Book Review: “Stubborn Attachments” by Tyler Cowen

Anyway, the big weakness of growth-above-all-else-ism is that we mostly don’t know what policies are likely to produce the kind of sustained, self-compounding, super-long-term growth that Tyler rightly declares we should prize. And given the risk that what we think are pro-sustained-growth policies might ultimately retard the rate of super-long-term self-compounding growth, this risk acts as a sort of discount rate – a reason not to completely sacrifice our present on behalf of our future, because we don’t really know whether we’re sacrificing our present to destroy our future. Thus, “Stubborn Attachments” reads to me more like a manifesto for basic research and green technology than a manifesto for laissez-faire economics or any of the other things that commentators call “growth policy”.

Source: noahpinionblog.blogspot.com