“Ethical Markets fully supports this call for ”Partnerism” by our esteemed Advisory Board member Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade” and other best-sellers.
The Covid crisis has revealed that all the carers in our society who have been keeping us all functioning are the lowest paid and in the most danger of getting the virus . In addition all the unpaid volunteer carers who work in our households and communities comprises up to 50% of all production in all societies (even more in many developing countries) are ignored in macroeconomic stats., including GDP, as I have described for decades, as the unpaid “Love Economy”. Unpaid work missing from GDP was estimated at equivalent to $16 trillion annually in the UN Human Development Report (www.undp.org)
Now we also know that there is no shortage of money, as trillions have been conjured up to maintain aggregate demand and allow the unemployed purchasing power to keep our consumer economy afloat. The economists of the school of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) have been explaining this for decades. They show the all those deficit hawks who lecture about the immorality of budget deficits burdening our children have been wrong.
Of course, deficits matter, but so do all the valuable infrastructure and public goods and services they create, as well as the excessive spending on weapons and special interest subsidies on fossilized sectors. Yet our GDP still doesn’t record these public assets, but only the debts used to create them! Our new global survey “BEYOND GDP“ also finds that 72% of the public in eleven countries favor expanding GDP to include stats on health, education and environment. Join this rich discussion!
~Hazel Henderson, Editor“
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