GROWTH OR DEVELOPMENT?

The task of economics is apparently changing. After confronting the limits to growth, the economic interests, methods and thoughts, even its use of words and concepts are slowly but persistently modified. The discussion of "equilibrium" is replaced by the concern for a "sustainable path". Instead of finding out how to produce "more" it looks for "better", "cheaper" and "recyclable" commodities. Labor saving serves by and large the reduction of the working week and transformation of the life-cycle instead of surplus-production. The markets of developed countries are more easily glutted and their recessions deeper. The ever louder and more aggressive marketing attests to all this. It is high time to renew our old ways, to revisit the aged analytical and forecasting models. The renovation of obsolete concepts is rendered necessary to facilitate the introduction of an orderly and planned future of prudence. This investigation focuses less on the seldom, perhaps never occupied point of equilibrium, rather on the behavior and motion of the economic systems in its vicinity.