1. Does Stability Inevitably Mean Decline?
- Author
-
Wilson, George W.
- Subjects
- *
ECONOMIC stabilization , *SOCIOECONOMICS , *ECONOMIC development , *ECONOMIC policy , *ECONOMIC expansion , *ECONOMIC recovery - Abstract
The article reports that in the history of important societies or nations, the attainment of a condition of economic stability has typically been followed by decline or breakdown in at least the economic sphere and has frequently been accompanied at a more or less remote stage by political, social, cultural, and even moral decay. In other words, stability in the sense of cessation of economic expansion seems to have been one of the indispensable conditions of ultimate demise. The major problem which this study analyzes is whether there is a necessary connection between economic stability and economic decay. The fact of past correlation is accepted. But the inevitability of it, the a priori necessary connection, merits further discussion, for if it is a necessary connection, the Western world is indeed faced with at least a serious problem. In the twentieth century the self-conscious quest for, and emphasis upon, security, the manifestation of the desire for stability, has become a firmly ingrained aspect of policy-security from external aggression, security from internal revolution, security from famine or the business cycle. All societies, of course, are concerned to a greater or lesser extent with these problems.
- Published
- 1958