Economy

The necessary transition to a new economy

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Even Forbes is jumping on the bandwagon of the “sharing economy” with a recent article on AirBnB. This closely follows Van Jones’s CNN article about the “sharing economy,” but the push to transform our broken economy isn’t just about sharing, though; it isn’t even just about renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, and the other elements of the green economy movement. There is a “new economy movement” that’s pushing for a fundamental shift away from the neoliberal policies that have dominated our economy and society for decades.

From Green New Deal to New Economy Coalition (Part I)

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Here is a short overview and strategic assessment of the green economy movement, including its organizational makeup.  It concludes with recommendations for transitioning from a double bottom line movement to a triple bottom line one: being more inclusive of historically marginalized communities.

A patchwork blanket

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Long gone are the days when the job you’d grow up to do would more or less be determined by the jobs your parents did. But going now is the concept of the “job for life”; something you’d study for in youth and then spend your life improving your skills at, earning more and more pay until you’d retire with a generous final salary pension.

So, what do you do?

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Informed as much by new economic thinking as necessity, people are rediscovering and reinventing gift culture, experimenting with different means of exchange, and finding work arounds to “business as usual” sources of capital through peer-to-peer lending and crowd funding.

We cannot avoid the global crisis… but we can deal with it

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There is no doubt in my mind about the potential power of markets and business to be a positive force for change. There are, in the world of business some very smart and passionate people with enormous capacity to help society move forward. We have not yet seen that potential realised, but I know it is still there – waiting for its moment.

Economic Growth: The missing link in environmental journalism

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Environmental journalists are like doctors. Doctors run from patient to patient, harried, dealing with symptoms more than causes. They’re too busy dispensing pills to talk about holistic health. It’s an approach that makes money for the health industry but isn’t so great for public health.

How it could happen, part four: crossing the line

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This fourth part of a five-part series uses the tools of narrative fiction to explore some of the ways in which America’s global empire might come apart. As the multiple impacts of American defeat in the East African War come home to roost, a leadership vacuum made worse by partisan gridlock pushes the United States deeper into crisis — and efforts by the political establishment to evade that crisis without dealing with America’s systemic problems unleashes a backlash that might bring the American experiment to a sudden close.

How “Different” is the Recovery from the Financial Crisis?

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The slow recovery from the financial crisis and recession of 2007 – 2009 has become a centerpiece of the Presidential election. In last Tuesday’s debate, Mitt Romney, picking up on a theme that has been emphasized by John Taylor, contrasted the current slow recovery with the much faster recovery from the 1981 – 1982 recession.