems in considerable part from a powerful negative effect [from tax increases] on investment.' "

The Romers claim a tax increase of one percent of GDP yields a sizable decline in output of 3 percent of GDP. Their findings on how taxes influence investment—their supply-side effects—are startling: "The strong response of investment helps to explain why the output consequences of tax changes are so large."

THE TIMING OF THIS BOOK'S PUBLICATION is peerless. For starters, there is a good deal of confusion lately about the tax issue, particularly on the political right, the traditional home of antitax sentiment. What's more, the tax issue is likely going to take on growing political importance, and soon, as the bill for entitlement obligations comes due on top of the massive spending currently under way in Washington. Let's take these two issues in turn.

The argument swirling in some circles on the political right goes something like this: Tax rates have already been cut so much that they can't be cut much further. What's more, the tax issue has lost political punch—after all, President Obama ran successfully on a platform that included tax increases. Conservatives and Republicans need to de-emphasize the tax issue if they want to win votes from smart coastal elites and the middle class. Indeed, it's possible Republicans will need to propose tax increases themselves to demonstrate their serious commitment to fiscal sanity if they want to get elected down the road.

Weighing the merit of these arguments requires us to take stock of the relevant recent history on taxes and on broader supply-side policy initiatives, which this book does in stimulating detail.

Set the wayback machine to the late 1970s. The country was mired in stagflation—high inflation and unemployment. The top marginal tax rate was 70 percent. Mortgage rates were over 20 percent. Energy prices were ballooning while, between 1978 and 1981, real middle-class income levels fell. Reagan offered a road map out of the morass the country was in. He put growth and entrepreneurship at the center of his political vision. In Reagan's telling, the individual risk-taker, rather than the government, was the primary agent of economic change that advanced human welfare. According to this view, which seemed radical to many at the time, government- generated limits on individual initiative and growth were responsible for the problems the nation faced. A better tomorrow was possible given a series of daring policy moves: removing harmful regulations, licking inflation and strengthening the dollar, freeing and expanding trade, and unleashing entrepreneur-led growth via tax cuts. This was the supply-side vision.

These steps proved economically and politically potent. The Reagan years marked the beginning of "the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet." During the bull market beginning in 1982 and extending to 2000, "stocks soared by 12 percent per year, raising the net worth of U.S. households by some $30 trillion" while the size of the economic pie ballooned. "In the twenty-five year boom launched by the Reagan policies," the authors note, "the average annual growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) was 3.4 percent per year. In Europe the growth rate…was only a bit over 2.0 percent. By the end of the Reagan years, the American economy was almost one-third larger than it was when the 1980s began."

New firms and industries were born as the American economy was reborn. As economists Carl Schramm and Bob Litan have pointed out, the era of big-firm capitalism, and its cozy relationship with big government, was ushered out and entrepreneurial capitalism built on knowledge industries was ushered in.

And it wasn't just the United States. The supply-side vision swept the globe, finding adherents to the gospel of tax cuts from the Far East to Eastern Europe. Sweden has eliminated its estate tax. Germany has slashed corporate tax rates. France has flirted with "offering employees new tax incentives to earn more money by working longer hours." This is a remarkable history of successful policy and politics. Coupled with the empirical work of the Romers and others demonstrating the harmful effects of high taxes to investment and growth, a heavy burden should rest on those hoping to raise taxes or to de-emphasize the importance of low tax rates to high economic performance. If the tax cut issue has less resonance than it once did, or has lost some of its power as a vote-getter, this is not a reason to abandon everything that has been learned about the importance of tax rates to growth over the last two generations.

IT IS TRUE THAT IN WASHINGTON THESE DAYS, the talk is now of "higher income taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, energy taxes and hedge fund taxes." The financial crisis that began in 2007 and has morphed into a broader economic crisis now has advocates of free markets and supply-side policies on the defensive.

