Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Inequality: an overview
- 2 Remote Australia I: government settlements and missions
- 3 Remote Australia II: pastoral stations
- 4 Remote Australia III: decentralised communities
- 5 Settled Australia I: urban and rural communities
- 6 Settled Australia II: the major urban areas
- 7 Some economic issues
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Some economic issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 Inequality: an overview
- 2 Remote Australia I: government settlements and missions
- 3 Remote Australia II: pastoral stations
- 4 Remote Australia III: decentralised communities
- 5 Settled Australia I: urban and rural communities
- 6 Settled Australia II: the major urban areas
- 7 Some economic issues
- Appendixes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If an aboriginal in the seventeenth century had been captured as a curiosity and taken in a Dutch ship to Europe, and if he had travelled all the way from Scotland to the Caucases and seen how the average European struggled to make a living, he might have said to himself that he had now seen the third world and all its poverty and hardship.
G. Blainey, Triumph of the NomadsThe popular belief that unemployment is due to the absence of development, is clearly without foundation. On the contrary, development is itself in a sense the primary cause of (measured) unemployment, since it is development which opens up the gap between modern and traditional earnings, converts disguised into open unemployment, and accelerates population growth.
W. A. Lewis, Development PlanningThis chapter aims to highlight some of the economic issues raised in previous parts of the book. In discussing the implications of the economic status of Aborigines, a qualification made in the preface bears repeating, namely the value-laden assumption that economic growth and development may be desirable, or at least worth discussing. Some authors, especially in affluent societies, have condemned an ‘obsession’ with economic growth because of its aesthetic and ecological implications. On the other hand, as W. A. Lewis (1955, pp. 420–1) has argued, ‘the advantage of economic growth is … that it increases the range of economic choice … the case for economic growth is that it gives man greater control over his environment, and thereby increases his freedom’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Economic Status of Australian Aborigines , pp. 174 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979