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Economy: Why We Are Stuck In a 1989 Mindset One of history's great economic experiments ended 20 years ago. The odd thing is that we still haven't figured out what the results mean. The comparative experience of West Germany and East Germany during the Cold War was the stuff of terrible human drama. But it also added up to the closest thing that economists have had to a scientific trial with identical twins. The two countries provided the clearest measure of how well a "command" economy could perform against a market economy. Here were the same people from the same culture, starting from a virtual clean slate at precisely the same level of development after World War II-but under radically different forms of economic organization. On Nov. 9, 1989, the final test results were delivered by the thousands of East Germans who streamed across the border. One of the "twins" had produced the most vibrant economy in Europe; the other had become a place of darkness and dysfunction. Milton Friedman, the foremost champion of modern free-market thinking, later said that that the fall of the Berlin Wall was worth more than everything he had said and written. It was "undoubtedly the most influential action for the last hundred years because it put By Michael Hirsh Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Read more...(3 Pages)
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