Reward risk-takers, urges Johnson as he backs Telegraph campaign
BUSINESS people who take significant risks should be celebrated even if “we may sometimes be shocked at the scale of their rewards”, Boris Johnson says today.
Backing The Sunday Telegraph’s Campaign for Capitalism, the former foreign secretary warns that failing to deliver an “enterprise culture” would “kill the goose that lays the golden egg of tax”, damaging the Government’s ability to fund quality public services.
His rallying cry comes after he used a speech at the Tory conference to insist the party must “believe in Conservative values” to beat Labour.
Writing in this newspaper, Mr Johnson states: “If we fail to see that risktaking is a vital part of our market economy, and if we fail to ensure that we have an enterprise culture… then we will stifle the most effective means yet devised of satisfying human wants and needs. We will kill the goose that lays the golden egg of tax, and allows us to pay for great public services. Which is why I believe The Sunday Telegraph’s Campaign for Capitalism is long overdue. We may be nervous of risk-takers. We may sometimes be shocked at the scale of their rewards. But we need them, and we should celebrate their achievements.”
Mr Johnson states that the capitalist system is based on an urge to take risks. “The reason people are willing to risk exhaustion, risk their savings, risk their reputations, and risk total failure and humiliation is that they hope there will be a reward. They have every right to want such a reward.”
At the heart of the capitalist system is a simple piece of human psychology. It is an instinct that is as old as our species, and that impulse has created every company in history.
That basic human urge has generated every job ever performed, accounted for every wage ever paid, and every pound of tax that has ever been contributed for public benefit.
In propelling the entire market economy of the world that natural human propensity has lifted – and continues to lift – billions out of poverty.
That indispensable feature of human behaviour, that habit, is called taking a risk.
It is the willingness to take risk that has caused people to start new businesses, to sell new products, to try new jobs, to learn new skills, and to set the alarm for
5 am even though they could have a couple more hours in bed.
And the reason people are willing to risk exhaustion, risk their savings, risk their reputations, and risk total failure and humiliation is that they hope there will be a reward.
They have every right to want such a reward; and the successful risk-taker deserves one. There are many failings in 21st-century capitalism. There are too many who are rewarded amply, and yet who do not seem to have taken any particular risk.
From the mutual back-scratching of boardroom salaries to the derisory taxes paid by some internet giants, there are problems that need to be fixed. But if we fail to see that risktaking is a vital part of our market economy, and if we fail to ensure that we have an enterprise culture, in which there is a strong incentive to innovate and to compete, then we will stifle the most effective means yet devised of satisfying human wants and needs. We will kill the goose that lays the golden egg of tax, and allows us to pay for great public services.
Which is why I believe The Sunday Telegraph’s Campaign for Capitalism is long overdue.
We may be nervous of risktakers. We may sometimes be shocked at the scale of their rewards. But we need them, and we should celebrate their achievements.
Boris Johnson is MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip and the former foreign secretary