ECONOMIC SANITY OR COLLAPSE

by Gerald R. Zoffer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1980

With the economics profession in disarray, economic fix-it manuals are popping up on all sides. Taking off from Roman and Loebl's The Responsible Society--ostensibly the greatest contribution to economic thinking since Smith and Marx--Zoffer offers a set of cures for our economic ills. After a tedious and long-winded explanation of why all previous economic thinking is wrong--essentially because it's oriented toward the discovery of laws, whereas ZoUer sees the economy as an amalgam of individual wills-he proposes that what we need most is an ethical commitment to cooperation. Given that, we can phase out government regulatory agencies--to Zoller the main cause of inflation--by sensitizing the public to the problems they were created to combat. Like Roman and Loebl, he also advocates free credit, fixed prices to encourage efficiency, and subjecting the federal budget to a vote. Underpinning the whole edifice is a social commitment to ""gain,"" which Zoller identifies as the source of wealth, and which he defines simply as the difference between output and input with regard to natural resources. If we all cooperate, we will increase gain; and here lies the core of this whole approach, which attempts to systematically exclude the conflict between management and labor by cultivating a larger social consciousness on a Christian model. Short of a religious conversion, the plan doesn't even look good on paper.

Pub Date: March 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION