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PARIS – Two schools of thought tend to dominate today’s economic debates. According to free-market economists, governments should cut taxes, reduce regulations, reform labor laws, and then get out of the way to let consumers consume and producers create jobs. According to Keynesian economics, governments should boost total demand through quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus. Yet neither approach is delivering good results. We need a new Sustainable Development Economics, with governments promoting new types of investments.
Free-market economics leads to great outcomes for the rich, but pretty miserable outcomes for everyone else. Governments in the United States and parts of Europe are cutting back on social spending, job creation, infrastructure investment, and job training because the rich bosses who pay for politicians’ election campaigns are doing very well for themselves, even as the societies around them are crumbling.
Yet Keynesian solutions – easy money and large budget deficits – have also fallen far short of their promised results. Many governments tried stimulus spending after the 2008 financial crisis. After all, most politicians love to spend money they don’t have. Yet the short-term boost failed in two big ways.
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