"In assessing the health of the American economy," the authors write, "we're worried about where the puck is going. So, evidently, are the shrewd and successful investors who make their money anticipating seismic economic and political changes—the tipping points—and reacting before the herd. All over the globe, capitalists are looking ahead at where the United States is headed, and for the first time in more than a generation, they don't like what they are seeing. What they are anticipating is the torrent of bearish policy mistakes that we wrote this book to warn about."

The storm clouds include protectionist trade measures, increased taxes on capital, a swelling deficit, cap-and-trade regulations on greenhouse gases, greater government intervention in health care, a resurgent labor movement, and a weak dollar. Most worrisome of all is the rise of what my colleague Christopher DeMuth calls "fusion enterprise," a phenomenon in which we witness "the intermingling of politics and power with finance and commerce, going beyond government regulation to the government as direct owner and market participant." Laffer, Moore, and Tanous are usually happy warriors, upbeat and full of good cheer. As they say at the outset of the book, "we're not doom and gloom people, we're natural optimists." But their forecast for the near future is not a sunny one. It is telling that they close with a chapter offering highly detailed advice on "protecting your investments in the troubled times ahead." To find out their recommendations you'll have to plunk down $27. Given the current climate for investment, it might be the most prudent purchase you'll be able to make for some time.

About the Author

Nick Schulz is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of The American.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

danny| 4.7.09 @ 9:08AM

the answer is gold.

ACynic| 4.7.09 @ 4:13PM

So what if tax increases are highly GDP contractionary.
According to the Obama Marxist mantra, what matters most is "fairness" and "spreading the wealth."
Better if everyone, in the end, has the same amount of personal assets, than if lower taxation increases GDP (and thus, employment and opportunity due to a growing pie).
The pseudo religious leftists - like Obama, and others of his ilk, like Castro, would rather EVERYONE be poor and have zero opportunity, than have some, through personal intiative and effort, have more than the other guy.
Of course, some pigs are more equal than other pigs.
The more equal pigs - like the millionaires Obama, Kennedy, Kerry, Pelosi, Frank, Rahm Emmanuel, etc., - will not have to suffer the injustices and limitations of their socialist/communist utopian society because they, like Castro, will be immune and insulated from all the restrictions they will impose on everyone else. After all, they are the ruling PIGS, and therefore, not only more equal, but entitled to be more equal.
Thus, for example, Castro has his fellow traveling thugs, have access to free travel abroad, the internet, cell phones , automobiles (nice ones too !!!), first rate elitist medical care, and non-rationed food supply - just to cite a few items.
It's everyone else that has to get by with zero opportunity, food rationing and restrictions of personal liberties.
Of course, Obama's model society, Cuba, is a fair and just society because EVERYONE IS EQUAL ; and of course, that's all that matters.
(Did you know that all Cubans get "free" medical care and "free education ?? Why, even here in the USA, not everyone gets all this !! ) .

So, what really makes a difference is that policies are enacted by the diktat of the MORE EQUAL PIGS , Obama et. al., in which the MORE EQUAL PIGS, live and rule like the aristocracy, and everybody else - that would be the LESS EQUAL PIGS or, for short, the serfs are all equal.

Welcome to the vision of Obama where by increasing GDP through proven tax policy is not acceptable because it will allow the pie to grow bigger, but only by sacrificing the power and authority of the MORE EQUAL PIGS.

Alan Brooks| 4.7.09 @ 5:18PM

the answer is clone the Gipper. Cloning may be unethical but just this once-- the great leaders are all dead.

"I said hey Ron, take a walk on the wild side...
and the colored girls sing:
Ron Ron Ron, Ron Ron Ron Ron, Ron Ron Ron Ron Ron, Ron Ron Ron.
the do Ron Ron Ron, the do Ron Ron Ron"

and if you think it's funny, you might enjoy the Laugher Curve (oh, groan, what a tepid pun)

Paul Milenkovic| 4.7.09 @ 6:33PM

How about bring back Genghis Kahn?

