Human growth and avoiding European disintegration: lessons from Polanyi

Many economists, including mainstream economists, have declared the necessity of an ambitious public investment program for Europe. The continuation of the present laissez-faire and austerity approach, they say, will deepen the dissatisfaction of European peoples with the European project. In effect, in the absence of inspiring progressive alternatives, there is the real prospect of nationalistic reactions everywhere, with fragmentation and the end of the EU (or even worse) as a consequence. At the bottom of EU-fatigue there is dissatisfaction with the present economic paradigm, which implies social and economic strain and stagnation for a large majority, and growing wealth and privilege for a tiny minority (the “one percent”). A new social and economic paradigm should be necessary to reverse the negative and dangerous trends that the now more than 30 years old neoliberal paradigm has implied. To be effective, a new social and economic paradigm should underlie the new, ambitious European investment program. The guiding general idea of such a new, hopeful paradigm and program should be the idea of human growth. Human growth can be understood as the growth of human capabilities — the all-round development of individuals and societies. The paper summarizes a dynamic simulation model for the efficient allocation of investment. Investment efficiency is understood in the sense of the intersectoral allocation of investments being able to fulfil desired patterns of capability growth. That is, efficient investment programs are those that maximize the capacity of the production system — and in general, the socioeconomic system — of generating human growth.