With UK unemployment nudging 2 million once again (and that's the official count - if we apply the measurement criteria used back in the 1970s, it's now well over three million) it's time to ask again a simple question: just what, and more to the point, who, is the economy for, and what ends it is supposed to serve?
It's not - or should not be - rocket science: the economy consists of those mechanisms and institutions in society through which its members secure for themselves the means to survival and satisfaction in life in exchange for their labour.
For the last thirty years, however, the objective of full employment has fallen off the radar of economic policy because the neo-classical school of economics that has come to dominate the political and academic establishments has persuade people in large numbers that economic policies focussing on continuous growth and low inflation offer the best hope for economic advance.
This argument is now revealed as a gigantic con-trick, pulled off by economists and politicians, ably aided by much of the mainstream media, in the service of the interests of elite wealth and privilege. Democracy, meanwhile, appears quite unable to defend majority interests.
I'm not arguing that the state should take responsibility for directly creating jobs for those whom the market doesn't provide. But there needs to be a moral basis for economic policy, and key among the values referenced should be a commitment to an economy in which everyone has access to the resources and opportunities necessary to make a reasonable living for themselves.
By starting from that belief, and ensuring it remains the over-riding goal in policy formulation, it should be possible to restructure the economy along more just and inclusive lines. Presently however, there seems little chance of such progress.
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