Word: capita
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...recently, neither capitalist nor Communist seriously questioned the whirling-dervish doctrine that teaches, in René Dubos' words, "Produce more than you can consume so that you can produce more." This leads to ecological mismanagement. For example, says Barry Commoner: "Every day we produce 11,000 calories of food per capita in the U.S. We need only 2,500 calories." At the same time, while most of Latin America is suffering from protein deficiency, the U.S. is taking thousands of tons of protein-rich anchovies from the Humboldt Current off Peru and Chile. The anchovies are ground up for chicken feed...
...much of the world, Scandinavia, rather than the U.S., represents the ideal of an economic Utopia. Sweden has the world's second highest per capita income; Denmark, Norway and Finland also rank high. All four are free of slums, hunger and extreme poverty. All enjoy steady economic growth combined with full employment. By contrast, the U.S. is beset by labor unrest, rising unemployment and slow growth. How do the Scandinavians do so much better...
Data from the 1960 Census validates their point. At that time, average per capita income in SMSA's (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas) was 52 per cent higher than in non-SMSA's. And the New York metropolitan area had an average per capita income 15 per cent higher than the average SMSA. Since 1960 these relationships have remained approximately the same. It is not unreasonable then to ask why the cities, particularly New York City, are complaining about not having enough money...
...begin with, such persons take the "maximization of per capita income" as the "primary objective of poor countries, even though this implies "an acceptance of the status quo on income distribution." There are, of course, Western economists and Western economists, but Bowles and MacEwan are obviously right that in Western treatment of economic development attention has focused much more on per capital income growth than on income equality. Very possibly, too, a greater concern for equity would often be to the good. This might be so not only in terms of the economists' more ultimate goal of "social welfare...
Bowles and MacEwan tell us also, however, that per capita income "only has meaning in the context of a market economy." Defective as data on per capita income must be for a less developed economy. Bowles and MacEwan cannot really be urging here what they seem to be: that that index not be compiled and its increase not be sought. Moreover, as the primers teach, if income equality is stressed very much, incentives and bence output per capita may suffer. Just what is the trade off and where should a balance be struck between these two desiderata? These regrettably...