THE BIG PAY-OFF:

PM hopes 'human dividend' will pay (Sid Marris and Patricia Karvelas, April 09, 2007, The Australian)

THE "human dividend" of having a job and enjoying the benefits of a strong economy and a stable society is emerging as the focus of the Coalition's re-election message.

John Howard is determined to hammer home that message by first dragging the political spotlight back to what he believes is the Coalition's core strength, economic management.

And despite the mounting campaign against the Government's controversial industrial relations regime, the Howard Government will take Work Choices to the federal election fundamentally unaltered.

"Managing the economy well is not an end in itself. Strong economic growth is never a virtue in its own right," he says in his weekly radio message today.

"All the reforms of the past decade - balancing the budget, paying off Labor's $96 billion debt, generational tax reform, industrial relations and waterfront reform and so forth - have only been justified because of the immense human dividend they have helped deliver."

Indeed, it's easy enough to be so staggered by America's household net worth of $55 trillion that you ignore the fact that such a number does not include our human capital. Not only are places like China and Europe not catching up, we're widening our lead.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 9, 2007 7:00 AM