The Making of a Democratic Economy, Marjorie Kelly
The Making of a Democratic Economy, Marjorie Kelly
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The Making of a Democratic Economy
Building Prosperity For the Many, Not Just the Few

Author: Marjorie Kelly, Ted Howard

Narrator: Tiffany Williams

Unabridged: 4 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 07/23/2019


Synopsis

Our economy is designed by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent. This book offers a compelling vision of an equitable, ecologically sustainable alternative that meets the essential needs of all people.

Seventy-one percent of the American people say the economy is rigged against them, and they're right. Marjorie Kelly and Ted Howard describe the current economic system as the Extractive Economy-it enables the financial elite to extract maximum gain for themselves, heedless of any damage to people or planet. As an alternative, they offer the Democratic Economy, which is responsive to the concerns of ordinary people and balances human consumption with the regenerative capacity of the earth.

Kelly and Howard lay out seven principles of a Democratic Economy: Community, Inclusion, Place (keeping wealth local), Good Work (putting labor before capital), Democratized Ownership, Ethical Finance, and Sustainability. The book pairs each principle with a portrait of a place where it is being put into practice, from Pine Ridge to Portland to Cleveland to Preston, England, and more. This is a powerful, coherent, and achievable vision of an economy that serves the many, not the few.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ailith on July 17, 2019

In short: I have little patience for Yuppie capitalism. It keeps means testing, elite division, and offers restitution for the villains. Would this world be better than ours? Probably, but it would not be just.......more

Goodreads review by Ira on September 03, 2019

By whatever gauge you choose to measure—economic, environmental, or social—our country is in frightening shape, and the future, if we continue doing business as usual is only looking worse. That business, of course, is our market economy. The fact is that virtually all of the major decisions that af......more

Goodreads review by JRT on January 17, 2020

I really enjoyed this book. The authors catalogued real world examples of democratic economies in action, and highlighted the fundamental and soon-to-be cataclysmically fatal problems posed by the “extractive economy” (i.e. industrial and financial capitalism). My only issue is that not enough is sa......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 07, 2020

This book is an uplifting collection of stories of the work that has been slowly developing in the United States and elsewhere (mainly England) since approximately the year 2000. The concept of a democratic economy calls "capital bias" to the front of the discussion and successfully shows how alterna......more

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on February 16, 2021

When we look around today we see so much that is wrong. We feel it inside us - this is just not right. A big part of the reason we keep spinning in circles, where ‘solutions’ proposed to solve these wicked problems never seem to work, is because we are building solutions from within a framework that......more