IN his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state. The progressive state was one where capital accumulation would be occurring at a rate faster than the growth of population, because of which wages would be high and population growing; in a declining state by contrast the opposite happened, while in a stationary state the capital stock and the population, and hence the labour force, was constant and so were the wages, but at a level lower than in the progressive state.

FOR the French elections which Emmanuel Macron has called in the wake of the impressive showing by the far-right in the European parliamentary polls, four parties on the Left, the Communists, the Socialists, the Greens, and France Unbowed (of Jean-Luc Melenchon), have come together to form a New Popular Front to take on the fascist challenge of Marine Le Pen.

THE fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence, somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue.

A DISTINCTION is drawn in economics between demand-constrained systems and resource-constrained systems (which for simplicity and symmetry we shall call supply-constrained systems). In the former, an increase in output can occur if there is a rise in aggregate demand without causing any scarcity-induced inflation; in the latter, output is constrained either by capacity being fully used up, or by the scarcity of some critical input or of foodgrains or of the labour force, so that a rise in aggregate demand, instead of raising output, simply causes scarcity-induced inflation.

THE media has been full of claims by the World Bank and by governments that millions of people in the global South have been lifted out of poverty during the last three decades that saw neo-liberal economic policies. The Niti Aayog in a press release earlier this year claimed near zero poverty for India by 2022-23, affecting only 5 per cent of the population.