Social and economic problems requiring reform – Editor
In a recent communication, NZ member John Rawson discussed a range of social and economic issues requiring reform. John said that the first step must be to identify existing problems and their causes, and the second should be to decide which problems can be remedied by human action and which must be left to natural forces.
Only then can we make intelligent decisions for reform. John lists the major social and economic problems confronting the modern world as:
- Economic and financial instability, with periodic crises.
- The impossibility of a steady state economy while a continual growth imperative persists.
- Growing inequality, i.e. deprivation of a considerable section of communities from access to the benefits from production, with starvation in some of the poorest nations.
- A financial structure characterised by generally increasing debt.
- The risk of excessive changes in the price level (i.e. in inflation or deflation).
- Progressive restriction of fundamental human and democratic rights.
- Impending shortages of natural raw materials.
- Impairment and decay of the natural environment.
- Increasing crime and a legal system that does little to reform the culprits and provides insufficient aid to the victims.
To which list I suggest one should add:
- Large scale involuntary unemployment and underemployment.
