People-First Economics: Making a Clean Start for Jobs, Justice and Climate by David Ransom (PDF)

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Toxic debt, rising job losses, collapsing commodity prices and expanding poverty. How can we rein in these beasts unleashed by the free market economy?People First Economics takes a long, hard look at the mess globalized capitalism is in, and shifts the focus back to where it belongs – putting the needs of people and the environment first.People-First Economics looks at what recent events mean and could mean for us all. It’s about economics—and about a lot more. It’s about radical changes that are social, moral, ecological, and philosophical, too—changes that are already beginning to happen.In a series of plain-speaking contributions, David Ransom brings together exciting and radical activists and thinkers, such as Naomi Klein, Walden Bello, and Susan George, to set the agenda for “economic democratization.” Launching New Internationalist’s World Changing imprint, People-First Economics covers everything from the green revolution and feminist economics to what we can learn from history and a ten-step economic detox. In doing so, it provides the opportunity to rethink what really matters in life.David Ransom has been a co-editor of the New Internationalist since 1989. He is the author of the No-Nonsense Guide to Fair Trade.Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and author. Her latest book is the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.Walden Bello is a campaigner, academic, environmentalist, and journalist. He is senior analyst of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines.Susan George is a political scientist and fellow of the Transnational Institute. She has written many books, including Another World is Possible If…

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly The rising tide of populist outrage over the recent economic crisis fuels a series of essays, diatribes and manifestos in this compendium of left-wing economic alternatives. Editors Ransom and Baird have brought together journalists, economists, politicians and intellectuals to take the global capitalist market to task for everything from foreclosures and national economic collapse to global warming. Naomi Klein replays scenes of popular unrest in Iceland and Argentina; master financier Tarek El Diwany explains the history of interest and argues against usury; and, in case the stakes were unclear, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales offers a 10-point plan for saving the markets and humanity. Ann Pettifor, a fellow at the New Economics Foundation, best sums up the ideological thread that unites the book when she quotes a 1944 British Labour Party tract saying that finance must be returned to its role as the intelligent servant of the community, not its stupid master. If ever these criticisms were to be taken seriously, now would be the time, and voices such as Noam Chomsky’s and journalist Barbara Ehrenreich’s lend the volume plenty of heft. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the Author David Ransom has been a co-editor of New Internationalist magazine since 1989. He has edited a wide range of magazines, including several on fair trade. Prior to that he was a teacher and community worker in the East End of London. He spent several years at the London School of Economics working on the economic history of Latin America.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐From the publishers of New Internationalist comes this collection of writing entitled “People First Economics” which takes an alternative look at the recent troubles in the global economy. The contributors are a mixed group, including some I’ve never heard of, to well known names such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Barbara Ehrenreich and Susan George. The quality of the writing is likewise decidedly mixed; some pieces are excellent, others can only be classified as truly awful.The contributions from the “big” names are generally short and interesting, as far as they go, which isn’t particularly far. Klein casts a wary eye over the rescue plans pushed by various governments and international institutions; Chomsky in an interview format gives some historical context and food for thought; Susan George contemplates possible Keynesian responses as well as the global environment. All well and good, but those three pieces total about twenty out of the two-hundred odd pages the book extends to.There are some excellent contributions including Kate Pickett and Richard Williamson’s short (again!) piece that gives the reader a taste of the arguments contained in their book

⭐. That convinced me to get my hands on a copy. Derek Wall in his “Open Source Anti-Capitalism” looks at collective possibilities for disentangling ourselves from an over commodified world. Perhaps the most interesting contribution was Peter Walker’s, which provides a succinct and no-nonsense guide to the global financial system and it’s failures.Along side those contributions are some pretty poor efforts, including a positively cranky Michael Albert being interviewed about an ideas he has been promoting with regard to what he calls “a participatory economy”. All well and good, except he keeps referring to it as “Parecon”, talks about it in awed religious tones, and about dividing the day up into four hour parts: one for working, one for . . . I can’t even remember now. . . dusting? hoovering? Another contribution to avoid is Danny Chivers effort on climate change that starts with the sentence “Imagine ten rabbits lost at sea, in a boat carved out of a giant carrot.” Eh, well . . . . . Not today Danny. The piece itself is about the options for dealing with climate change, the information in it is not unreasonable. Unfortunately the tone is overly smug, smarmy and frankly embarrassing.The two editors should have had the courage, and respect for their any readers, to cut out half a dozen or so of the contributions which irritated rather than informed and detracted from the good writing in this collection. In my case I was lucky to borrow it from the library, I certainly wouldn’t recommend purchasing it.

⭐Hmm, I must say I wanted to read a good book here. I wanted to see some real facts with solid arguments. Instead you get a collection of essays, which I must say were not written for this book and with a few exceptions are just copied off the authors blogs, with the same old ‘capitalism sucks, working class, working class’ . Now some of the papers bring up good points, like how nations with more equal income distribution have lower crime rates… word.But then we somehow get to the marxist dribble of Michael Albeet. He suggest that workers should all gather together and just vote on pay, production and who’s work is valuable . Now this sounds like a good idea untill he proclaims this brave new world will vote to pay him for writing “social commentaries ” ,but at the same time will decide not to vote to pay someone to compose music, since that work won’t have “value”.Wait WTF is going on here, instead of having a market determine the wealth of ones work, you’d suggest we set up a system were workers have to constantly convince the masses there work has value, and in this new system of course Mr. Albeet will be able to sit at home writing social commentaries instead of doing real work.So what happens when this votting concil doesn’t see the value in complex highly skilled sewage mantanince , thus your drains stop working .It’s a bunch of logical problems with the new socities the writers propose that ruin this book.Not to mention I feel a bit scamec paying 16$ for a collection of old essays . Instead of charging 5$ for the book and asking us to donate an additional ammount the writters want to make sure there paid, seems like greedy capitalism to me…

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