If you want to know what economies (and governments too) are really for, it is to facilitate the fulfillment of all these needs -- including the highest one. That is, to help citizens "be all they can be."
Part IV -- Conclusion
Socialist economists have shown some insight into this requirement, and of course, Karl Marx clearly laid out the state of alienation that capitalism brings about by estranging the worker from the product of his or her own labor.
Nonetheless, there has not yet been a post-industrial national economy (including so-called socialist ones) that has prioritized or, for that matter, even recognized self-actualization as a goal of economic policy. Because such an effort has never been part of our official political and economic policy making, it is difficult for all people, including those in the U.S. celebrating Labor Day, to think of satisfying this need through the activity -- the labor -- that takes up most of their waking hours.
And here is a piece of consequential irony that this blindness to the humanizing potential of labor has left us with. According to the advertising agents working diligently to convince us all that we live in the best of possible worlds, the best place for youth to fulfill their potential is (no gagging please) in the military. Thus, the slogan "be all you can be" has been turned into a recruiting ad for the U.S. Army.
At this rate daily work will stay a stultifying trap for most, and dissatisfaction will continue to be taken for granted as a consequence of the need to labor. It is no wonder that here in the 21st century, one is driven back to the 18th-century Enlightenment writer Voltaire for solace -- for the message that we can as yet do little better than "tending our own gardens well."
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