The benefits of hands off

Matthew Hooton writes in NBR:

The bigger the lie, the more likely it will be believed.

Today’s left wails that the global financial crisis has undermined the case for so-called neoliberal economics: free and open economies, price stability as the primary goal of monetary policy, freely traded currencies, prudent fiscal policy and private ownership of productive assets.

David Shearer says “the hands-off, leave-it-to-the-market approach has failed all over the world.” Labour/Green will be “hands on.”

Matthew provides a table to compare how well hands-off and hands-on countries are doing:

Hooton notes:

According to the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, the world’s six freest economies are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada (see table).

These six have avoided anything like the deep and prolonged recessions of more interventionist countries.

The IMF continues to forecast higher growth for the six than for countries further down the freedom list.

Even more important, both unemployment and youth unemployment are lower in the more free-market economies.

While I don’t think the labels hands-on and hands-off are particularly meaningful, I absolutely agree with Matthew that the freer the economy the more it tends to grow, and the more jobs are created.