Opportunity Economics

Everyday billions of dollars are wasted on welfare. Everyday the top 1% of our world get richer while the rest of us struggle, some of us don’t even get by.

We’ve tried survival of the fittest with absolutist lese fair economics, but we can’t just let everyone who’s not “fittest” starve. We’ve also tried every kind of socialism and communism we can think of; over and over it doesn’t work because people just don’t produce enough and innovation goes down the tubes.

Socialism or Capitalism? Conservative or Liberal? When should the government get involved in our lives? At what point should we put it on our government (and use our tax money) to help out those who don’t have much? What should we use the government for?

These are the questions that we talk over, argue over on the radio and TV, and fight over in campaigns all over the world.

What should be the guidelines to answer these questions?

It’s time to use a guiding principal to come up with the answers to these questions.

Too many times we bring innovative ideas to the floors of congresses and parliaments all over the world and the “other side” either waters them down or they prove to be ineffectual because they're based on outdated theories of how the system should work.

Communism doesn’t work because it denies the opportunity of success to those who want to work harder for more. Lase fair Capitalism doesn’t work because so many people are stuck barely surviving, they never get the opportunity to get ahead, let alone truly find success. But where is the right place in the middle?

If we defined the goal for our government, when it comes to our economy, as one that would provide real opportunity to succeed for the highest number of people, we could have a real guideline for our policies. The government doesn’t provide opportunity to people by giving handouts, and letting people sit at home and watch cable and still live comfortably.

Society as group (our government is part of that) can provide real opportunity for all of our citizens by giving them the tools to succeed in our economy. Some of these tools we partially provide now, i.e. education and relative safety at home and from abroad. But, and a big “but,” some of the things all people need to succeed in our economy are, a healthy body (health care), a healthy mind (mental health care) and a place to start (access to capital) let alone the fact that we don't do education and personal safety very well. These are few. We could probably make a long list.

If we concentrate our resources on making these things available to everyone, without letting people feel entitled to everything for nothing, a much higher portion of people could contribute to our economy to their fullest potential.

One can only imagine what riches that would bring all of us.