Growth vs Development - why development?
增长或发展 - 为什么更顾发展？
“Productivity isn’t everything, …” A way to see this is to contrast “growth” with “development”.
The first work of Amartya Sen that I read was “Development as Freedom”, published shortly after he won the Nobel Prize for Economics. It took me a while to work out what Sen was saying as his approach to economics was so different from how mainstream economics is taught (at least to undergraduate students).
As I understand him, Sen says that “freedom” is both the primary objective and principal means of development. For Sen, “freedom” is simply a person’s capability to do things that the person has reason to value. So development of a country is primarily about enhancing its people’s capability to live lives and pursue goals that they have reason to value. This concept of development is much more expansive than “economic growth”; it is not simply about raising income levels, providing plentiful employment opportunities, ending poverty and hunger, etc. It includes raising education levels, improving health and life expectancy, attending to the special needs of the disabled, enhancing opportunities for social exchange, protecting the environment, …
There is a real sense in which a person with poor health, short lives, low education, limited social intercourse, living with pollution, etc is much less free. So growing per capita output is not everything.
“生产并不是一切。。。”看待这一点的一种方法是将“增长”与“发展”进行对比。
我读到的阿马蒂亚.森第一本著作是《发展充当自由》，使他获得诺尔贝（Nobel）o济学奖后不久出版的。我花了一段时间才明白森教授说出的话，因为他的经济学方法与主流经济学家的教学方式（至少对本科生来说）是如此不同。
据我了解，森教授说明“自由”既是发展的首要目标，也是主要手段。对于森教授来说，“自由”只是一个人做他有理由重视的事情的能力性。因此一个国家的发展首先是提高人民的过活人生能力，和追求他们有理由重视目标的能力性。这种发展的概念比“经济增长”要广泛得多；它不仅仅提高收入水平、提供丰富就业机会、消除贫困和饥饿等。它还包括提高教育水平、完善健康和预期寿命、关注残疾人的特殊需要、增加社会交流机会、保护环境、。。。
确实意义上，一个人健康状况不佳、寿命短、受教育程度低、社会交流限制、生活在污染之中等，那么它的自由就是少得多。
因此，人均生产的增长并不是一切。