Economic Policy and the Common Good

All conceptions of the common good agree: for the individual to flourish, society must flourish, and for society to flourish the individual must flourish.  But what is this common good that is essential for flourishing and... [ view full abstract ]

All conceptions of the common good agree: for the individual to flourish, society must flourish, and for society to flourish the individual must flourish.  But what is this common good that is essential for flourishing and how does the pursuit of this good shape the individual and society? This paper presents various conceptions of the common good, asks what a society must provide to enable its citizens individually and collectively to flourish, examines an actual society from this perspective, finds it wanting and critiques economic policy from a common good perspective to establish where and why it falls short.  The paper concludes with a discussion of how economic policy can be designed to support individual and societal flourishing, that is, the common good.