Of course, every nation's economic environment is made up of a complex aggregation of individual laws and regulations. The basic question is whether such economic stupidity dominates national life. As critical as are the right economic policies in promoting development, economic growth is obviously not the only element of development. But wealth creation is the only sensible starting point, the necessary if not sufficient condition for ensuring that the starving are fed, the ill are healed, and the poor have an opportunity to acquire wealth. This is, in fact, the practical lesson of Third World development.
Studies suggest that outward-oriented economic policies tend to widen the distribution of income.
Even where growth has not diminished income inequality, it has nevertheless tended to reduce poverty. Get out of the way. End foreign aid, which subsidizes incumbent regimes and dirigiste economic policies. Open domestic markets to the products of the entrepreneurial poor abroad. And end counterproductive economic policies in the West, to expand the global economic pie.