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One of the suggested requirements for governance (2.1) was to enable people to flourish, and another was for people to have freedom. This section draws together the material in this chapter that is relevant to those requirements.
People may have different kinds of economic freedom:
· They may have the opportunity to set up businesses, to create wealth in the way that they choose (3.2.1).
· They may have money to spend as consumers and be able to choose what they buy (3.2.2).
· They may receive government support to enable them to survive (3.2.3).
· They may be able to choose among several employment opportunities (3.3.3.2).
There are several factors which might constrain such economic freedom:
· A government might take a proportion of their wealth in tax (3.5.2).
· The government also competes for resources (3.2.3).
· The country€™s infrastructure may be inadequate (3.2.8).
· The way in which wealth is shared affects disposable income (3.5.6.1).
· Economic regulation (3.3.1) might restrain the choices people make in wealth creation.
· They may not be able to borrow money to support their wealth creation (3.2.7).
· In the absence of free trade (3.5.4), their opportunities to create wealth are reduced by restricted access to customers in other countries.
Economic freedoms and constraints apply to individuals, to companies and to whole countries. As described in the previous section (3.5.8.3), for example, people in developing countries are currently held back by the absence of free trade.
Even though the overall state of the economy is determined partly by economic circumstances over which their politicians have little or no control (3.3.9.2), people can press for increases in economic freedom so that they have more opportunity to flourish.
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