Big State Good For Growth? Then Why Did Humanity Starve For Millennia Under Big States?

Among the debates between socialists and capitalists is the question of who made the West so rich? Was it private enterprise or the state? Former President Barack Obama energized the discussion when he told us, "If you’ve got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen" during a 2012 election campaign speech.

The left continues to prop up the idea that the state is the fount of all blessings. Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value and Director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London, wrote recently that western economies are failing because the people have hobbled the state: