Employment and Inter-generational Equity

Gautam Mathur
Additional contact information
Gautam Mathur: University of Allahabad

Chapter 11 in Employment Policy in a Developing Country A Case-study of India Volume 1, 1983, pp 253-275 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract There has been a great deal of controversy as to the degree to which one should look after the interest of future generations in relation to that of the present generation. I would describe the two opposing viewpoints as those of the Economic Futurists and the Economic Existentialists. The former, relying upon some formulation of pay-off between inflation and employment, would be willing to decrease the real wage rate of the present generation’s workers in order that capital might be built for future generations, justifying it with the incorrect statement that a little bit of real inflation is unavoidable for development. The latter would, equally incorrectly, like to ‘take no thought of the morrow’, would forget the continuity of the body politic over generations to come, and would wish to allocate all resources to improvement of the present generation’s living conditions alone. The purpose of this paper is to present a picture of inter-generational equity in such economic benefits as standard of living, capacity to increase it further, provision of full employment, lower disparities of consumption among wage-earners, drastic reduction of consumption, especially by the entrepreneurs, landowners and rentiers, higher investment of the surplus, allocation of investments in a more balanced way between long-term and short-term projects, elimination of luxuries from the production spectrum.

Keywords: Consumption Good; Full Employment; Employment Policy; Employment Creation; Subsistence Level (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1983
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:intecp:978-1-349-06267-6_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349062676

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-06267-6_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Economic Association Series from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().