Politics and economics (2)

In writing the title of this column, I thought of changing the order to: economics and politics. This change will signify that economics takes precedence over politics.

On second thought, however, it occurred to me that politics concerns leadership and governance while economics pertains largely to the results of the decisions that elected leaders in government make.

What I would like, therefore, to point out is that the quality of life in our communities depends a lot on the quality of our leaders. This is so because our elected leaders will make laws and decide on which projects to fund which, in turn, determine whether we will improve the employment situation, have higher family incomes, have more people living above the poverty line, improve agricultural production, lower inflation, and so on.

The important task at hand for those running for public office (and I am highlighting this because we are already into the campaign period for the May 14 elections) is to understand the economic situation of their constituents and look for ways to improve it in a sustainable manner. They will have to make choices after considering several alternatives.

The candidates may be fully aware of this responsibility but the problem, I suppose, is that there are too many economic problems and too little resources with which to solve them. This will be a strong constraint to the choice of realistic alternatives. The criteria for choosing the best alternative would differ from leader to leader. Therefore, the choice of leaders is important in determining which alternative will be implemented.

Perhaps the candidates should be optimistic and keep their targets (or promises) manageable. A gradual improvement will suffice. In fact, preventing economic problems from getting bigger could already be a significant accomplishment.