Why the Jobs Summit Will Fail

Stephanie wrote: This nation's entire economic policy is disasterous.....from soup to nuts.

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.

America’s founders did the same thing. The Constitution announced that American would be a country of limited government. That provided the simple and understandable rules that allowed America to grow into the richest country ever.

Today’s political class thinks that they can improve on that, but they can’t. Their micromanagement kills jobs. When Washington threatens to drastically change the rules of the game with health care mandates, cap and trade, financial regulation, a second stimulus, and (of course) a "jobs bill", the private sector can't make investments with any confidence. At least the Post quoted one businessman who said Washington should stop fiddling:

Peter Y. Solmssen, interim U.S. chief executive of Siemens Corp., a German conglomerate, said fixed policies would help businesses, large and small. "We both need a certain amount of certainty, which gives us the opportunity and capability to plan."