Cecil Bohanon and John Horowitz: There are no solutions in economics, just trade-offs

I eat my peas with honey,

I’ve done it all my life.

It makes the peas taste funny,

But it keeps them on the knife.

The children’s poem, often misattributed to Shel Silverstein or Ogden Nash, was actually penned by that ubiquitous author, Anonymous. Its whimsical logic captures something economists recognize all too well: Human solutions to one problem often lead to other insoluble problems.

If you fight inflation too aggressively, mass unemployment follows. The margin for error sits on a knife edge. This means good news rarely arrives without bad news trailing close behind. Alas, there is no honey on the knife.

Consider childhood nutrition. World Bank data reveals encouraging progress: From 2001 to 2024, the proportion of underweight children under the age of 5 worldwide dropped from 20.9% to 12.2%. UNICEF reports similar gains for ages 5-19, with underweight prevalence falling from 13.2% to 9.4%.

On the other hand, obesity rates among 5- to 19-year-olds have surged, from 3% to 9.4%. Obesity now exceeds those underweight in every region of the world except sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The global garment industry tells a parallel story. When Samford University professor Joy Buchanan visited Ball State University last month, she described how 2005 international trade reforms liberalized textile and garment tariffs and quotas. The results were dramatic: Worldwide clothing production doubled from 2000 to 2025.

For developing nations, the benefits have been transformative. Bangladesh’s per capita income jumped from $500 in 1998 to $2,500 in 2024. Bangladesh’s national poverty rate plummeted from 48.9% to 18.7% from 2000 to 2022, lifting millions from desperate circumstances.

This manufacturing boom in clothing gave rise to “fast fashion,” a system that delivers the latest styles to consumers in weeks rather than months, at prices that previous generations couldn’t imagine. Western consumers enjoy unprecedented access to affordable, trendy clothing.

Nevertheless, fast fashion has a dark side. Many attribute horrendous garment-factory disasters in Bangladesh to the pressures that rapid production and rock-bottom prices place on manufacturers. Moreover, affluent Western consumers often run out of room in their closets to store all their clothes. Donations of tons of excess clothes frequently end up in landfills or on beaches in developing countries, leading to severe environmental degradation.

Progress in one dimension—whether in employment, nutrition or economic development—often creates new problems that we struggle to solve. As we economists say, there are no solutions, just trade-offs. Unfortunately, there is no honey on the knife.•

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Bohanon and Horowitz are professors of economics at Ball State University. Send comments to [email protected].