Jobs or Wealth Creation?

This query brings into focus the role of government: Is its primary role one of jobs or wealth creation? It is especially a relevant query as debate continues in these isles over all the hardship born by the Asian Crisis.

If its role is one of jobs creation, then we should visit all construction sites and replace shovels being used by workers with spoons. Never mind the actual purpose of the construction job at hand. It’s jobs creation all around. Now, if its primary responsibility is one of wealth creation, naturally, it means embracing the free enterprise system, an economic concept hardly understood by politicians whose mouth wash is jobs creation when in fact they meant wealth creation.

The ability of governments to influence wealth creation has been documented in a recent study produced by a consortium of research institutes in Canada, Mexico and the United States in a research paper written by a CATO Institute fellow.

“The study attempted to gauge, in a methodical way, the degree of economic freedom in each of a broad cross-section of nations. The conclusion from examining more than 100 countries over a 20-year period was that governments with a strong commitment to economic liberty tended to be faster-growing and wealthier.

“No nation with a persistently high economic freedom rating failed to achieve a high level of income. Furthermore, the 17 countries with the most improved freedom ratings all had positive and generally strong growth rates, while the 15 countries where economic freedoms declined recorded less real per capita wealth declines”.

Indeed, it is all very confusing amidst a deepening crisis or that we pretend to have a full graps of concepts so foreign to us. But it doesn’t mean we should embrace the pitfalls of adolescency as to deliberately impose negative policy intervention on current and future investments which, through a long and often uncharted course, breeds bankruptcy and abject poverty. In brief, we have already started imposing protectionist policies that inhibit wealth creation and, therefore, the subsequent by-product of jobs creation. We wanted the latter, but without having to fulfill the difficult task of ensuring that the former is first in place so allow the actual enhancement of jobs creation.

If we want wealth creation, then we must approve policies that will enhance lasting investments down the stretch. It’s the only way to prepare more jobs for the jobless today and the more than 400 high school graduates who march through pomp and circumstance every June. Our children can only begin building their wealth through jobs that enable them to earn amd spend as consumers through wealth created by their government.