The Link Between Economic Freedom, Opportunity, and Recovery

Anthony B. Kim / June 10, 2010

In a rather confessional tone, Jeffrey Sachs declared in his recent op-ed:

The global fiscal stimulus championed last year by the Obama administration is coming undone, repudiated by the same Group of 20 that endorsed it last year. Now, against a backdrop of a widening sovereign debt crisis, we need to abandon short-term thinking in favour of the long-term investments needed for sustained recovery.

Indeed, the current period of uncertain and fragile economic rebound poses a critical opportunity to ponder the principles that can revitalize economic growth. More than ever, the urgency to adhere to sensible principles is high as a wave of interventionism has seen government take more control of our private economic activity, wearing away economic freedom hard won through years of determined work. Government’s rush to fix the perceived causes of the economic crisis has demonstrated the dangers of interventionist policies by big government. Rather than fixing economic problems, they can actually exacerbate them. (more…)