Questioner: Acharya Ji, if we talk about the subject matter of economics, it was said by the father of economics, Adam Smith, that economics is a science of wealth where he puts money over men. So over the years as time passed and the scope was broadened, the economist Alfred Marshall told that economics is a science of material welfare where he puts man over money. But his definition has been a lot criticized in the academic world because he divided welfare between material and non-material. So my question is what is the meaning of welfare and should it be divided between material and non-material?
Acharya Prashant: Ultimately, welfare or wellness is an experience within the experienced. Irrespective of where the object of that experience lies, the experience is always within. You might be experiencing pleasure from a great building in front of your eyes. But the building outside is in itself not the pleasure. The pleasure that you are experiencing is a subjective thing happening obviously within the subject. So, whether it is as tangible as a building or something less tangible like a thought or a memory is always internal. The object might be external or apparently not so external. But the feeling of wellness is always internal.
So when we talk of human welfare, we are essentially talking of something within the human being. The human being might say that the cause of that wellness or lack of wellness lies outside of himself. But still, the effect is always experienced within, right? Now this experience within has been observed to be only partially a function of the conditions outside. There is ample proof.
Japan is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and the Japanese have been known, empirically known, to be one of the unhappiest people on the planet. That by no means establishes that material welfare is inversely correlated with internal welfare. We also have examples of highly impoverished nations where the people are internally unwell because of the poverty outside. Material poverty, therefore, is a known reason for lack of internal wellness.
