Last week the Ethan Allen Institute put on presentation at Sheraton featuring guest speaker Lawrence Reed. He had some very good things to say about how to put Vermont (or any state or the federal government) back on the right track. The main part of of speech was about seven principles that if followed by everyone involved in crafting policy in government would help improve our economy and way of life as we would be a much freer and more industrious people. Here they are below…
Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy
PRINCIPLE #1: Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
PRINCIPLE #2: What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.
PRINCIPLE #3: Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.
PRINCIPLE #4: If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.
PRINCIPLE #5: Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
PRINCIPLE #6: Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that’s big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you’ve got.
PRINCIPLE #7: Liberty makes all the difference in the world.
Click here for more descriptive comments by Lawrence Reed regarding: Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy