The Second Crisis of Economic Theory : RICHARD T. ELY LECTURE = 經濟學의 第二 危機

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In short, we have not got a theory of distribution. We have nothing to say on the people whom economics is supposed to enlighten.
Here th second crisis links up with the first. The first crisis failed to be resolved because there was no solution to the problem of maintaining near-full employment without inflation. Experience of inflation has destroyed the conventions governing the acceptance of existing distribution. Everyone can see that his relative earnings depend on the bargaining power of the group that he belongs to. The professors become quite nervous when they are discussing the earnings of the garbage collectors. Now it is clear enough that income from property is not the reward of waiting but the reward of employing a good stock broker. On top of this a sudden freeze comes down. If it is successful it is to keep everyone in the position where he happened to be when the scramble for relative gains was brought to a halt and it will
perpetuate the division of income between work and property that happened to exist when it set in. But it does not seem likely that it will be as successful as all that. Rather it will add a political elements to the distribution of bargaining power. Perhaps this is going to create a crisis in the so called free-enterprise economy. I am not talking about that. I am talking about the evident bank ruptcy of economic theory which for the second time has nothing to say on the questions that, to everyone except economists, appear to be most in need of an answer.