ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the criteria currently appealed to in private-enterprise economies, as distinguished from socialist economies, example, the Soviet Union. Some of these criteria were formulated centuries ago. Most of these criteria become macro-economic goals. On some criteria the community will be found united, once the question at hand is well understood. These criteria raise no conflict-of-interest issues; they may be termed consensus criteria. Equal treatment of those equally circumstanced, and almost equal treatment of those almost equally circumstanced, has six aspects: relevance, certainty, impersonality, continuity, uniformity of mispayment, and uniformity of cost of compliance. The economic efficiency criteria that give rise to virtually no difference of opinion as to their desirability are full employment and Pareto-optimum allocation of resources. The number of persons in the labor force, including in labor force those whose work yields imputed income, and the number of hours and the intensity of work are affected by the pattern and size of the public finance system.
