( Strategy Published in Journal, February 1, 2008 )
long time ago that economists have adopted economic growth as the only solution to all economic problems facing modern societies.
When inequality proliferates like a plague that floods of misery to the people, in unison economists answer: growth. This is because if the economy grows, it reduces unemployment and many feared would leave the poverty line. Given the problems of inflation, so, if the economy grows generate the conditions to avoid pressure on prices as supply increases. Exaggerating the qualities of economic growth, to environmental problems have become a major problem in the modern world, the answer is the same: when countries reach a level of per capita income similar to that of today's developed countries, then begin to decrease these problems because they could face the costs of mitigation. Regardless
that income growth is a necessary condition for the material improvement of the people, is still widespread concern oblivion economists have performed compared to the other questions that the economy must know how to respond. These are basically four: what to produce? How much does it produce? How to produce? And for whom to produce? Today, the only theme on which turns the conversation of economists is the answer to the question about how much to produce and is only one answer: to the fullest.
But growth is not the same bread and milk producing abusing the exploitation of natural resources or, worse, producing nuclear weapons or highly hazardous chemicals. So, what to produce is a question you need to know to respond. Nor is it produced using capital-intensive and low labor-intensive methods in hiring people and not do the same thing using highly polluting technologies than more environmentally friendly. This is related to how to produce. Finally, it is the same result for the benefit of 1% of the population to 100%, so, for whom the produce is one of the key questions that economists must know how to respond to fulfill its task of providing recommendations policies that increase people's welfare.
I have the impression that the profession is not doing his duty.
Marcel Claude, an economist.
