The value of everything - Mariana Mazzucato

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value
of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis
is a problem hiding in plain sight. In modern capitalism,
value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders'
dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than
value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and
society. We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what
value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this
concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no
longer discussed.

Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this
penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism - to
radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue
feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Who is
creating it, who is extracting it, and who is destroying it? Answers to
these questions are key if we want to replace the current parasitic
system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more
symbiotic: that works for us all. The Value of Everything will reignite a long-needed debate about the kind of world we really want to live in.