By Herman Cain ——Bio and Archives--December 27, 2013
American Politics, News | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Prosperity does not come from government. It comes from people who live the ABCs of prosperity. These are the people who are empowered to drive the creation of wealth and offer opportunities to others. The best thing government can do is enact policies that create an economic atmosphere conducive to prosperity. That is the opposite of what the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress are doing. Republicans can complain all day along about how horrible big government is, but when they really make the enactment of pro-prosperity policies their top priority – and achieve them – that will be when both they and the nation win.
- Education. They key here, as far as public policy is concerned, is to remove barriers to education instead of building them up. Remember the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program? It was passed in 2004 when (ahem) Bush was president, and it was designed to remove barriers to success for students in poverty-stricken Washington D.C. Students who received the scholarships graduated at a 91 percent rate. Others were at 49 percent. Because it removed barriers! But Democrats didn’t like it because teachers’ unions didn’t like it, and now it’s gone. For all their talk about spending on education, too many of the policies that accompany this spending create barriers to education. Remove those barriers and you get people ready for B.
- A job. Have you checked the unemployment rate lately? It’s still around 8 percent. That’s terrible. Under Bush it was consistently under 6 percent. Have you noticed that we’ve still got well over 350,000 people filing new unemployment claims every month? We need to empower the private sector to grow and create jobs, and public policy must be designed to achieve that objective. This is what my 9-9-9 plan is all about. I recall that during the presidential campaign, former Sen. Rick Santorum said the problem with my plan was that it couldn’t pass. I responded that this was the difference between him as a politician and me as a businessman. He proposes things that can pass. I propose things that solve the problem. Leaders need to change their thinking, forget about what’s politically viable and focus on what solves the problem. Policies that empower the private sector to create jobs put people in a position to succeed, and that leads them to C.
- A career. Those who attain the education they need (whether it comes in a traditional form or an entirely unconventional form), prove themselves in the jobs and handle themselves responsibly usually find themselves on a path to a rewarding career. These folks may have the occasional professional setback, but they are confident and competent and they know how to bounce back and make good decisions. They are stable and prosperous, which sets them up for D.
- Ownership. Whether it’s a house, a car or a business, the more you own, the more empowered you are in your own life. Consider the difference between a person on one end of the spectrum who owns a house, and the person on the other end who is “renting to own” furniture and a flat-screen TV. The latter person is beholden to someone else for almost everything in their life. The former person is empowered and stable. Now I will quibble with the Bush Administration about something here. They recognized the power of ownership, but they pursued policies that made it too easy for people to become homeowners before they had gone through steps A, B and C. They thought ownership would breed responsibility. Nope. It works the other way around.
View Comments
Herman Cain’s column is distributed by CainTV, which can be found at Herman Cain