If I were president

By Jeffrey D. Jones

Growing up as a baby boomer in the United States, it was not uncommon for young children to aspire to be president. It was a different era where the public at large tended to respect and revere the office of the president. Very few young people today, either in the U.S. or Korea, have such a dream, making it even more remarkable when someone actually commits themselves to this path.

As we are in the midst of a very heated presidential race here in Korea, my mind turned to those old thoughts of what I would want to do if I were president. While I have no ambition to be president and would never venture into the political arena, it is sometimes entertaining to give thought to what I would do if I did become president. I have a few ideas. They are not novel or ground-breaking, but simply things I would like to see Korea's next president implement irrespective of who gets elected.

One of the unusual characteristics of this season's campaign is a common theme of trying to win favor with the MZ generation. Granted this generation is important and I fully understand the clamor to win their votes. However, I would go about it a bit differently.

One of the fundamental characteristics of human nature is we respond well to opportunity and incentives. Handouts can be temporarily interesting, but long term they do not win hearts and minds and certainly do not provide long-term benefits to society. To be clear, I am fully supportive of a strong welfare system to take care of those who need help or who are unable to compete. This is one of the fundamental obligations of any government. I am referring to simple broad-based subsidies to provide support for living expenses, education expenses, child rearing or whatever purpose without regard to personal need or circumstances.

One of the things we have learned from the pandemic is subsidies do not motivate or provide incentives to work. In the United States, the government handed out significant sums of money to all citizens in response to the pandemic. The result was a clear loss of interest in working and all businesses had an extremely difficult time hiring anyone. The young could live on these subsidies and there was no need to work so they naturally chose not to do so. Similarly, in Korea, when the subsidies were flowing, restaurants, convenience stores and other similar employers could not find people willing to work. There were no incentives to do so.

Rather than the Korean candidates competing on who can come up with the greatest number and highest value of subsidies and handouts, I believe young people will respond much more favorably to opportunities and incentives. The youth of Korea are some of the most highly educated and capable people on Earth and what they want more than handouts is fair opportunities to get ahead. They want incentives to work hard and know that they will be rewarded when they do so. Our presidential candidates should be focusing on how to provide the young with the rewards when they apply their talents to productive activities. We need to focus on how to create more opportunities for them, loosen up the regulatory restrictions that prevent new businesses from forming and provide appropriate and extensive rewards when the young innovate and find productive things to do.

Many young people become discouraged when they receive their income to find much of it used for a wide variety of taxes and social programs, for which they are the least likely to need or use. I believe all segments of society would be accepting of a differing tax and social benefits system for the young. Both the old and young would favor any plan designed to provide for fair and equal opportunity to work, build a new business or engage in an activity productive for their lives and for society. Giving young people the opportunity to earn at a reduced tax burden, for example, would gain wide acceptance. Tax incentives are one method, but there must be others and with these incentives, they would go out and look for creative things to do. They should be rewarded not with a mine field of strangling regulations and red tape, but a free and open environment accepting of innovation. Fair opportunity and incentives are effective; handouts are not. This is how to attract the MZ generation.

Finally, I would like to see the various social distancing restrictions eased, particularly the limitations placed on small business' operating hours. It is obvious that these restrictions may protect some, but more people are dying from traffic accidents, suicide and other unrelated diseases than any of the COVID variants, particularly Omicron which is spreading like wildfire. The cost of these restrictions is tremendous and is damaging the long-term health of these businesses, reducing tax revenues and causing economic hardship for the business owners.

Rather than focusing on subsidies for these businesses as a cure for the restrictions, let them operate so they don't need subsidies. Rather, the government should invest this money on healthcare providers, expanding healthcare facilities and focusing on treatment for the few who become seriously ill from COVID.

Whoever becomes the next president, I do hope he or she will focus on creating opportunity and providing rewards for innovation and hard work, rather than spending time creating new subsidies.

Jeffrey D. Jones is a lawyer for Kim & Chang.