People, in general, desire consistency and implicit guarantees, so that if they do their part in getting educated and preparing themselves for gainful employment, that they should thereby always be employed on a consistent and reliable basis. While that type of world certainly seems desirable, undoubtedly preferred, it isn't something that can be guaranteed by any government, unless such a government exercises the power to control everything in regards to the people and their choices, effectively eliminating free choice and negating free decisions.
On the surface, this reminds one of repressive nations that put forth five-year plans, ten-year plans, and the like, only to see these plans constantly revised again and again, for their objectives never are reached, and hence always therefore revised or faked. The main reason that planned economies fail, is not that the government doesn't have control of the people, for they basically do, but rather that these coerced actions by the government disengages the people from being as productive as they would normally be, with the additional issue that the governmental elite privileges itself so that the rules most definitely do not apply to them.
This means that the more power that the people cede to government, as well as the more freedoms that are sacrificed for their alleged security, along with the more arbitrary rules and regulations that employers are compelled to obey, the inevitable result will be less overall freedom that is permitted to occur for the people, in which this type of bargain, often results in the people gaining little, if anything, and losing the very essence of what it means to be gifted with free will, free choice, and a free mind.
The greatness of any nation is in direct relationship to the freedom and fair opportunities that it provides for each citizen, in which, those citizens, jointly or individually, can as they so choose, provide aid or mentoring to others, so that those on the lower echelons are helped to advance to a superior level. The government of such a people, because it both represents the people as well as in actuality being the ultimate arbiter of fairness, has an obligation to behave as much as possible, in an impartial, objective, and in cases in which much previous wrong has been done, set standards to ameliorate and to thereby help restore wholeness to those so oppressed.
The economy is ultimately made up of the people with their intelligence, their knowhow, their vision, their capital, their negotiations, and their productivity in which the true purpose of the government isn't so much to be laissez–faire, but rather, as necessary, the government has an inherent obligation and purpose to breakup concentrated power, to eliminate crony capitalism, assure fair taxation, to forgo foreign wars done at the behest of the military-industrial complex, and to eliminate unfair profiteering in times of trouble. If these things are done right, our economy will take care of itself, for it is, after all, these free American people that created this greatest nation on earth.