Abstract
Neoclassical economists claim Adam Smith to be their patron saint, but they reject his broader social, moral and political-based understanding of the economy. Smith recognized that economic progress, explicitly defined by rising real wages for those at the bottom of society, implied an increasingly complex and interdependent society and appropriately changing rules of justice. The Neoclassical use of an asocial, value-free model of humans, however, serves to hinder the process of developing an adequate analysis of both the true nature of human welfare and means for promoting it. True market failure occurs when markets are unable to accommodate these social and normative dimensions.
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Johnson, R.D. (2017). The Foundations of Economics. In: Rediscovering Social Economics. Perspectives from Social Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51265-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51265-5_1
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