摘要
The goal of the paper is to discuss the explanation of commonly accepted goal of economy in a national level and the problems which threaten the goal. Though the leading economists of the 20th century have strictly supported the necessity of close link between economics and morals, the mainstream economics mostly has regarded it as a problem of secondary importance. The paper discusses the deepest meaning of the generally accepted objective of economy--sustainable development, which necessarily should take into consideration the social dimension along with the economic and environmental. The different understandings of the wellbeing concept are considered and discussed, as it lies on the basis of the explanation of the goal--not any development, but development, which makes people happier. Next follows the discussion on the concepts of sustainability and its link with environment in a broader sense. It is followed by the discussion on the manipulations with human minds. The problem of the global and local economies is considered as a part of the discussion about the sustainability of economies of all levels. This leads to conclusions that social economics should be integrated in economic science as a substantial part. The idea of local economies is considered as an alternative to the present economic paradigm. The methodology of the conclusion making is based on qualitative historical analysis and empirical evaluation of the standpoints of the scientific discussion. The paper is mainly library-based. The ideas of world famous economists are taken from their own books in a printed form or that can be found in Internet. Conclusions are based on mainly qualitative comparison of the facts that arise from the theoretical discussion and empirical evidence of the study object manifestations in real life. Quantitative methods, briefly used, are basic econometrics--conventional correlation analysis, based on the statistic data of the World Bank. The scientific discussion has been approbated in students＇ audience in the study course of macroeconomics in BA School of Business and Finance, Riga, and Ventspils University College, and has been discussed in the fifth International Conference of Latvian Economic Association and Latvian Academy of Sciences.
