ABSTRACT
We have now discussed the general principles on which governmental policies might be devised for three basic purposes: the control of inflation (Chapter II), the promotion of a competitive market mechanism to combine economic freedom with economic efficiency (Chapters III and IV), and the redistribution of income and property (Chapters V and VI). The emphasis throughout this discussion has been upon the advantages of freedom of individualistic behaviour and decision in markets guided by the price mechanism. But it has been a main purpose of those Chapters to show that these advantages can be obtained only if the free-enterprise system is operated against a background of appropriate governmental interventions. In discussing these interventions the emphasis has been put upon the construction of general fiscal and monetary conditions in which the market mechanism could be left free to work. To mention two examples, the stabilisation of prices or incomes is to be achieved through the control of the general level of taxation and of the total supply of money so as to prevent inflationary or deflationary movements in the total demand for goods and services, and personal incomes are to be more equally distributed through the payment of a universal tax-exempt social dividend to every citizen.
