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A book of pedestrian economic and political prescriptions
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Foundational Economy: The infrastructure of everyday life
by The Collective Foundational Economy
Manchester University Press £11.99
THE opening chapters of this book reminded me of president John F Kennedy’s trenchant and moving attack on the idea that a country’s progress can be judged by GDP figures. The Gross Domestic Product, he said “measures everything... except that which makes life worthwhile.”
Many proposals to re-focus economy theory and policy away from national income accounting have been published. In this case the focus is the “foundations” of an economy – consisting of zones “producing daily essential goods and services which are critical to citizens flourishing.”
There are three main areas: the “material” Foundational Economy (FE) consists of those pipes and networks “which continuously connect households to everyday life including water, electricity, food, transport and telecoms.”
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