Friday, December 4, 2009

Another Valid Critique Of Obama's Job Summit By John Stossel

Will at least some free-market economists get to speak? No. The White House will hear from Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, and Jeffrey Sachs. "Fresh ideas" won’t be heard from these folks.

They and the political class can’t imagine a decentralized world where good things happen…without them. But in the real world, that’s exactly how good things happen, and how jobs are created.

When government sets simple rules that everyone understands and then gets out of the way, free people create jobs.

Hong Kong demonstrates this. Last century, Hong Kong was third world poor. 50 years ago, its citizens’ average income was under $700 (in today’s dollars) per year. Today, it’s $43,800. Hong Kong got rich because Hong Kong’s rulers, stuffy British bureaucrats, practiced what I’ll call “benign neglect”: they enforced rule of law—kept people from stealing from each other, or killing each other--- but then sat around and drank tea. They left people alone, and free people, left alone, created prosperity.
From John Stossel's post on the Fox Business blog, "Who Creates Jobs?"

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