Today, march 1st 2010 I am reading an article in the "breaking news" section of Chicago Tribune. The article is called "Personal spending jumps, but incomes stuck." It is very important to understand that the issue we are presented with relates to economic freedom. According to the article, personal spending jumped in january more than expected for Americans, and this poses a problem because income has been almost unchanged. If income would increase, then people would be able to buy more products, and the personal spending budget would increase. This is what social economic freedom represents. The power to buy things because of your economic independence, and financial self-sufficiency.
You may be asking how this relates to Friendman and his theories discussed in class. Well, Friedman presents the issue as economic freedom leading to total freedom from a "state" point of view. But from a personal point of view, we can see that economic freedom leads to more choices and less worries about the spending budget, therefore more freedom. Now if economic freedom leads to TOTAL freedom, that is another matter.
By analyzing the meaning of "total freedom" I have come to the conlcusion that economic freedom can lead to total freedom when it comes to the well-being of a country. But when talking about individual human beings, economic freedom becomes simply a tool or an instrument in achieving total freedom.
So could "economic freedom" be understood as a self-sufficient independent status of a country? What about when it comes down to population, which constitutes a big part of the country? Is the meaning of "economic freedom" the same for individual people as it is for a country?
Here is the link to the article:
http://www.chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2010/03/personal-spending-jumps-but-incomes-stucks.html
Monday, March 1, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)