It is we, through our elected representatives,
who have created a system in which corporations and banks privatise profits
and make the public absorb the losses. We also have the power to bring their
activities back under democratic control, argue Larry Elliot and Dan Atkinson.
Recent financial turmoil has highlighted the impact of faulty economic theory on the real world. Economists should embrace the failure of orthodox ideas as a chance to modify and improve their discipline, writes Peter Radford.
Despite their importance, interest rates, financial regulation and fiscal policy are often ignored in multilateral discussions on development. Progressive movements need to seize the initiative in defining new avenues for macroeconomic policy, says Alejandro Nadal.
In Northern policy circles, current debate is centred on which is the best way to revive the global economy. But given the finite nature of the planet’s ecosystems and the clear link between economic growth and resource use, are we hoping for the right kind of recovery? By Tom Birch.
For the first time in forty years, some of the most powerful business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum are questioning the value of globalisation. But will this change in rhetoric lead to a more credible vision of human progress?
For the most part, the wake-up call in
2008 to rethink our economic model went unheeded. Governments must address financial
and ecological sustainability together in order to allow humans to flourish
within the limits of a finite planet, argues Tim Jackson.
With seismic shifts in global power relations already underway,
the coming decade is set to reshape the world as we know it. Far more
profound will be changes to the natural world, which will impact humanity in
unpredictable and possibly devastating ways, writes Michael Klare.
The practice of sustainable development has been
mainstreamed to align with the interests of business, government, and
‘economics as usual’. We need to reset the pursuit of sustainability and
demand transformative changes to the predominant global economic system, argues
Alan Atkisson.
Environmentalists are coalescing around the idea that the current drive for unending economic growth is not sustainable on a finite planet. But the end to which the economic system should now aim is still open to debate, suggest three different viewpoints.
Despite the continuing instability of the current economic
system, the belief that neoliberal capitalism is indestructible has not yet
been abandoned. Perhaps only a more serious crisis will overturn this erroneous
idea upon which so many policies are based, says John Gray.
