I don't really care who the candidate is; none of the Republican contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are talking about the importance of growth and prosperity as much as they should be.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, the smart political answer to every crisis or challenge is more economic growth and prosperity. Prosperity is a nonpartisan idea. Politically, it transcends left, middle, and right. This is especially true when you fully grasp what prosperity, which only comes from economic growth, is and what it means.

According to George Gilder, who writes in his book, Life After Capitalism, that economic growth, at its most basic, is an increase in the accumulation of wealth and knowledge. Who's against more wealth and knowledge? 

If we borrow from the wisdom of the ages and cite someone like Jean-Baptiste Say as our go-to on the way to achieving economic growth, he'd tell us it's all about more production and supply. According to Says Law, production, or supply, creates its own demand. This is at diametrical odds with Keynesianism, which teaches that stimulating demand is what creates more supply and production. But I digress.

Still, does more economic growth really solve every societal challenge or problem? Yes, I believe you can get there intellectually.

According to Art Laffer, David Ricardo, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Jack Kemp, just to name a few of my heroes, economic growth comes from sound money and lowering tax rates, which lead to more private investment. This is especially true of lower rates of taxation on income, and savings, i.e., the formation of capital.

By reducing the marginal rate of tax on the incomes of the most productive members of our economy, they will have even more incentive to invest, which will add to the capital stock of the economy, leading to more credit, more entrepreneurship, and more production and this generates new economic activity, and, ultimately, puts more people to work.

Therefore, in a political context, where voters are easily bored and unlikely to listen to tedium or talking points lifted from the newest economic white paper, the answer to every question should be, wait for it, more economic growth and prosperity!

Allow me to demonstrate:

Q: Mr. Candidate, what's your solution to COVID?
A: Economic growth and more prosperity. And for that reason, I'm against locking down the economy.

Q: What's your solution to saving Social Security and Medicare?
A: More tax revenue in Washington, and for that reason, I'm for far more robust economic growth. We need the economy to grow at a 4 percent rate for a decade, which will throw off trillions of additional taxes and help bring the programs into equilibrium. 

Q: What's your solution to the problem in Ukraine?
A: Besides a ceasefire, bring the parties to the table to discuss multi-lateral initiatives that can help rebuild both economies once a new framework for peace is formulated. Central to that is more economic engagement.

Q: How do we fix our K-12 public schools?
A: Growth leads to more prosperity, which allows for more home ownership, which leads to more property taxes, and more stable families. Therefore, the answer is more economic growth.

Q: How do we modernize our transportation system, including highways, airports, and train stations?
A: More revenues, which means more economic growth.

Q: How do we protect our environment?
A: More prosperity. The richest nations in the world have the cleanest environments. Prosperity allows for the luxury of allocating limited resources to achieving environmental sustainability. Think innovation and technology. Neither are free or cheap!

Look, I’m going to make an audacious claim--the solution to every societal problem or crisis is more freedom and prosperity. Or what I like to call the morality of prosperity. And by the way, freedom and prosperity are inextricably linked. Prosperity allows us the freedom to buy more things, including housing, food, clothing, health care, education, transportation, protection in numerous forms, and most importantly, knowledge.

This is why the COVID lockdowns were so outrageous and immoral; they flew entirely and violently in the face of freedom and prosperity, which is, at its most basic, moral. The solution to any problem is never poverty. Just ask Bob Cratchit. His family’s puny Christmas goose was a symbol of scarcity and poverty.

Tiny Tim Cratchit was sickly, and he was going to die because of, among other things, a lack of access to suitable shelter and better health care, Bob Cratchit couldn’t afford the bigger Christmas goose for his family--the bigger goose being a symbol of abundance and prosperity.

So, if you're running for political office, especially the highest office in the land, and your message isn't peppered throughout with the essential social and familial ingredient of economic growth which leads to more abundance and prosperity--which means more of everything including knowledge and opportunity--you're doing it wrong. 

Merry Christmas and God bless us all, everyone.