The Institute for New Economic Thinking and China’s Tsinghua University today kicked off their seminar in Shenzhen, China, called “The Good Life: The Challenges of Progress in China.”...
[Robert] Johnson set the tone for the conversation by stating that the goal of the conference was to address the elements and mechanisms needed to create “the good life” and how society can achieve it....The good life has an ancient and modern meaning. In modern terms, "the good life" means material prosperity. The ancient meaning signified a life that unfolded maximum potential as both as a human being and as an individual — as a human being in terms of achieving the good for man or the summum bonum, and as unique person in terms of using personal endowment to optimal advantage individually and socially.
Plato and Aristotle held that the good life as the human ideal included the good society, since human beings are inherently social and cannot find full expression exclusive of social relationships. Thus, living a good life implies a good society.
Kaletsky then followed with a discussion of the economic lessons from the most recent financial crisis. He said that the meltdown revealed that economics provided no theories to help us understand what had happened or what our next step should be. This failure has resulted in questions about the role of economic policy and the proper division of macro and microeconomics. Kaletsky urged society to recognize the imperfections in current economic theories and to go beyond traditional thought to come up with new ways of thinking about economies.
Johnson closed the evening by noting that the economic theories that have been predominant over the past few decades have broken down, and we now have to start creating a new economics that reflects the realities of today.Let's hope that INET realizes that Kaletsky's assertion, "the meltdown revealed that economics provided no theories to help us understand what had happened or what our next step should be," is incorrect. It should read, "the meltdown revealed that [conventional] economics provided no theories...." Nor is Johnson's assertion that it is necessary "to start creating a new economics that reflects the realities of today" completely correct either, in that it is not necessary to start from scratch. The first step is to jettison the dead weight of conventional economics and the second is to turn the focus on existing heterodox solutions that predicted the global financial crisis and warned about the euro debacle, and so provided solutions.
Hopefully, the MMT analysis and prescription will be presented. If not, why not?
And will they actually integrate the philosophy of economics with traditional philosophical investigation of the good life in a good society that has been central since ancient times? Or will "the good life" be seen as only a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage?
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