The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity

Matt Miller

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A leading political and business thinker identifies the greatest threat to our economic future: the things we think we know—but don’t

America is at a crossroads. In the face of global competition and rapid technological change, our economy is about to face its most severe test in nearly a century. Yet our leaders have failed to prepare us for what lies ahead because they are in the grip of a set of "dead ideas" about how a modern economy should work. They wrongly believe that


• our kids will earn more than we do
• free trade is always good, no matter who gets hurt
• employers should be responsible for health coverage
• taxes hurt the economy
• schools are a local matter
• money follows merit

These ways of thinking—dubious at best and often dead wrong—are on a collision course with economic developments that are irreversible.

Matt Miller, one of America’s most creative public-affairs thinkers, offers a unique blend of business-world acumen and public-policy vision to lay bare how this conventional wisdom holds our country back, and he introduces us to a new way of thinking—what he calls "tomorrow’s destined ideas"—that can reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives.

It is only by breaking the tyranny of dead ideas that we can move beyond the limits of today’s obsolete debates and reinvent American capitalism and democracy for the twenty-first century.

Matt Miller is a columnist for Fortune, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and the host of public radio’s popular week-in-review program Left, Right & Center. He is a consultant to corporations, governments, and nonprofits, and his first book, The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America’s Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. He lives in Los Angeles.

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