Making Another World Possible: The Torah, Louis Kelso, and the Problem of Poverty

Why is it that after centuries of concerted efforts to eliminate it, and decades of unprecedented economic growth that should have accomplished it, poverty not only is still with us but actually is increasing? Starting with a passage in the Old Testament, the source of moral behavior for believers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this author argues that the postulation of the labor theory of value and scarcity by Adam Smith, and accepted as part of the basic framework of the discipline of economics, has prevented us from formulating public policies that would enable us to implement the way the God of the Abrahamic faiths intended the poor to be cared for. Substituting modifications in economic theory proposed originally by Louis Kelso, a model acknowledging the independent contribution of capital in the productive process is proposed that would enable us to formulate policies for the production and distribution of wealth and that would make the scourge of human poverty a bad dream of the past.