Yeah, yeah, he had his faults but Mongol rule was based on 1) low tariffs, 2) globalization of commerce, 3) religious tolerance, 4) a vigorously pro-active Middle East policy.

When the Mongol Empire crumbled and Arab civilization gained control of the Eastern trade routes, East Asian goods (spice, silk, etc) got much more expensive. Which resulted in Columbus -- you could say that America is the ultimate "blowback" for the shennanigans of the Middle Easterners rather than the other way around.

Alan Brooks| 4.7.09 @ 11:55PM

Jimmuh ought to be cloned, and his clones sent to every one of our adversaries to bore them to death.

"escuze me, your excellency Cawtor, I must to go douse myself with gasoline-- the better to immolate mineself.
Goodnight"

Derek Jarvis| 4.11.09 @ 5:29PM

Is it not ironic that

a) Kauffman benefits from the TARP bailouts as it is a foundation with $2.5 billion in assets
b) Kauffman does not fund entrepreneurs nor entrepreneurship directly, but only those who talk/write about it

Imagine if Mr. Kauffman had had to compete with the Kauffman Foundation's sapping of resources had he had to launch his companies in the shadows of the Kauffman Foundation, where entrepreneurs are not supported.

Yes--Kauffman the entrepreneur would have received no support from Kauffman.

The article states, "And so, for instance, Mr. Schramm brags that Kauffman has "dragged economists into considering the importance of firm formation to the overall growth of the economy." The foundation has commissioned some 6,000 papers on this and related topics in the past several years." --http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879888700588243.html

Imagine if Schramm would have invested in 6,000 patents or 6,000 companies or 6,000 entrepreneurs--then perhaps America's reserve currency status would not be in danger.

But 6,000 papers penned by professors in the ivory tower as the economy crumbles... the great thing about it is that Schramm can take credit for any bounce, as surely it was not the actions of rugged entrepreneurs, but the 6,000 papers that few, if anyone, will ever read.

fordingham| 4.19.09 @ 4:04PM

Carl Schramm’s “Schrammenomics” Creates Record Unemployment
By entrepreneurshipeconomist

Over the past seven years, Carl Schramm has presided over the least entrepreneurial and most corrupt era of American business. During these seven years he has done far more harm than good by redefining entrepreneurship in a Harvard MBA “growthology” buzzword manner that pleases his Statist friends. During the era of Schrammenomic “entrepreneurship/growthology” the government burgeoned (growthology) as tens of millions lost their pensions, savings, jobs, and homes while entrepreneurs lost their credit lines and the rising generation lost its future earnings, as the Kauffman Foundation’s endowment/hedge fund needed the TARP bailout funds to line Schramm et al.’s pockets with millions upon millions, as the $2.5 billion endowment benefited from taxpayer bailouts for the Wall Street rich both directly and indirectly.

Instead of investing the Kauffman funds in entrepreneurs and innovators, Schramm has pocketed millions for his corporate vanity press while leading and furthering double-speaking Statist philosophies, dumbing down and feminizing the university campus and replacing wealth-creating Ph.D.’s with wealth-transferring MBAs/JDs, all the while saying one thing while doing another; as one cannot serve two masters. As Schramm’s campaigning for the Nobel prize and fostering innovation and entrepreneuership are opposing endeavors, he had not the time to do both; and as he does not personally innovate nor invent nor create companies with actual names, he figured the former path would be the safer investment for the $2.5 billion endowment he inherited/commandeered.

Never has Schramm used his throne to speak out against massive student debt, but instead he has rewarded the administrations who augmented the student debt in an unprecedented manner and bought up more land and property with hundreds of millions of dollars–stolen capital that Kauffman had meant for entrepreneurs, rather than a private citizen’s campaign for the Nobel in economics.

