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They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers
From the author of The End of Work, Who Needs the Fed?, and Popular Economics, comes a true policy guide for America’s frustrated, independent thinkers. In They’re Both Wrong, John Tamny explains how both Democrats and Republicans have turned the Constitution on its head by virtue of both parties presuming to govern us from Washington, D.C. – as opposed to each leaving us free to choose our policy bliss through our choice of city or state. What they’re “An astonishing, mind-stretching, provocative, always-interesting book that could perform a genuine public service for us all by smashing the oft-sterile boundaries of political debate. A must-read masterpiece.” ~ Steve Forbes "John Tamny may be the most effective contrarian in America today. No matter how much I may endeavor to understand the subtleties of a given topic or issue, I can count on Tamny to not only poke meaningful holes in my perspective but teaches me a thing or two in the process. And is that not the true value of those who can effectively, perceptively and smartly view issues from outside that box that often confines even the most clever analysis? Tamny is almost sure to test the patience and the boundaries of a reader’s own point of view. But you will come away from the experience with questions you didn’t even know you should be asking along with a few answers you likely did not see coming." ~ Rick Ungar, Host of the nationally syndicated “The Rick Ungar Show” "I agree with John Tamny about a lot, but I strongly disagree with him on much more. What's not up for debate is that John is one of the smartest, most original thinkers in America. I dare you to read 'They're Both Wrong' and come to a different conclusion." ~ Steve Bannon “In ‘They’re Both Wrong,’ John Tamny is right. Why? Because Conservatives and Liberals both believe in politics. Politics is the idea that all of society’s ills can be cured politically. This is like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The soup is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and cake. And your Pinot Chardonnay is rolled in breadcrumbs and dunked in the deep fat fryer. Tamny argues that you’re better off doing your own ideological home cooking.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke John Tamny is Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks. He's also editor of RealClearMarkets and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research & Trading. Tamny frequently writes about the securities markets, along with tax, trade and monetary policy issues that impact those markets for a variety of publications including the Wall Street Journal, Investor's Business Daily, Financial Times, National Review and London’s Daily Telegraph. Prior to his present work, Tamny worked in private wealth management for Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. He received a BA in Government from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. He lives in Washington, D.C. The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 5, 2020
I liked John Tamny’s work, and this book is thought-provoking on a range of topics where he believes both the left and the right are wrong. In fact, I love this from the Foreword:
Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But that’s a good working theory.
This is an excellent defense of free markets, free trade, even the logic behind not worrying about government deficits. It’s the spending that is the real cost of government. I’d rather live in a world with a $1 trillion deficit where the government spends $3 trillion than a world where the government spends $6 trillion and the budget is balanced. The deficit is an accounting fiction, like the trade deficits. What matters is what government spends, since it takes real resources out of the economy right now, and lowers our standard of living overall. If government was limited, we wouldn’t be so emotional and divided over elections. His arguments for why conservatives are wrong on immigration are good, and I’ve made them myself. However, I would have liked to see him take on Thomas Sowell on this issue, whose views altered my own. The distinction between legal and illegal is important, and importing Toyotas is not the same as people, albeit we might got an Einstein in the mix. No matter what you think about this topic, there’s no doubt with a smaller government I’d be all for more legal immigration. The chapter on global warming is good, where Tamny acknowledges he’s not a scientist—nor is Al Gore. He cites stories dating back to the 1920s warning the “Artic Ocean is warming up, icebergs growing scarcer” (Washington Post, November 2, 1922). The price system still has nosebleed prices for coastal property, so the buyers/owners must not take these warnings very seriously. He quotes Warren Buffett, who is heavily invested in insurance companies saying in 2016 climate change has not produced more frequent or costly hurricanes nor other weather-related events covered by insurance. He’d know, since if he’s wrong, he’d pay for his errors, whereas when scientists and politicians are wrong, they don’t pay for their errors. In fact, those errors are spread nationally and even internationally. At least with markets, errors are contained. Watch what people do, not what they say, and Tamny provides many examples where the market signals totally contradict the conventional wisdom, such as why T-Bill rates are so low while we are running record deficits? Good question; perhaps because deficits don’t matter. He also argues that the entitlement spending is a good thing, since it reduces the money government can spend indiscriminately. Milton Friedman made a similar argument for interest on the national debt—that it is the least distorted spending the government does.
