The New Economy Won't Be Like the Last One

Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, the economy is a long ways from recovery. The speculative system that created the mess remains intact, and foreclosures and unemployment continue to rise. But at the same time, a new economy is taking form. It's built on a recognition that the only thing too big to fail is the Earth itself. It is designed to build sustainable wealth for families, communities, and ecosystems, and it's our best chance to improve prospects for future generations, instead of leaving them with ever-growing debt, conflict, and environmental destruction.

Politicians, pundits, and financiers defend deepening our national debt to bail out the institutions of a failed Wall Street system. But this system, built on speculation and the rule of money, is undermining the health of the planet and the well-being of all but the wealthiest few.

It's time to let it go.

The new economy is built on new forms of money, and on democratic finance and business. In the summer 2009 issue of YES!, we report on worker-owned cooperatives that distribute the benefits of hard work to employee-owners who call the shots in democratic workplaces. These co-ops spend locally and are rooted locally, so they are long-term boons to their local economies. And they don't close down in favor of sweat shops in low-wage regions.

Money, though hidden in plain sight, is another critical piece of the puzzle. As currently created, it destabilizes our economy and concentrates wealth. Many communities are developing new means of exchange that work even when there is a global shortage of credit. And the issuing of money could be a public service, rather than a profit center for private banks.

We're told we need Wall Street in order to finance business. But Wall Street has quit serving the real economy and, with the continued blessing of the Obama administration, is acting as a global casino, creating exotic and toxic packages of "assets" that have no function but to make money for the already wealthy.

In the new economy, credit is provided through local banks rooted in the communities they serve. Credit unions, community development banks, and other democratic institutions also serve, rather than cannibalize, the real economy.

Americans know we've been living beyond our means, and we're cutting back. That means the segment of the old economy centered on encouraging wasteful consumption will continue shrinking.

The new economy--sometimes with the aid of President Obama's stimulus spending--is moving in to meet needs unmet by a system centered on mega-profits. New jobs are being created to install renewable energy and weatherize homes, raise food through more labor-intensive and less damaging means, build public transit systems and inter-city rail, and rebuild schools, bridges, water systems and neighborhoods. We can no longer defer these vital investments as we did when we oriented our economy around the desires of the ultra-rich.

The new economy is about increasing quality of life, improving health, and restoring the environment. The resources to pay for this will be the resources that previously went into multi-million-dollar CEO pay packages and oversized returns on speculation.

With reduced consumption, we'll no longer need to fight for an excess share of the world's resources, so we can slim down our bloated military budget. We can save on prisons and police, since people with access to good education and jobs less often turn to crime.

An Earth- and human-centered economy is not inevitable. We could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps. The current economic downturn, though, offers an exceptional opportunity to rebuild and, this time, to make it an economy that works for all.

Sarah van Gelder wrote this article as part of The New Economy, the Summer 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah is the Executive Editor of YES! Magazine.

Follow Sarah van Gelder on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SarahVanGelder

Comments

[ThePeoplesKey]

This is real wishful thinking Sarah. The utopia you describe leaves out at least one if not more very important details: The most attractive females on the planet are most attracted to wealth and a leisurely life. Not physical appearance. Not work. It's not their fault. It's human nature. It's built in and all the educating to the contrary will never change it. Girls just want to have fun. For the most part they have no interest in politics of any kind. My wife is a good example. The only reason she knows anything about politics is because I'm involved in politics. Other than that she has little interest in anything to do with how things are run in our community and nation beyond her children and grand children. Their are a handful of women in every community that don't see themselves as "care takers" but they are vastly outnumbered by women who do. Unless that ever changes (and it won't) men will continue to pursue power and wealth over others in order to attract the most attractive females to them no matter what you put in their way, and even to the destruction of the planet. You can argue with it all you want but it is the fact that's never discussed anymore, and it's more powerful than any economic or government system that any human being will ever devise.

[RoloTomassi]

Sorry Sarah, while I would love to buy into your pie-in-the-sky vision of this "new economy," I have to assert that you are indulging in wishful thinking; nothing much has changed for the better, and the Obama administration in league with the dispicable Wall St. curmudgeons are working as hard as they can to stablize the economy FOR THE BANKS and return it to the dysfunctional status quo of fast & loose trading of volitile derivatives, and all manner of fraudulent behavior they've come to depend on. Yes, regulations have been proposed, and yes, Obama has a vision for "green" energy projects and manufacturing, but so far it is all talk, and I don't think it will be allowed to go much farther.

The real economy of this nation is greatly diminished, and what remains is mostly in hibernation, or on life support; it will not be revivied by returning to dominance by Wall St. finance [which was based mostly on fantasy profits], nor will it be lifted by a few "green jobs" projects.

Unless we are smart enough to forcibly reduce the size and role of Wall St. in the affairs of Main St., any recovery efforts will be a waste of time.

Free market fundamentalism destroys everything it touches and funnels the derived wealth to the top; this nation has not faced the truth of that, and will continue to pay a steep price for the sake of maintaining the economic religion of the wealthy.

[Lololol]

This "green economy" is more appropriate for an economic boom where capital flows freely, like fifteen years ago. Promoting it now is just wishfully thinking the market will support it, instead of looking at the real economy of the present and how to adapt.