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Joseph Schumpeter was born on this date in 1883.
Alan Greenspan’s much-discussed memoir, is full of thoughtful discussions of Schumpeter’s central mesage of creative destruction. Here are a few lines from the first of those discussions:
(p. 48) Working with heavy industry gave me a profound appreciation of the central dynamic of capitalism. “Creative destruction” is an idea that was articulated by the Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. LIke many powerful ideas, his is simple: A market economy will incessantly revitalize itself from within by scrapping old and failing businesses and then reallocating resources to newer, more productive ones. I read Schumpeter in my twenties and always thought he was right, and I’ve watched the process at work through my entire career.
The reference to Greenspan’s book is:
Greenspan, Alan. The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World Economic Flexibility. New York: Penguin Press, 2007.