How to Create Wealth by Plucking Money Out of Thin Air

Politicians have had a long running love affair with “entrepreneurs.”, when seeking power campaigning politicians talk of supporting entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs,  once in power they” target=”_blank”>http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/business/cmbor/working/200807.pdf”>they court successful entrepreneurs hoping to raise funds for future campaigns and to cast themselves as successful. The politicos cling to a delusional belief that entrepreneurs, fabled creatures that they are, create the wealth and jobs that will spread prosperity and happiness among the electorate.

 When Margaret Thatcher, the founder of this cult of entrepreneur worship, spoke of entrepreneurs, her eyes would take on a glazed look and he face the beatific expression of somebody who has just had a spontaneous orgasm.

Throughout the New Labour years in the UK, the “people’s” party (so long as those people were lawyers, academics or were stinking rich) sucked up to entrepreneurs even more than their conservative predecessors had. Business adventurers  were talked of in the reverential terms normally used when evangelical Christians discuss Jesus. Our present government, the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats  government is sitting around, waiting with bated breath for entrepreneurs in shining armour to ride by on their white horses and magically restore growth to the economy. But there are no signs that a great boom in business activity is on its way.

The problem is politicians are not really very bright. I have always been honest enough to admit I was a lazy and disinterested student and French, as taught in English schools never engaged me. Even so I know that an entrepreneur enters and takes, they are opportunists, quick buck merchants, nothing more.

The idea politicians and the media are so fond of then, that Entrepreneurs create wealth is a fallacy, as much a fallacy as the other crackpot idea that has been foisted on the public in developed nations, that advances in science are always beneficial to humanity. Science does not solve problems, it creates them, (but that is dealt with in another article) and  entrepreneurs do not create wealth, they collect it. It is more correct to say Banks create wealth, but really they only facilitate the creation of wealth. True wealth can only be created by the great mass of people in a society. Still,  if you have wanted to know why politicians are so powerless to control the bankers, the answer is relatively simple. Banks have a monopoly on the creation of money.