Economics is a broad-ranging discipline, both in the questions it asks and the methods it uses to seek answers. Many of the world's most pressing problems are economic in nature.
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To residents of a prosperous society like ours, economic growth—the notion that standards of living rise from one year to the next—seems like part of the natural order of things. But it is not. Historians tell us that living standards barely changed from the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution—a period of some 16 centuries! Closer in time, per-capita incomes have tragically declined, on net, in most of the former Soviet Union and some of the poorest countries of Africa in some recent decades. Economic growth is not automatic.
"Economics: Principles and Policy" by William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder
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