When entrepreneurs innovate and create, according to Schramm, they do it for selfish motivations, and that is why Kauffman cannot fund them, but only take credit for their success, while leaving them with their failures as their lines of credit are cut off by Schramm’s satatist/banking friends. But when Schramm takes credit for the wealth created by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship via his elite Kauffmun-funded PR team and Kauffman-funded vanity-press buzzword bloggers, he does it for the greater good of humanity, and thus he is the one, true pre-ordained beneficiary of Kauffman, as he is more virtuous than you, because he neither innovates nor invents, which is considered to be a crime against the Statists and the State. And over the past seven years, he and his team of elite Statists have crusaded against the true entreprneurial spirit, while seeking to take credit for entrepreneurship’s wondrous wealth creation while funneling millions to the bureuacracies/university administrations that oppose it. Name one–just one–Kauffman venture that has sprung fourth form the millions they have invested in Statist technology transfer and university dog and pony shows.

“I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.” –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

Scrhamm and his socialist friends would have dominated in the Soviet Union, as the Statists redefine entrepreneurship as a puerile Web 2.0 riskless/centralized blogfest/PR machine/vanity press.

blogs.forbes.com/innovation/2009/03/america-still-loves-its-entrepreneurs.html

Yes–America still loves its entrepreneurs, but Schramm is the opposite of the entrepreneur, funding university administrations and creating vast technology transfer/entrepreneurship education bureaucracies in Schramm’s image–filled with lifelong, professional Statists who are jealous of wealth creators and entrepreneurs and pull out all the stops in opposing them.

The Kauffman funds were meant to fund entrepreneurs all across the land–not to be concentrated in one central-planner’s hands so as to build his vanity press/buzzword blogfest and further his campaign for the Nobel in ecomics, as millions of entrepreneurs lost their homes, savings, pensions, and businesses over the seven years of the central-planners’ anti-entreprneuerial leadership. Under Schrammenomics government spending has burgeoned in an unprecedented manner while corporate corruption has soared. And all the while, Schramm has remained too big to fail as the eocnomy crumbled under his anti-leadership.

How many more years is the Kauffman Board going to sit idly by as Schrammenomics funds innovationless university administrators and Statists? How many more homes, jobs, pensions, businesses, and savings must be lost, before the Kauffman Board reallocates the hundreds of millions directed towards Schramm’s vanity press/soulless, dishonorable boomer blogfest filled to the brim with conflicts of interest?

dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments
“It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as:

“In light of the public allegations of a departure from Mr. Kauffman’s intent, lack of appropriate oversight by the Board of Directors, and certain instances of conflicts of interest. ” (www.ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2004/kauffmanreport030404.htm#conclusion)

See also this editorial from the Kansas City Business Journal (www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2003/09/15/editorial1.html)

Ewing Kauffman was famous as an ethical leader. Carl Schramm is not.
dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php#comments

uk.reuters.com/article/gc06/idUKTRE53H1B920090418
blogs.harvardbusiness.org/how-to-fix-business-schools/2009/04/can-ethics-classes-cure-cheati.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/business/economy/18grads.html?ref=business

Talk talk talk talk talk talk, PR release, soundbite, soundbite, blog, blog, talk, talk, talk, PR release, talk, fund blog to review schrammenomic books with kauffman funds, talk talk talk, blog, blog blog. And the DOW goes down, down, down, along with the economy, pensions, savings, and the American Dream. Hord. Hord. Hord Kauffman funds for personal profits/book promotions/book tours. Deny entrepreneurs funding while pocketing millions meant for entrepreneurs and funding friends and schrammenomic “team players.” Write another vanity-press book. Send to sycophantic buzzword Harvard MBA/JD bloggers.

bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aL0jFzKptwwg&refer=us

Nowhere in the Kauffman mission statement did Mr. Kauffman say that one risk-free, Machiavellian man/Statist should so dominate and transmorgify the fruits of Mr. Kauffman’s vison, service, leadership, and entrepreneurship.

