Reviving the Economy

Practical economics is not taught in class. Those few nuggets of wisdom picked up in standard textbooks are useful less than 1% of the time. Zimbabwe has a desperate financing need. It is no surprise standard economic theory, which fits into elegant looking models, has been of no value. Economics 101 teaches for a state to finance public expenditure it can either tax, print more money or increase real economic growth.
In Zimbabwe's case, printing money is out of the question. Hyperinflation just a few years ago was a nightmare. As the US Dollar is now legal tender, the Reserve Bank can no longer print bucket loads of green to feed an inefficient consumption economy. Tax collection remains shambolic, as the the ruling elite evades taxes with impunity. Zimbabwe's only way out of the quagmire is through generating long-term real economic growth. So far, Economics 101 has given less than its 1% in helping with Zimbabwe's practical problem.
Mainstream economics text books are worse than useless when it comes to prescribing practical economic guidelines. As Zimbabwe learnt in the 90s, with the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, following the advice of international aid agencies, and their elaborate economic theory models to the letter; pure economics can be poisonous.
Werner Sombart(1947) clarified growth can be realized through entrepreneurship, modernizing the state and improving technology -The ideas of Sombart are excluded in mainstream economics. Investing in innovation, technology and invention is a long-term process.China started emulating and copying technologies in the 1940s, it only started realizing rapid growth in the 1980s. State development occurs in a cultural context, as such it is another long-term process. This leaves the entrepreneur as the source of immediate long-term growth potential. Conventional economics texts fail to clarify how entrepreneurial potential can be encouraged, given their mathematical foundations. As such, practical economic growth advice for Zimbabwe cannot be found in 101 Economics class and Zimbabwe needs many more productive entrepreneurs.