Values: An Economist’s Guide to Everything That Matters

Values: An Economist’s Guide to Everything That Matters

Our world is full of fault lines – growing inequality in income and opportunity; systemic racism; health and economic crises from a global pandemic; mistrust of experts; the existential threat of climate change; deep threats to employment in a digital economy with robotics on the rise.

These fundamental problems and others like them, argues Mark Carney, stem from a common crisis in values.

Drawing on the turmoil of the past decade, Mark Carney shows how ‘market economies’ have evolved into ‘market societies’ where price determines the value of everything. In this profoundly important new book, Carney argues that radical, foundational change is required if we are to build an economy and society based not on market values but on human values. A society that can work better for all.

When we think about what we, as individuals, value most highly, we might list fairness, health, the protection of our rights, economic security from poverty, the preservation of natural diversity, resources and beauty. The tragedy is, these things that we hold dearest are too often the casualties of our twenty-first century world, where they ought to be our bedrock.

In Value(s), Mark Carney offers a vision of a more humane society and a practical manifesto for getting there. How we reform our infrastructure to make things better and fairer is at the heart of every chapter, with outlines of wholly new ideas that can restructure society and enshrine our human values at the core of all that we build for our children and grandchildren.