Voices
read just one of those), you also
need to read Conard’s technical but fervent paean to the folks
whom the soon-to-be Republican
presidential nominee reverently
calls “the job creators.”
That is: America’s wealthiest
and yearning-to-be-wealthiest.
The gist of the Book of Ed is
that the lower-income tax era that
began 32 years ago with Ronald
Reagan, and that has continued
through the Obama Years, is a great
thing. It nurtures the richest (and
those who want to be the richest),
which is also a good thing because
they take the risks that spur jobcreating innovation as they strive
for the Big Score. Income inequality is not only inevitable, it is a
blessing, he writes, in that we need
these fat geese because their eggs
are the most efficient way to hatch
economic growth.
The “unintended consequences”
in the title, Conard explained to me,
are the unemployment and stagnation created by government policies
that ignore the fundamental physics of risk and striving. “The economy is what it is,” he says.
The fact that this theory bestows social utility on the accumulation of wealth in general and
the careers of investment bank-
HOWARD
FINEMAN
HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
ers and take-over artists doesn’t
make it wrong, though it does
make it convenient for the likes
of Conard—and Romney—and the
partners of, say, Bain Capital.
Conard is not a weird guy with
a soup-stained Adam Smith tie at
a Grover Norquist rally. Conard is
a presentable Manhattanite with
an MBA from Harvard, which Mitt
also attended. He and Romney are
good friends—so much
so that Conard gave
a million dollars to
Income
an independent PAC
inequality
supporting the foris not only
mer Massachusetts
inevitable, it
governor. Conard is a
is a blessing,
former managing dihe writes.”
rector of Bain Capital.
Romney hired him.
Romney read a full draft of the book
and made suggestions, including
ways to cut it from 140,000 words
to 80,000. “We’ve talked about a
lot of the ideas in the book over the
years,” Conard told me. “He told me
I’m the new Ayn Rand.”
Actually, Conard isn’t. Unlike Randian purists, he worries
about federal deficits and thinks
we need an across-the-board tax
hike to ameliorate them. “We’ve
got spending at 25 percent of GDP
and tax revenues at 16 percent,” he