Pressure for greater equality erodes the incentives for firms and individuals to accept the inconvenience of change. Many of these developments represent choices which societies and individuals are entitled to make. But they must recognize that there may be a price to pay, in a loss of economic efficiency and hence of real income. Unemployment and low growth accentuate the resistance to change. People will defend their jobs more tenaciously if a new one is hard to find.
Firms seek protection more readily if new competitors enter a static market.
If economic and social resistances to structural adaptation are a brake on growth, this brake may be lifted by policies to reduce the economic and social costs of change and to increase the rewards for accepting it. The growth rate could in this way be increased and the costs and inconvenience of change thus further reduced. But because the structural characteristics of the modern economy will still be there when employment and growth are high, the need for policies for structural adaptation will remain, even if the demand for them may be less intense. Whether this rationale for policies to influence the structure of the economy is accepted or not, it can hardly be denied that such policies exist. It is hard to define a target which is so complex and moving so fast.