Question

The political problem of mankind: how to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty. Note: Economic concept: may be included on exams.

Economics is all about TRADEOFFS! Choices which society or individuals make. An example: we must give up or sacrifice some individual liberty in order to achieve societal goals of justice. Why?

John Maynard Keynes

Comment, please

Answer 1

Economic efficiency is when all goods and factors of production in an economy are distributed or allocated to their most valuable uses and waste is eliminated or minimized.

Social Justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.

Individual liberty is the liberty of an individual to exercise freely those rights generally accepted as being outside of governmental control.

John Maynard Keynes rightly said, "Economics is all about TRADEOFFS! Choices which society or individuals make." An example: we must give up or sacrifice some individual liberty in order to achieve societal goals of justice. This is true because the whole or the basic concept on which the study of economics is based on the distribution of the scarce resources and hence since resources are in fixed quantity if one is given more of them there is only less left for the others.

Since we live in a Society and hence we have to think about all the members of the society. Some of them are well off and some are worse off but all the people need some opportunity to prove them. So everyone must get equal chance and hence we talk about the social justice i.e. provide everyone with equal opportunity. But this social justice can be achieved only when we are ready to sacrifice some of our individual liberty. If all the people talk of their liberty then those who are rich or are in higher classes they will not think about the poor people in the society. If these people only work for themselves they will grow more higher and hence the social justice will go far away. Hence in order to achieve social justice people must give up some of their liberty then only it is possible to achieve social justice.