Economics' Achilles heel

If economics studies scarcity, how do we study surpluses?

T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan 

T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan Half a century ago, when I attended my very first class in economics, the professor said economic theory was a discipline — he was careful not to say science — that studies the effect of scarcity on production and consumption. For the last 15 years, however, I have been asking a different question: If economics studies scarcity, how do we study surpluses, especially huge ones in the factors of production?  The immediate provocation for revisiting this matter is the minimum wage code Bill that the Cabinet approved a week back. It is designed to neutralise the ...

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