Strickland or Blackwell ? Who is better for Lakewood?

[Bill Call]

This post has strayed from a discussion about which candidate is better for Lakewood into a discussion about macro economic theory. What enables one country or area to generate economic activity while another stagnates? Better minds than mine have tackled this issue and come up with different theories.

You can choose Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations, Karl Marx and Das Kapital, Mao Tse-Tung and his little red book or Dennis Kucinich and Shirley McClain chanelling Chou En Lai or Ayn Rand as the fountainhead of economic wisdom.

My own partial list, in no particular order:

1.Entrepenourship. Individuals acting in their own self interest to challenge the status quo. Centrally planned economies are not going to create an industrial revolution or a revolution in computer technology. China boomed after it abandandoned communist economics and India boomed after it abandoned Fabian Socialism.

2.Respect for private property. There are no other rights without property rights. If states or individuals can seize private property economic activity winds down. Individuals become spectators instead of actors. Africa suffers because most of its nation states are kleptocrocies.

3.Ease of business creation. Bureauacracies discourage economic activity.

4.Respect for work, education and familty. The politcally incorrect term is the Protestant work ethic.

But the issue here is: Which candidate is better for Lakewood? Why is Cuyahoga County falling behind? I have my own theory, which is yours?

Does a policy that transfers another billion dollars to Columbus help the City? Does it help the State? Or does it just help the City of Columbus? My humble opinion is that if Columbus wasn’t the capital it would still be a cow town. Any economic growth it has experienced has come at the expense of other areas.

People who think they are actually getting something from the State are like the gambler who buys $500 worth of lottery tickets, scratches off the last one to discover a $50 winner and then exclaims “I’ve won fifty dollars, I’ve won fifty dollars!!!!!â€Â￾