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logo    Economics, Goals, and Measures


The question of what goals an economic system should strive to attain and how its progress should be measured seems not to have been considered by most economic thinkers. It seems that they have all merely accepted that wealth, defined variously, is that goal without ever giving it very much thought, and economic progress has been and continues to be measured in terms of national wealth. The goal of Mercantilism, for example, was for nations to amass as much wealth, defined as precious metals, as possible. It failed as an economic system merely because the amount of precious metals in a monarch's treasury had no bearing on the welfare of a nation's people.

Free market Capitalism is somewhat of an improvement, but wealth is still measured by the net wealth of the nation, now defined as the sum of products and services available. As far as it has a bearing on the nation's people, free market Capitalism institutionalizes a trickle-down theory. As the nation gets wealthier, some of that wealth trickles down to the people and betters their lots. But the trickle-down has always been a trickle, never a stream, and often almost a dry gulley, and it has never gotten down to all of the people. Isn't it time that someone began asking whether wealth is the right goal? Strange as it may seem, and no one seems to have ever pointed this out, this economic model commits the fallacy of division and would have been discarded a long time ago by logical thinkers.

Looking at economics from the level of a nation's people, the nation's wealth, net GNP, or whatever, has never proved to be adequate. Nobody, not even the people who amass wealth in this kind of economy, really cares what the sum-total of the nation's wealth is. All they care about is their own wealth. And they care about that only because it determines whether or not they can adequately take care of themselves and those they care about.

But what if we had an economic system that adopted the well being of the nation's people as its goal? What would that consist of? Something like this, I propose: adequate housing, adequate clothing, adequate food, adequate healthcare, adequate education, adequate security from both human predators and natural disasters, adequate employment, to list just a few. Democratically elected legislators could define the word adequate in each of these categories, and goals could be set to be attained over some period of time. We might say, for instance, that in so many years, our goal would be provide these things to some percentage of the population. Then the percentage to be attained could be increased and set as a another goal to be attained in so many more years. In this way, an economy's progress could be measured over time, and the legislature could restrict any actions that interfered with the attainment of these goals. Such an economic system would make sense, because it would have a guiding intent, in contrast to the current system which is nothing but haphazard at best, lacking any defined social goal.

Nations are merely extents of territory governed by a single entity. A nation, as such, does not constitute a society. We all know what the United States of America is, but it lacks social unity. America is made up of countless groups, but even most of these do not rise to the level of societies. Societies are groups in which people take care of each other; the Amish are a good example, and there may be others. But the United States is, instead, a place where each person is in competition and conflict with everybody else. This competition and conflict are a direct result of our flawed economic model. Everyone is familiar with the old saw, United we stand, divided we fall. Few realize that a nation whose peoples are in competition and conflict with everybody else is a nation divided and is bound to fall sooner or later. If the world were merely made up of atoms, not ever combining into molecules, it would not amount to much more than nothing. A society-less nation is very much like a world of atoms.

Much of what is happening in America today trends toward a fall much sooner than later and our current economic system is what will bring America down. It cannot be fixed as long as wealth, especially national wealth, rather than welfare is its goal. (6/23/2007)