Economics Is an Expression of Our Values, Not a Law of Physics

Photo: "Hormel Chili Can and Seated Homeless Man," taken February 5, 2026, by James Lyons Walsh in Albany, New York, USA

Economics Is an Expression of Our Values, Not a Law of Physics

I wish more people could have attended the October 7, 2025, lecture at UAlbany by Nobel laureate economist David Card. Prof. Card spoke about his work in experimental economics, supporting beliefs that immigration doesn’t drive down wages and that raising the minimum wage doesn’t increase unemployment. Illustrating the value of immigration, the lecture was part of a series honoring the late UAlbany economics professor Pong S. Lee, a Korean immigrant about whom UAlbany Provost Carol Kim spoke, noting her own membership in childhood in Albany’s Korean community. The event embodied a courageous and hopeful worldview, but it worried me.

During the Q&A session, I asked Prof. Card what he thought about degrowth and whether there was experimental evidence concerning it. After I clarified for him that I was speaking of the movement to reduce economic activity in rich countries and increase it in poor ones, Prof. Card said that many suffer in poverty in rich countries and that parents hope their children will do better than they did.

Now, why is a physicist writing about economics, let alone to support a movement that a Nobel prize-winning economist passed up an opportunity to endorse? Worse yet, the 2025 economics Nobel was awarded October 13 for theories aimed at the exact opposite goal. Have economists started publishing opinions questioning gravity?

Everyone is qualified to comment on the goals of our economy.  Economics is a social science that should serve our values, not shape them. Gravity is a fact of life. Our economy is an expression of who we are and who we want to become.

So, would degrowth perpetuate poverty or end progress in middle class lifestyles?

It’s just the opposite. Economists at the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy advocate an economy small enough to fit within the “ecological capacity,” meaning small enough to preserve the planetary systems and geopolitical stability on which we depend for survival. At the same time, they see economic development continuing as economic output declines, since “the relative prominence of economic sectors may evolve.”

I, personally, don’t want to own a car, a contraption that the average person works two months of every year to afford. I’d prefer more free time and adequate public transportation.

I wish more well-off people would prefer tastefully proportioned houses to McMansions. I wish our culture wouldn’t encourage food waste or fast fashion or profligate vacation travel or ornamental lawns. Appetites for high resource consumption make life more difficult for everyone by driving up prices and degrading the environment. Sure, jobs are created, but people wind up working more to satisfy their basic needs, if they’re able. As Dr. King put it in 1956, “Oh America, how often have you taken necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes.”

The economists and scientists at Earth4All speak of “wellbeing” instead of “degrowth.” They quote Simon Kuznets, the inventor of gross domestic product as an economic indicator, who said, “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP.” Earth4All calls for economic indicators that “include the interdependence of human wellbeing and a healthy planet,” adding, “Human needs are universal, but how they are satisfied depends on cultural circumstances…”

Let’s respect each other’s values while discussing more seriously whether our current economic system serves anyone’s values well enough to be worth the risks it poses to our society.

And the next time a Nobel laureate speaks at UAlbany, could they appear in the large auditorium, so more people could attend?