The Economic Dimension of Future Justice

Ian McDonald

“Future justice has an economic dimension because economic decisions made today will have an impact on the level of wellbeing achievable by people in the future. For example, decisions today to use less of our non-renewable natural resources, such as coal and oil, will influence how much of these resources will be available for people to use in the future. Simply put, the less coal we use today, the more coal there will be for use by people in the future. As will be seen, along similar lines of logic, if we decide to use output produced today to increasing the capital stock or to developing better ways to produce things or to developing new and improved products then the total quantity and quality of goods and services that people in the future will be able to produce and enjoy will be increased …”