The chapter on quarterly capitalism is quite good, once and for all dispelling the silly notion that companies only care about the short-term. An exceptionally stupid claim coming from politicians who can’t see beyond the next term. Short-term investing is no easier than long-term, the best of the best are wrong as often as they’re right. Without the liquidity short termers provide, capital couldn’t shift to higher-value opportunities. Silicon Valley sits atop a graveyard of failure. I’m less convinced by Tamny’s argument that falling birth rates are nothing to fret over. But the future belongs to those who show up, and what does it say about the faith in the future when people have less children? We know that it requires faith in the future to launch a business, and a family is no different. I think George Gilder has the better of this argument over Tamny. He chides conservatives for arguing USA has highest corporate tax rate in the world (even though he says it should be zero). But USA has most of the world’s most valuable corporations. True, but at the margin, it has lost some of those. He takes down the notion repatriating foreign money overseas, energy independence, the fracking revolution—a blast to the past. Why do something yourself when someone else can do it cheaper? Why do conservatives cheer when the most advanced country competes with backward ones like Iran, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, and Saudi Arabia? It’s a good point. The wealthy, like Jeff Bezos, are excellent at innovation, and that’s why we need them and their billions, to launch new enterprises (Bezos was an early investor in Uber). Hard to see them contributing the same level of wealth through a foundation, no matter how well intended. What do they know about charity? Name the charity that has improved conditions anywhere in the world more than economic growth? Profits are always and everywhere the source of giving. It’s also a good point that the increase in foreign students in USA college accounts for some of the tuition increases, not just federal loans; 305,000 from China and 250,000 from South Korea, for example. Prices at top universities even in the absence of federal money would be high, because the value/demand is there. And who cares if liberal professors outnumber conservative ones 10 to 1. Would you rather have Fred Smith teach free market thinking at Yale or launch and run FedEx? The chapter on healthcare was also good. How could it be an inalienable right, when it didn’t even exist until very recently? In WW I was the first war where disease was not the number one killer. Falling prices are a result of economic growth. Transatlantic messages in 1866 were $10 per word, with a ten-word minimum! Twitter is free. There’s a chapter on conservatives and their housing misconceptions, which I largely agree with. Housing is consumption, and lowers economic growth, all the while being heavily subsidized by the government. He takes down the idea of Universal Basic Income as well, because the driver of poverty is plainly something other than a lack of money.
This is a fantastic book, and it will make you think no matter what side of the aisle you find yourself. If you’re a liberal, you’ll squirm a lot, but if you’re a conservative, you’ll squirm as well. That alone makes it worth reading. Great job, John Tamny!
Notable quotes:
“Your margin is my opportunity.” Jeff Bezos
“Don’t worry about people stealing in idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” Howard Aiken
“You want me to go to school with you tomorrow?” Frank Sinatra, responding to a child who’d been told by her teacher there was no more opportunity in America.
Just because an idea appeals to a lot of people doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But that’s a good working theory.
This is an excellent defense of free markets, free trade, even the logic behind not worrying about government deficits. It’s the spending that is the real cost of government. I’d rather live in a world with a $1 trillion deficit where the government spends $3 trillion than a world where the government spends $6 trillion and the budget is balanced. The deficit is an accounting fiction, like the trade deficits. What matters is what government spends, since it takes real resources out of the economy right now, and lowers our standard of living overall. If government was limited, we wouldn’t be so emotional and divided over elections. His arguments for why conservatives are wrong on immigration are good, and I’ve made them myself. However, I would have liked to see him take on Thomas Sowell on this issue, whose views altered my own. The distinction between legal and illegal is important, and importing Toyotas is not the same as people, albeit we might got an Einstein in the mix. No matter what you think about this topic, there’s no doubt with a smaller government I’d be all for more legal immigration. The chapter on global warming is good, where Tamny acknowledges he’s not a scientist—nor is Al Gore. He cites stories dating back to the 1920s warning the “Artic Ocean is warming up, icebergs growing scarcer” (Washington Post, November 2, 1922). The price system still has nosebleed prices for coastal property, so the buyers/owners must not take these warnings very seriously. He quotes Warren Buffett, who is heavily invested in insurance companies saying in 2016 climate change has not produced more frequent or costly hurricanes nor other weather-related events covered by insurance. He’d know, since if he’s wrong, he’d pay for his errors, whereas when scientists and politicians are wrong, they don’t pay for their errors. In fact, those errors are spread nationally and even internationally. At least with markets, errors are contained. Watch what people do, not what they say, and Tamny provides many examples where the market signals totally contradict the conventional wisdom, such as why T-Bill rates are so low while we are running record deficits? Good question; perhaps because deficits don’t matter. He also argues that the entitlement spending is a good thing, since it reduces the money government can spend indiscriminately. Milton Friedman made a similar argument for interest on the national debt—that it is the least distorted spending the government does.
