ABSTRACT
Economics needs to be a practical art that explains how the world works. Economics needs to shift from last century's preoccupation with psychological welfare back to the original classical focus on material welfare. "Equilibrium" is an outmoded and misleading physics concept which distorts the grasp of economic reality. The market is a useful social and economic instrument but it cannot set national and social ends—conscious human thought has to be involved. Most of the gross domestic product for several generations in the major high-income societies has been produced in business firms. The high-income countries have become predominantly services-producing economies. The economics of services differ significantly from those of material goods. The public sector influences all the rest of the economy. Its responsibilities and activities cannot be cramped into the narrow axioms of conventional theory. Civil society, the infrastructure of civilization itself, is intimately bonded with the economy but influenced by different forces.