Over the past seven years as the DOW plummeted, housing prices plummted, and tens of millions of American’s lost their jobs/homes/savings/penisons to Schrammenomics, Schramm has pocketed millions and doled out hundreds of millions more to university administrators and elite blogger/lawyers supporting his campaign for the Nobel in ecomomincs.

Schramm had a vast opportunity to directly fund entrepreneurs and innovation–to lead an army of entrepreneurs; but as his major goal was the Nobel in economics and not fostering wealth creation and growth, nor saving the US Constitution nor economy; he focused on PR and “being liked” and surrounding himslef with syocphantic socialists who could put on the best entrepreneuership dog and pony shows. And after seven long years of anti-entrepreneur Schrammenomics, the unemployment rate has hit an all-time high:

news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=unemployment&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

Under Schramm’s anti-leadership (As the WSJ article states that he is proud that nobody knows what it is that Kauffman does), Kauffman will not fund entrepreneurs nor innovators nor risk-takers, but Schramm’s purloined empire will instead merely seek to take credit for the entrepreneurs’ innovation, work, and wealth creation via PR releases.

Notice what has happened over the past seven years since Schramm took the helm of the Kauffman Foundation and redefined entrepreneurship in his own elite, “never worked a day in my life,” “never filed a patent nor launched a company with an actual name,” “too big to fail” image.

This is because Schramm sees entrepreneurs as greedy, selfish people. And that is why he receives the lion’s share of the Kauffman funds to promote his vanity press and hire an entire cabal of “growthology” bloggers and Harvard MBAs to coin new buzzwords so as to transfer more wealth into Schramm’s pocket as the economy declines. For when entrepreneurs seek money, they do it for selfish reasons. But when Schramm’s “schrammenomic” Harvard MBA/blogger/lawyer friends seek money, they do it for the greater good of society.

When entrepreneurs innovate and create, according to Schramm, they do it for selfish motivations, and thus the Statist will not fund them. But when Schramm takes credit for the wealth created by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship via his elite Kauffmun-funded Harvard MBA/PR team and Kauffman-funded vanity-press buzzword bloggers, he does it for the greater good of humanity.

Schrammenomics is the problem–not the solution.

davisrest| 4.25.09 @ 10:45AM

F.A. Hayek warned us about Carl Schramm’s Tyranny: Mises Warned us of Carl Shramm’s/Dane Stangler’s Post Office
April 24, 2009 by entrepreneurshipeconomist
“[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.”” –Ludwig Von Mises predicting what the Kauffman Foundation would become after seven years of tryannical, corporate-CEO, personal-profiteering, anti-intellectual, anti-entrepreneurial Schrammenomics.

“Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow…” –Ludwig Von Mises talking about why Carm Schramm goes to the $ 3,995.00/head Milken Institute to address his fellow corporate-statists on Kauffman’s dime, instead of funding innovators, true academics, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and inventors who are losing their homes and businesses as the eocnomy withers after seven lonmg years of Schrammenomics and Schramm funnels himself and his growthology buzzword-bloggers millions from the Kauffman endowment (which was meant to go to entrepreneurs, true academics who are not afraid to quote Hayek and Mises, and innovators), while pretending to serve the innovators and entrepreneurs Schramm opposes in his characterless actions and by saying one thing while doing another.

I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back. –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

F.A. Hayek/Mises warned us about Carl Schramm et al.’s Temporal Tyranny, where he hires thug deputies such as Dane Stangler to backdate research and make it look like Schrammenomics embraces the Austrains, when, in fact, he compeletly ignores them in word, deeed, spirit, and action.

Because Schramm has hijacked the $2.5 billion Kauffman foundation, he runs it as a top-down dictarorial CEO would, with every action motivated by self-preservation as the Nobel in economics slips further and further beyond his intellectually-inept reach. Sycophantic lockstepping lawyers such as Dane Stangler will never call Schramm out, as thier salary depends on supporting Statist Schrammenomics above truth, beauty, and reason, and they will go so far as to backdate Kauffman research to serve their master.

