Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your invitation to testify before the subcommittee today. First, we must repeal or relax the federal and state laws that impede the employment of prison labor and commerce in prison-made products. With that accomplished, access to productive work on a large scale would mean private enterprise supplying as many as six out of seven jobs, similar to the employment pattern in the U.S. economy. Competition is a good thing, not bad.
Competition is the process that made the U.S. economy the envy of the world.
Monopoly privilege, achieved through artificial restraints on competitors, is bad in terms of both fairness and efficiency. Successful economic policy operates on the principle of consumer sovereignty, not producer sovereignty. Open competition is fair. No special advantage. Fairness means playing by the rules but, more importantly, the rules themselves must be tolerably fair.