We can’t count the number of years Uncle Sam Can’t Count has been in the making. The idea that government subsidies not only fail but also cause harm to the economy—and to the people receiving the subsidies—is so counterintuitive that we have only grasped the truth of it over many years of study.
We have many people to thank for helping us write this exciting book. Robert Higgs, Aileen Kraditor, and Forrest McDonald have been mentors and sources of wisdom to both of us for many decades. Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, and Ron Robinson, president of Young America’s Foundation, have steadily encouraged us over many years in developing these ideas, and both men have offered us opportunities to teach and to refine our ideas through give-and-take with many different audiences. Michelle Easton, president of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, has done the same. Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, took the chance in hiring both of us at Hillsdale College. We thank him for helping preserve Hillsdale College as a bastion of freedom, and we thank Mark Kalthoff for his fine leadership of the history department, and Doug Jeffrey for his help in External Affairs. John Cervini and Ellen Donohoe have been so encouraging to us that we simply had to finish this book to show them that their faith was not misplaced.
We developed earlier versions of some of the chapters in this book for Young America’s Foundation (Vanderbilt and Hill) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (Astor, Mason, and Dow). We thank both of these groups for the confidence they had that we could show the advantages entrepreneurs have in a relatively free economy.
Specific scholars also helped us with several of our chapters. On Astor, John Denis Haeger, the foremost expert on Astor, read our first draft and offered wise counsel. On Vanderbilt, Glenn Porter and Bill Mulligan read our first draft many years ago and helped point us in the right direction. The Hagley Foundation in Wilmington, Delaware, has a wealth of information on steamships, Collins, and Vanderbilt, and that got our research started. On Hill, we learned from Albro Martin and Maury Klein about railroads and mobility in the 1800s. On Dow, we were blessed to work in a good research facility at the Post Street Archives in Midland, Michigan. Ned Brandt, the curator, has written a definitive book on Dow and he was a sure guide through the maze of information. Herbert Dow’s grandson, Ted Doan, gave us an interview that helped us focus on Dow and his challenges. On U.S. energy, Burt had several lunches with Allen Matusow, history professor at Rice University and author of an outstanding book on Richard Nixon. Matusow’s insights on price controls and the energy crisis were indispensable to writing our chapter. Richard H. K. Vietor, author of a fine book on energy policy, was Burt’s colleague in graduate school and his insights on energy and government have been useful. On the modern energy subsidies, Tim Carney has constantly been full of insights. We have been blessed in our conversations with him and by reading his many fine articles in the Washington Examiner.
HarperCollins has been a fine publisher to work with on this project. Our editor, Adam Bellow, has been an enthusiastic supporter of this book’s publication, and Eric Meyers has assisted us many times. Tom Pitoniak did excellent copyediting on this book, and we are grateful to him for his improvements. Alex Hoyt is the best agent there is; when he speaks, we listen.
The students at Hillsdale College have been a wonderful sounding board for these ideas. Special thanks go to Ian Swanson for his fine work as our research assistant, and also to Thomas Waters, Robert Ramsey, and Doug Williams for their suggestions. We also want to thank Joseph Rishel, Blaine McCormick, Kendra Shrode, Mitchell Rutledge, Sally Pavalis, Thomas Folsom, Winston Elliott, Margaret Britt, and Gary Dean Best for support and kind words at the right time. Our son, Adam, to whom we dedicate this book, is central to our lives, and we want him to enjoy the liberty in his life that we have had so abundantly in ours.