Kevin A. Hassett
Q&A with author via The Washington Post
Q: Let’s start with the premise of your book, that America’s on a path to socialism. I’d like you to just give us what you see as the evidence of that. From what I read, we still have what sure looks like the most dynamic capitalist economy in the world. Our growth has been above 6 percent recently. Interest rates are low. Investment seems to be picking up. That looks like a pretty resilient capitalist economy to me. But you’re obviously concerned. Explain why.
A: Yeah, that’s right. And you know, we certainly aren’t all the way there yet. But I think that the key observation is that, you know, Joseph Schumpeter back at the 20s, looked forward to America he was writing about it in the 70s or 80s, where he basically saw an America in the future that would be very prosperous but that would sow the seeds of its own–the destruction of its capitalist system. And if you look at–and I go to this quite a bit in the book–if you look at Schumpeter’s idea of what the world would look like, you know, it very, very much looks like the world of today…basically, what he said was, as we get richer and richer, that Americans are going to send their kids to colleges and universities much more, and colleges and universities are going to be hotbeds of socialism.