How to fix the economy - Part III

This is the conclusion of my three-part adaptation of Stephen Leacock's thoughts on what ails the economy and how to put it right. Parts I and II will be found above.

Take off all the excess profits taxes and the surtaxes on income and as much of the income tax itself as can be done by a wholesale dismissal of government employees and then give industry a mark to shoot at.

What is needed now is not the multiplication of government reports, but corporate industry, the formation of any kind of corporation that will call out private capital from its hiding places, offer employment to millions and start the wheels moving again.

The next thing to be done, then, is to fire the government officials and bring back the profiteer. As to which officials are to be fired first, it doesn't matter much. If the edge of the axe of dismissal seems too sharp, hit with the back of it.

As to the profiteer, bring him back. If the promoters of corporations presently earn huge fortunes for themselves, society is none the worse. In any case, humanity being what it is, they will hand back a vast part of what they have acquired in return for honorary degrees or bits of blue ribbon or whatever kind of glass bead fits the fancy of the retired millionaire.

Yes, bring back the profiteer -- the same person who not so long ago was called a Captain of Industry, an Empire Builder and a Nation Maker. It is the times that have changed, not the man. He is there still, just as greedy and rapacious as ever, but no greedier. And we have just the same social need of his greed as a motive power in industry than we ever had, indeed a worse need than before.

We need him not only in business but in the whole setting of life, or if not him personally, we need the eager, selfish but reliant spirit of the man who looks after himself and doesn't want to have a spoon-fed education and a government job alternating with a government dole, and a set of morals framed for him by a board of censors.

Show such a man a map of the world and ask him to pick out a few likely spots. The trained greed of the rascal will find them in a moment. Then write him out a concession for oil in central Asia or irrigation in the Australian Outback. The ink will hardly be dry on it before the capital will begin to flow in.

Wealth will come from all kinds of places whence the government could never coax it and where the tax-gatherer could never find it. Only promise that it is not going to be taxed out of existence and the stream of capital which is being dried up in the sands of government mismanagement will flow into the hands of private industry like a river of gold.

And incidentally, when the profiteer has finished his work, we can always put him back into the penitentiary if we like. But we need him just now.

Adapted from From My Discovery of England, by Stephen Leacock, 1922, Toronto, S.B. Gundy. Stephen Butler Leacock, FRSC (30 December 1869 – 28 March 1944) was a Canadian economist, writer and humorist. He lived and wrote before the rise of the nanny state and political correctness.