The Mission of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty is to apply the perennial truths of economics and ethics to the urgent challenges of today. We are building a sustained argument against the progressive ideological regime that increasingly dominates America’s institutions and rebuilding the foundation of the nation’s first principles: freedom, equality, charity, and the pursuit of happiness for all.
What We Do
Provide a multifaceted defense of the practical and moral necessity of free markets through the publication of books, articles, and research by Institute scholars.
Foster a discussion of current events and top issues in economics, public policy, and culture at our blog, Wealth and Poverty Review.
Engage the academic, business, student, and faith communities in meaningful dialogue about the free enterprise system through public lectures and debates held nationwide.
Offer a summer seminar program to inspire, train, and mentor young leaders in business, politics, and religion.
Inform policy and thought through a targeted outreach to policymakers and opinion leaders.
Bring our defense of free enterprise to the public sphere through radio and television interviews and originally produced media.
Senior Fellow and Co-Founder of Discovery Institute
George Gilder is Chairman of Gilder Publishing LLC, located in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. A co-founder of Discovery Institute, Mr. Gilder is a Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality, and also directs Discovery's Technology and Democracy Project. His latest book, Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy (2018), Gilder waves goodbye to today's Internet. In a rocketing journey into the very near-future, he argues that Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a “great unbundling,” which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet.
Jerry Bowyer
Fellow, Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth & Poverty
Jerry Bowyer is the Chief Economist of Vident Financial, Editor of Townhall Finance, Editor of the business channel of The Christian Post, host of Meeting of Minds with Jerry Bowyer podcast, President of Bowyer Research, and author of The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics. He is also Resident Economist with Kingdom Advisors, serves on the Editorial Board of Salem Communications, and is Senior Fellow in Financial Economics at the Center for Cultural Leadership. He has been a Forbes.com columnist and a frequent commentator on Fox Business News, Fox News, and CNBC. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine, and he has written for the Wall Street Journal and for numerous other publications. Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of his seven children.
Nathan Lewis is the author of four books on economic topics, including three about the gold standard. He has maintained a website on economic topics since 2005, at newworldeconomics.com. He has fifteen years of experience in the asset management industry, in research and portfolio management. Today, he is the editor of the Polaris Letter, an investment newsletter.
Robert Marbut is a renowned expert on homelessness and a senior fellow of Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty. Marbut has a PhD in Political Behavior and American Political Institutions and his career has been marked by bipartisanship having served as Chief of Staff for San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros in the 1980s, as a White House Fellow under George H. W. Bush, and most recently as the Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021 under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Additionally, he served on the Board of Directors of the United States Olympic Committee from 1992 to 2004.
Michael Medved is a nationally-broadcast talk radio host, podcaster and best-selling author. With an audience growing to 5 million weekly listeners, his daily three-hour current events and pop culture show has placed for two decades among the ten most important talk shows in the United States. His daily podcast, “In the Light of History,” available with his radio show (commercial-free) to a growing list of subscribers, provides historical context for the news and analysis he covers.
Gale Pooley
Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth & Poverty
Gale L. Pooley is an associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. He has taught economics and statistics at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho. Dr. Pooley serves on the board of HumanProgress.org.
Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality
Scott Powell has enjoyed a career split between theory and practice with over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and rainmaker in several industries. He joins the Discovery Institute after having been a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution for six years and serving as a managing partner at a consulting firm, RemingtonRand. His research and writing has resulted in over 250 published articles on economics, business and regulation. Scott Powell graduated from the University of Chicago with honors (B.A. and M.A.) and received his Ph.D. in political and economic theory from Boston University in 1987, writing his dissertation on the determinants of entrepreneurial activity and economic growth.
Senior Fellow at Discovery, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and the Executive Editor of The Stream. Richards is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with Douglas Axe and William Briggs, is The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe.
Bill Walton
Senior Fellow, Center for Wealth, Poverty, and Morality
Bill Walton is a Senior Fellow of the Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality, and Vice President of the Council for National Policy. He is the chairman of Rappahannock Ventures, LLC (private equity) and Rush River Entertainment (feature film production), which he founded in 2010.
About Us
The Center on Wealth and Poverty is a program of Discovery Institute, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit and non-partisan educational and research organization based in Seattle. We are supported entirely by the generosity of private foundations and individual donors committed to a vibrant public life infused with faith and freedom.
