ON EQUALITY AND EFFICIENCY, AND THE FINDING OF UTOPIA

Economic systems today exist in a multitude of different shapes, colours and sizes. They all, however, have an indisputable presence of homogeneity in their central objectives. As Henry Simons states in his Economic Policy for a Free Society, “There is in America no important disagreement as to the proper objectives of economic policy – larger real income, greater regularity of production and employment, reduction of inequality, preservation of democratic institutions.” The veering point in the diversity of these systems lies in the way in which they seek to obtain these goals, and the relative success or failure in each arena of the modern economic objective. The focal point of this paper is the examination of equity and efficiency in a host of different economic scenarios.

In 1934, during The Great Depression, a man named Henry C. Simons put pen to paper and created one of the most controversial works of his time. An Economic Policy for a Free Society underlined the causes o...