ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights three broad groups of ideas regarding economics. The first, the classical group, developed the Laissez Faire view based on competitive markets. Economists of this group regarded markets as an efficient allocation mechanism. The second group was that of the socialists. It included Marxists who held a very special position in the events of the last century. They believe that capitalism is a contradictory mechanism and on top of it, is grossly unfair to the majority of population. The third group of ideas—Keynes and his followers—agree that capitalism has a problem of selling its output. Like Marx before them, they observed that the demand coming from consumption cannot buy all the output of an economy. So the rest has to be absorbed by the demand arising in business. One useful development is that poverty has been recognised as a global problem.
