Future Wealth

During the 1980s human poverty and misery in the world increased and, as a result, ecological disaster now threatens. Our present economic path is systematically damaging to both people and the Earth.

The need for a greener economy is now widely accepted, but the author of Future Wealth stresses the need for a more fundamental revolution in the way the world thinks about economics and organizes economic life. We need a new economic order for the 21st century, geared to the real needs of people as well as the Earth. The keywords must be "enable" (for people) and "conserve" (for the Earth). We must establish in the public mind worldwide that human beings are capable of something better than competitive greed—between people and between nations—as the mainspring of economic life. We must replace our systematic wastefulness and polluting with systematic conserving, reform the money system, and shift taxation away from what people contribute to society and on to what they take out of it.

This book is for everyone who is in any way concerned about the present state of the world. It is for those interested in environmental issues, in public health, in poverty, in Third World development. It is for professionals, planners, economists, academics, business people, managers and politicians who are interested in economic and social change and the future.

James Robertson, who has been called 'that most subversive of men, the eminently reasonable revolutionary', is an internationally known writer, speaker and consultant on alternative futures and economic and social change.