Arthur C. Brooks's Blog

In today’s speech at the Clinton Global Initiative, Mitt Romney stated “By the way, perhaps the best example of the good that free enterprise can do is by looking at the example of the developed world itself. My friend Arthur Brooks at the American Enterprise Institute, he’s pointed out that before the year 1800, living standards in the West were appalling… But starting in 1800, the West began two centuries of free enterprise and trade… As the most prosperous nation in history, it’s our duty to keep the engine o prosperity running. To open markets across the globe and to spread prosperity to all corners of the earth. We should do it, because it’s the right moral course.”

In a hard-hitting piece out today on National Review, Arthur shows why the federal stimulus didn’t work — and why such policies never will. So what should the government be doing?

“The best government philosophy is one that starts every day with the question, “What can we do today to get out of Americans’ way?” In other words, the president should not ask what new agency or program the government can create to stimulate, bail out, or redistribute from this group to that one. That will ultimately add to our problems, rob more from our children, and make it harder to create the jobs, opportunity, and growth our country needs. The president should instead ask these questions: What tax barrier to small business can we lower; what competition-killing regulation can we rescind; what unfair crony-tax loophole can we close?”

On September 12, Arthur spoke to the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis. Check out the full speech below.

Check out Arthur’s interview from earlier this week with Mark Reardon on KMOX in St. Louis!

In his latest “Stossel in the Classroom,” John Stossel interviews both Arthur and Rep. Paul Ryan on the importance of earned success for creating happiness. Watch the full segment below, and check out Stossel’s classroom resources.

In this long segment on Canada’s Sun News, Arthur discusses the themes from “The Road to Freedom,” contrasting learned helplessness and earned success, and discussing the need for real fairness. He combats the myth that the rich gain their wealth at the expense of the poor and points to the need for more mobility, not more redistribution. Watch the full segment below.

Arthur discussed the hope that Paul Ryan brings to the Romney ticket on Fox News. According to Arthur, “the problem with the Republican Party from the point of view of a lot of conservatives over the past ten  years is that it’s drifted toward being a kind of a minor version of the democrats when you talk about government spending…But Ryan has basically disentangled this. He’s somebody with real conservative principles but believes we need a safety net, believes that Medicare shouldn’t be abolished but should be saved in a responsible way and has a plan to do it.”

What does Paul Ryan bring to the Romney ticket? In Arthur’s words,

“Paul Ryan has found what may be the right approach, and Mitt Romney has installed it at the center of the Republican party before it is too late to save the country from a European-style debt crisis…Romney has done much more than fill out his ticket. He has shown his intention to refocus American politics. Ryanism is now an official voice of establishment Republicanism. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, Americans might just find they have a national political party centered on free enterprise and American greatness.”

Read his full analysis from The Weekly Standard here.

Yesterday Arthur appeared on Fox & Friends, dismantling the myths surrounding the Romney-Ryan budget and Medicare plans. Watch below to learn the truth.

On this morning’s Squawk Box, Joe Kernen, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Ben Mezrich discuss the American dream and the importance of earned success. According to Mezrich, the American dream is “charting your own way and doing something incredible and crazy and finding that happiness in your life.” Kernen goes on to point out that this is the earned success discussed by Arthur in “The Road to Freedom.”