ECONOMY
TRUDI MAKHAYA: Bread has changed but dough is still low
It remains one of the central questions of our age: how to nurture high-productivity activities that go beyond the manufacturing sector in an open and competitive global economy?
In media interviews and other public engagements I am often asked to make sure I highlight the relevance of various economic topics to ordinary people’s lives. This is as if ordinary life is divorced from economics. But I understand the anxiety behind that question, because the disciplines of economics and business are often presented in ways that are too abstract for even the informed observer to make meaningful connections. Economic questions have always been personal for me. Like many children, one of my earliest significant chores was going to the local shop almost daily to buy bread and other necessities. A simple task, it was also the chore that exposed us, very early, to the realities of life.During breaks at primary school, in our youthful way we talked about the cost of living as we experienced it in the late 1980s. We speculated about the forces that drove the prices so high so quickly. But our speculation was not restricted to the price of bread. We wondered why the facto...
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