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When the growth of gross national income is not accompanied by growth in employment and salaries, young people look to the future with dismay and the middle classes, the grass roots, fall into a distressing condition of insecurity, that in turn determines a more accentuated political instability. (24:3) To square the circle we need to break this perverse logic. The ever-increasing fruits of productivity should not stagnate in a competitive economy as an end in itself, and should not be wasted in the virtual economy of speculative finance; they should be invested in increasing quantity in activities that are freed from the rigid logic of the competitive market; they should satisfy the even more pressing collective needs of the of the environmental, social and cultural well-being. It is only in these terms we can find a logical solution to the problem of unemployment and social degradation. (24:4) To carry out and finance this process of decanting we need to invent new methods of redistributing the fruits of productivity. The traditional one based on withholding taxes and national expenditures is no longer sustainable in a richer, ever more restless and frightened society. It is clear therefore that the classic economic theory is no longer able to solve the growing disarray in the world. Economists continue to conceive the system as a mechanic process where supply and demand are like oscillations in a pendulum. It is enough to consult any text on economics to understand that the economy, in brief, is a "giving" and "taking" process based on curves of supply and demand. When the demand of a certain good or service increases, the price rises. When it rises too high and the demand weakens either it concentrates on other goods and services, or the price lowers.
(24:5)
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