Business Standard

The irony of microeconomics: Excess supply and a study of scarcities

How has economics built the excess supply of land, labour, capital and product into its formal analytical structure which, even now, is predicated on the study of scarcities? The answer is, it hasn't

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T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan
Microeconomics is the study of four markets and their participants — land, labour, capital and product. The first three combine to produce the fourth. This combining is more effective or less effective depending on technology, whose main contribution is to save on labour. This is what is called productivity. 

Two decades into this century, labour, capital, output and technology are all in excess supply. Labour because of runaway population growth. Capital because currencies are no longer pegged to gold and countries are feee to print as many notes as they need to. Output because the above two have become cheaper
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