Poem by R A Mundell

In the course of preparing for the class, I stumbled upon a poem by R A Mundell in his book ‘Man and Economics’ published in the mid-sixties. We are now living in a time when almost the prices of all goods are driven by the market to touch dizzy heights; RBI is so obsessed with inflation in its recent monetary policy announcement yesterday. Although inflation is manageable still our central bank wants to dampen inflationary expectation and in line with global monetary tightening, it is also sucking excess liquidity from the economy by hiking CRR to 7 percent. Shall we go to Mundell’s articulation which goes to disprove the conventional notion that economics is a dry subject and economists are the driest of the lot.

Free goods, scarce goods
Goods made for market
Public goods, private goods
Goods made in Chile

There are necessaries, luxuries
Snob goods of Veblen
There are war goods and peace goods
Goods sent to Vietnam

There are present goods, future goods
Consumer goods and capital
Wholesale goods and wholesome goods
Goods not for children

There are stolen goods, hot goods
Used goods and services
Intermediate goods and final goods
Goods made for retail

Dry goods, Hong Kong goods
Import goods with the taxes
Traded goods, home goods
Goods made with axes

Substitutes, complements
Bread, Butter and cheese
Superior goods, inferior goods
Goods made for deep freeze

Outputs, inputs
Goods and factors
Inventions and patents
Plays by actors

Goodness!