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

Praise for

THE TYRANNY OF DEAD IDEAS

Named one of the Books That Drive the Debate by
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Whenever an administration gets ready to take office for the first time, new ideas are back in vogue. Not so fast, warns Matt Miller: We need to get rid of the old ideas first. In The Tyranny of Dead Ideas he argues that stale thinking about government, business and public policy is holding America back and suffocating our national discourse.... When it comes to offering change, however, Mr. Miller preaches neither guillotines nor social upheaval but fresh policy.... These ideas are certainly worthy of debate.

The Wall Street Journal

Matt Miller is a one-man economic stimulus package. His ambitious new book... has more intriguing proposals packed into it than might be found in a month of congressional debates.... In this allegedly bipartisan age, where good ideas are supposed to trump ideology and politics, Miller is precisely the type of thinker we needsmart, independent and reformist.... If only the nation hired philosopher-kings, Miller would never be out of a job.

Truthdig.com

I was just reading [Millers] new book in the plane and its really, really good and I cant resist plugging it.

Justin Fox, Time.com

This book will make you the most valuable contributor to your next workplace discussion of politics or the economy. Matt Miller explains the history of ideas in a way that forces fresh insights about the future. I feel smarter already.

Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick:
Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, our times are piled high with difficulty, and just as we must act anew we must think anew. Matt Miller is one of those few, invaluable voices who is able to reach beyond the truisms of yesterday to help us think anew about tomorrow. I warmly recommend his pathbreaking new book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas.

David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership,
Harvard University, and senior political analyst, CNN

This reviewer hopes Miller is an inaccurate prognosticator, but something tells me hes got plenty of it right.

Sacramento Book Review

Millers suggestions will shock a lot of people, but they are ingenious.... In every case, he bases his arguments on solid evidence, shows the perils involved in holding onto these ideas, and suggests ways to solve the problems he raises. He thinks outside the box like no other writer I have read.

The Internet Review of Books

If Fortune columnist Millers eerily prophetic book had come out earlier, it could have served as a wakeup call for Wall Street leaders and Washington, D.C., lawmakers before the failure of several venerable financial institutions required government bailouts. The authors prescient observations make a persuasive case for how an American attitude of entitlement and outdated beliefs about government, education, taxes, business, corporate excess and health care threaten our national well-being and our position as a world leader.... Rather than a petulant indictment of our political and economic myopia, this book offers a fair-handed critique.

Publishers Weekly

Matt Miller is... one of Americas most distinguished public intellectuals.... In his new book, The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, he exposes the dry rot of unofficial American ideologyeverything from the evils of taxation to the virtues of corporatismto the light of sweet reason.

Peter Passell, editor of the Milken Institute Review

In The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Matt Miller drives a bulldozer into the complacent conventional wisdoms of our society, including the desirability of free trade, of paternalistic corporations, and even of low taxes. You need not agree with every idea to be invigorated by Millers bold and original vision.

Philip K. Howard, author of
The Death of Common Sense and Life Without Lawyers

With crisp prose and compelling arguments, Matt Miller overturns orthodoxies left and right. Whatever your political persuasion, you will agree that The Tyranny of Dead Ideas is a tour de forcethe rare book that can reshape the national agenda.

Daniel H. Pink, author of A Whole New Mind

THE TYRANNY OF DEAD IDEAS

REVOLUTIONARY THINKING FOR
A NEW AGE OF PROSPERITY

MATT MILLER

A HOLT PAPERBACK
TIMES BOOKS / HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
NEW YORK

ALSO BY MATT MILLER

The Two Percent Solution:
Fixing Americas Problems in Ways
Liberals and Conservatives Can Love

Holt Paperbacks
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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A Holt Paperback and are registered trademarks of
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Copyright 2009 by Matt Miller
Preface 2010 by Matt Miller
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Miller, Matthew, 1961

The tyranny of dead ideas : letting go of the old ways of thinking to unleash a new prosperity / Matt Miller.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9150-2

1. United StatesEconomic conditions2001 2. EconomicsPsychological aspects.
3. Attitude change. 4. Organizational change. I. Title.

HC106.83.M55 2009

330.973dc22 2008027801

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Originally published in hardcover in 2009 by Times Books

First Holt Paperbacks Edition 2010

Designed by Kelly Too

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For Amelia and Jody

STILL STUCK

What if the worst of the Great Recession is past, but we cant fix the economys deeper long-term problems because were in the grip of Dead Ideas? Thats the predicament we find ourselves in more than a year after the mortgage and financial meltdown brought the American economy to the brink. And despite some promising steps by President Barack Obama in his first year in office, there is no avoiding the truth: Americas economic future is at risk because we remain trapped in old ways of thinking. Unless enough of us open our minds, raise our voices, and demand more from our leaders, we will emerge from the current crisis having avoided something worse, but also having failed to renew American prosperity.

This doesnt have to be the case. America doesnt have to settle for economic stagnation or the loss of global competitiveness when a better future is just a few fresh ideas away. But the battle to fix the economy starts inside our heads.

Dead Ideas is the phrase I use to describe old ways of thinking that we hang on to even though circumstances have fundamentally changed; conventional wisdoms that retain their power long after they make any sense; or beliefs that, while comforting, are so at odds with reality that they amount to delusions that hold us back, and even doom us to fail. Dead Ideas are eternal, universal phenomena that plague all of us, thanks to an essential vulnerability in human nature: our slowness in updating the way we think about the world even when the world itself changes radically. When we talk about Dead Ideas, were talking about the trouble we get into when we cling to the things we think we know.