The supply-side theorists have got the bit in their teeth now, and it is obvious that they are going to run themselves flat out. Theory indeed has far outstripped politics, a fact of which supply-side writers are acutely aware; if their fervor amounts actually to messianism it must be acknowledged that they have come closer to conjoining economics and religion than anyone since Tawney. The newest contribution —and one of the most interesting—to this latter-day efflorescence of the doctrines of Adam Smith is The Economy in Mind (Universe, 381 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016; $15.95), by Warren T. Brookes, a former business executive turned columnist for the Boston Herald American.
The Economy in Mind is an odd book, by turns analytical and exhortative, philosophical and political, spacious and narrow, stuffy and moving— but consistently cogent. It is really an extended variation on a theme found in George Gilder’s Wealth and Poverty. the idea that the resources upon which economies are based are not material but mental, not physical but metaphysical. “Capital” is essentially what Julian Simon has described as “the ultimate resource,” human intelligence and imagination, of which no economy can have a surfeit.
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