The chapter on quarterly capitalism is quite good, once and for all dispelling the silly notion that companies only care about the short-term. An exceptionally stupid claim coming from politicians who can’t see beyond the next term. Short-term investing is no easier than long-term, the best of the best are wrong as often as they’re right. Without the liquidity short termers provide, capital couldn’t shift to higher-value opportunities. Silicon Valley sits atop a graveyard of failure. I’m less convinced by Tamny’s argument that falling birth rates are nothing to fret over. But the future belongs to those who show up, and what does it say about the faith in the future when people have less children? We know that it requires faith in the future to launch a business, and a family is no different. I think George Gilder has the better of this argument over Tamny. He chides conservatives for arguing USA has highest corporate tax rate in the world (even though he says it should be zero). But USA has most of the world’s most valuable corporations. True, but at the margin, it has lost some of those. He takes down the notion repatriating foreign money overseas, energy independence, the fracking revolution—a blast to the past. Why do something yourself when someone else can do it cheaper? Why do conservatives cheer when the most advanced country competes with backward ones like Iran, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, and Saudi Arabia? It’s a good point. The wealthy, like Jeff Bezos, are excellent at innovation, and that’s why we need them and their billions, to launch new enterprises (Bezos was an early investor in Uber). Hard to see them contributing the same level of wealth through a foundation, no matter how well intended. What do they know about charity? Name the charity that has improved conditions anywhere in the world more than economic growth? Profits are always and everywhere the source of giving. It’s also a good point that the increase in foreign students in USA college accounts for some of the tuition increases, not just federal loans; 305,000 from China and 250,000 from South Korea, for example. Prices at top universities even in the absence of federal money would be high, because the value/demand is there. And who cares if liberal professors outnumber conservative ones 10 to 1. Would you rather have Fred Smith teach free market thinking at Yale or launch and run FedEx? The chapter on healthcare was also good. How could it be an inalienable right, when it didn’t even exist until very recently? In WW I was the first war where disease was not the number one killer. Falling prices are a result of economic growth. Transatlantic messages in 1866 were $10 per word, with a ten-word minimum! Twitter is free. There’s a chapter on conservatives and their housing misconceptions, which I largely agree with. Housing is consumption, and lowers economic growth, all the while being heavily subsidized by the government. He takes down the idea of Universal Basic Income as well, because the driver of poverty is plainly something other than a lack of money.
This is a fantastic book, and it will make you think no matter what side of the aisle you find yourself. If you’re a liberal, you’ll squirm a lot, but if you’re a conservative, you’ll squirm as well. That alone makes it worth reading. Great job, John Tamny!
Notable quotes:
“Your margin is my opportunity.” Jeff Bezos
“Don’t worry about people stealing in idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” Howard Aiken
“You want me to go to school with you tomorrow?” Frank Sinatra, responding to a child who’d been told by her teacher there was no more opportunity in America.
June 9, 2020
Great book. Says a lot about how we think as a country.
I had heard the author's interview on a talk station in St. Louis and immediately bought the book. It's wonkish in spots and the read drags a bit in later chapters, but the author makes some very good points. The Right can be wrong and so can the Left. If you like to get new perspectives before the 2020 Presidential Election, read this book.
I had heard the author's interview on a talk station in St. Louis and immediately bought the book. It's wonkish in spots and the read drags a bit in later chapters, but the author makes some very good points. The Right can be wrong and so can the Left. If you like to get new perspectives before the 2020 Presidential Election, read this book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews