What's the Economy For, Anyway?

"Thomas Pynchon once wrote that if you can get people to ask the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about the answers. In some ways, American conservatives have been masters of that. "Wouldn't you like a tax cut?' "Do you trust the government?" "Can't you spend your money better than government can?" These are the kind of questions they ask and for many Americans, the answers seem deceptively simple -- "sure I'd like to have more money, who wouldn't?"

For the past year, an organization called the Forum on Social Wealth has been involved in an exciting campaign to alter the American political dialogue and ask a different question, a seemingly simple question: What's the economy for, anyway? Is it just about having the biggest GDP or the highest Dow Jones Average? Or is it about providing for a healthy, happy, fair and sustainable society? More than a hundred years ago, Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the U.S. Forest Service and Republican governor of Pennsylvania answered that question in a clear and simple way -- the purpose of the economy, he said, is "the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run." In layperson's terms, it's a high quality of life, in a socially just and sustainable society."

"What we've found is shocking: in almost every area of quality of life, health outcomes, economic fairness and sustainability, the U.S. under-performs almost every western European nation and many poorer nations as well. Moreover, the U.S. has seen significant relative declines since the mid-1970s, the beginning of our slide into right-wing economic policy."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-de-graaf/a-peaceful-revolution-wha_b_66800.html

John de Graaf előadása: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5340242634845987456