The Trade Off Economy

“The Trade-off Economy - A New Cheerful Side to the Dismal Science” by Lawrence Summers delves into the economic concept of trade-offs. Summers explains how society is jammed and bombarded with economic trade-offs. “Guns vs. butter, public vs. private, efficiency vs. equity, environmental protection vs. economic growth, consumption vs. investment, inflation vs. unemployment, [and] quality vs. quantity…” (Summers) are a few of the trade-offs Summers challenges. He explains how not every decision has to give-and-take, yielding a winner and loser instead two winners may be the product of an innovation. He challenges the traditional view and transforms the concept of trade-offs. Choices no longer will be synonymous with dreary, dismal constraints; rather, they should be seen as exciting, cheerful economic challenges worth finding a cure where trade-offs are denied. …show more content…
Boucoyannis explains how the American society accepts inequality as an inevitable trade-off received from a free-market system. Americans value their Freedom; they view any change requiring government intervention as a bridge to socialism and a any progressive viewpoint as a loss moral dimension. The first step to abridge inequality will be to challenge the traditional viewpoint with Adam Smith. Enlighten society with the facts; Smith believed “inequality is not an equilibrium outcome”. Rather, he believed high profits were foreshadowings “of a country going fast to ruin” (qtd. in Boucoyannis). If Smith were alive today he would agree with Piketty on the terms of something must be done to avoid ruin, but he would also underline Piketty’s attempts to equalize as only treating symptoms not the disease