Carl Schramm did not build Kauffman, and it is time for him to step down.
Carl Schramm is not Kauffman, and it is time to step down.
Carl Schramm does not own Kauffman, and it is time to step down.
Kauffman did not will for his vast welath to become a Schrammenomics vanity press, and it is time for Schramm to step down.
Kauffman did not will for Schramm to use a $2.5 billion warchest to pen and promote insipid, self-serving books lauding Schrammenomics while completely ignoring intellectual diants such as L.V. Mises and F.A. Hayek, and it is time for Carl Schramm to setp down.
Nowhere in the foundation’s charter did it stipulate that Carl Schramm was to lord over the Kauffman Foundation for all of entirety as the economy withered, crashed, and died; and the netrprnuerial spirit was replaced with Schrammenomics

The most important elements in entrepreneurship are character and integrity. The most important elements for Statists/Schrammeconomist are the lack of character and integrity and the ability to use words to mislead and deceive while laying claim to a dead entrepreneur’s estate. While Hayek and Mises used words for truth, Schramm uses words for mere personal profit, and then when his lackluster, anti-intellectual, unscholarly works fall short, he has to try and put all better economists out of business by leveraging his $2.5 billion warchest. Imagine if Hayek and Mises had used a $2.5 billion warchest to put their competitors out of business. They would never do this. For they had character and integrity, which Schramm the self-serving tyrant/Statist completely lacks.

“Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.” –Mises. Again we see why Schramm never quotes Mises, as Reason is the groupthink statists’ prime enemy.

“Whenever lesser men and groupthink, central-planning intellects begin with the idea that they are the best and the brightest, they will advance that notion by any means necessary. All superior competitors will be put out of business by the central planners, and as the groupthinkers congregate to discuss entrepreneurship, they wil inevitably criminalize the individual, innovator, and entrepreneur and seek to persecute and bankrupt him while promoting their own soulless, spirtualless works. They will go so far as to ignore entire bodies of work and Nobel Laureates, replaicing the Greats with a sycophantic corproate groupthink structre which enriches the insiders while preaching the virtues of entrepreneurship, even as the groupthink corporation/buzzword blogfest kills it. They take great pride in their failure to define terms, as their generic “growthology” buzzwords come to mean but one thing–the flow of capital into their own personal pockets.”

Whenever those with a fundamentally socialist, central-planning, bureaucratic mindset approach entrepreneurship, they generally end up creating a groupthink tyranny which kills the spirit of entrepreneurship, while simultaneouly profiting off the fruits of entrepreneurship and free markets, even as such exalted entities wither and die under the Schrammeconomists’ reign of corporate terror, whence a Foundation’s resources are leveraged to put competitors out of business so that the Schrammeconomist’s inferior work might prevail in the dumbed-down market, thusly exlating Schramm as teh eocnomy and academia decline. The study and teaching of entrepreneurship requires a great character and intellect, and an even greater humility. Over the past seven years Carl Schramm has demonstrated that he lacks character, intellect, and humility; and the economy and academy have suffered immensely under is reign.

1) Carl Schramm lacks character: Schramm has beocme famous for syaing one thing while doing another and making promises he never keeps. This has been pointed out elsewhere on the internet, and it is also manifested in that he runs the Kauffman Foundation like a tyrant, pocketing millions of dollars for his inspidid treatises on Capitalism which compeletly ignore the towering giants of the field including Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek. Not referencing the Greats who have walked before you is a serious sign of unscholarly egomania, ineptitude, and a withered character. Rather than funding true economists and entrepreurs, Schramm actually uses the Kauffman foundation’s funds to oppose them while campaigning for the Nobel in economics, wiring hundreds of millions to Statists and intellectually-indifferent University administrators. Schramm runs the Kauffman Foundation not as a charitable foundation, but as a corrupt corporation which enriches Schramm in a massive manner with millions, while also allowing him to try and put his competitors out of business, funding groupthink growthology bloggers to dumb down the internet. Should a foundation be run by those with lackluster, unscholarly books to promote and a track record for academic irresponsibility? Will they not by and by use the foundation’s resources to try and put their superior competitors out of business in cloaked, obfuscating, unmanly manners, all the while preaching fair markets and free markets? Because Schramm lacks character, integrity, and intellect, he profits not by serving entrepreneurship’s ideals, but by saying one thing while doing another and hiring Dane Stangler to backdate research trying to claim that Schramm was the first to discover/rediscover Austrian economics. Actually the Austrian economists discovered Austrian economics. And Schramm destests them because they call his failed Statist bluff with every word.

http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php

Posted by John Bunch, Ph.D., May 03, 2007 8:50AM

It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as:

“In light of the public allegations of a departure from Mr. Kauffman’s intent, lack of appropriate oversight by the Board of Directors, and certain instances of conflicts of interest. ” (http://www.ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2004/kauffmanreport030404.htm#conclusion)

See also this editorial from the Kansas City Business Journal (http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2003/09/15/editorial1.html)

Ewing Kauffman was famous as an ethical leader. Carl Schramm is not.
–http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php

2. Carl Schramm lacks Intellect: Suppose you were to write a treatise on philosophy and leave out Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Suppose you were to write a treatise on physics and leave out Einstein and Newton. Schramm wrote a treatise on kapitalism and he left out Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek and his teacher Ludwig Von Mises.

Conduct a search in GOOD CPITALISM: BAD CAPITALISM.

0 results for ‘hayek’
0 results for ‘mises’

Now Schramm has hired Dane Stangler to backdate Kauffman research to show that really Schramm was thinking about the Austrians all along; and again this ties into Schramm’s complete lack of character and corrupt nature.

3) Carl Schramm Lacks Humility: When one has no achievements other than commandeering a foundation for one’s own personal profit and intellectually-indifferent, vapid, Statist vanity press, one has nothing to be humble about. If Schramm had any humility he would apoligize for what he and his Statist, doublespeaking philosophies have done to academia and the economy, and he would step down.

Hayek reminds us that economics is about values, ethics, and character–not about doublespeaking Schrammenomics:

“I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
Conversation at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. (9 February 1978); published in A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism (1979) –Hayek

“If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.” Schramm has done more harm than good by placing his campaign for the Nobel Economics and hiring/funding growthology groupthink bloggers, over supporting entrepreneurs, innovators, and entrepreneurship. After seven years of Schrammenomics, look at the economy where millions ar elosing their jobs an dhomes. Look at the academy and the skyrocketing tuitions at the Kauffman campuses which place studnets in massive, unprecedented debt, with Kauffman campuses such as Oberlin and Keynon oft leading the way.

http://www.newsnet5.com/education/19073605/detail.html

How many more years of Schramenomics will the Kauffman board allow? When Schramm steps down, a thousand flowers will bloom, and the greats such as Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek will be given theior rightful place in the academy, as opposed to Schramm’s MBA/lawyer groupthink thugs who Schramm handpicked to serve the Schrammenomics tyranny over truth and reason.

Jon| 4.24.10 @ 11:41AM

Vai onko kenties ravintoguruilla jotain konkreettisempaa tietoa marjan terveysvaikutuksista (tai niiden vähäisestä arvosta)? Itse olen ainakin huomannut goji marjoissa olevan tehoa, ja varovasti uskaltaisin sanoa että omasta mielestäni se on kokeilemistani "superfoodeista" tehokkainta; tarkoitan siis että syötyäni (Tai siis juotuani koska kätevimmin sitä saa mehuna) tunnen vaikutukset samoin tein ja heti ensimmäisestä käyttökerrasta alkaen (mm ruuansulatus nopeutuu) toisin kuin monissa muissa superfoodeissa joiden vaikutukset huomaan vasta pitemmän käytön jälkeen.