The question of our times: Does economics promote inequality?

The disciplines emphasis on self-interest as rational’ must yield to a focus on global collaboration to achieve collective goals

- KAUSHIK BASU

These are harrowing times. Amid soaring inequality, political leaders in many countries are cutting programmes and services that benefit the poor, while stoking fear and anger against migrants and refugees. Their noble-sounding intentions—safeguarding individual freedom, promoting prosperity and protecting citizens—are often a fig leaf fora policy agenda designed to enrich themselves and their wealthy cronies.

This deterioration in the practice of politics can be attributed to many causes. One of the most important may be found in the deterioration in how economicsis practised.

Economics is often described asa scientific discipline, which studies ‘if-then’ propositions without reference to morals and values. But scientific findings do affect our values and normative judgements, and claims of ‘scientific objectivity’ can be used to rationalize actions that offend our moral sensibilities. In fact, the logic ofmainstream economics—in particular, the long-dominant neo-liberal ideology, which emphasizes growth, efficiency and market freedom—has often justified and even encouraged greed, exploitation and extreme inequality.

This may well be built into the discipline. A 2012 study based on the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’—a framework for evaluating economic arrangements that focuses on people's ability to live the kinds of lives they value, not simply on material wealth—found that some educational approaches can help make people more caring and cooperative.