Economists
Created 7/14/1997
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EconomistsCreated 7/14/1997 |
"It would be easy to provide everyone with a physiologically adequate diet; for example, a man could perhaps live for a year on the following diet, at a cost of about $8 a month in 1950:
- 370 pounds of wheat flour
- 57 cans of evaporated milk
- 111 pounds of cabbage
- 25 pounds of spinach
- 285 pounds of dried navy beans.
"But man insists upon luxuries such as meat, and should we somehow fully satisfy his desire (despite his penchant for shifting from sow belly to pheasant), he will no doubt insist upon shifting to another and more expensive food.
"Thus, from an Olympian peak, one may say that the economic system has as its purpose forcing people to find new scarcities. From a closer vantage point, the study of economics has as its purpose the alteration of a host of circumstances and policies that deprive large numbers of people of eminently desirable things a more efficiently organized society could afford..."
From The Theory of Price, (New York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 2-3.
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EconomistsCreated 7/14/1997 |
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Professor of Economics J. Bradford DeLong, 601 Evans, #3880 University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027 phone (510) 642-6615 fax delong@econ.berkeley.edu http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/ |
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