Grassroot Scholar Gale Pooley, co-author of ‘Superabundance,’ touts a Mark Perry chart showing why we should favor freedom
Grassroot Scholar and former BYU-Hawaii economics and business professor Gale Pooley has been racking up accolades worldwide for the 2023 book he wrote with Marian Tupy, “Superabundance”, subtitled “The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet.”
At the same time, Pooley, who now lives in Utah, posts regularly on his Substack blog about how economic freedom has facilitated greater material abundance as expressed in so-called time prices, which are based on how many hours you have to work to buy a particular product.
In one of his latest posts, however, Pooley noted that not everything is more abundant, which in his view is mainly due to government.
He posted a chart, above, produced by American Enterprise Institute economist Mark J. Perry showing that from 2000 to June 2024, new cars, clothing, cell phone services, computer software and TVs especially all became more abundant, while products and services featuring significant government involvement, such as hospital and other medical care services, college tuition and fees, and childcare and nursery schools, became less abundant.
This suggests, Pooley wrote, that “if we want more abundance and less scarcity, we really need more entrepreneurs and free markets and fewer bureaucrats and politicians.”
To learn more about Pooley, you can watch an interview that Grassroot President Keli‘i Akina conducted with him back in 2019 here.
