Featured Article
How to Create a Real Ownership Society
Last year, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the “ownership society” the theme for his second term, he was doing more than throwing up a polemical smokescreen for his policies of providing corporate executives and Wall-Street investors with everything they could possibly want. He was also introducing a radical vision for the entire world.
Through trade agreements and diplomatic and military muscle, the president and his cohorts are intent on re-engineering the world for the convenience of corporations. They want to eliminate every centre of power, every vestige of tradition or social values, that stands in the way. With the exception of a few nods in the direction of family and religion, the market will be the engine driving every aspect of modern life—every moment of time and every inch of space. The impact of this goes far beyond American national politics. Through leading international institutions such as the U.N., World Bank and World Trade Organization, Bush’s ideas about an ownership society are setting an agenda that will transform the world into a playground for multinational corporations.
Commons
Pre-Distributive Economics and Sufficiency for the Long Haul
Part I: Inequality, The Iatrogenic Spiral, and Systemic Diminishing Returns The problem is that the explosive growth of the global economy has not brought a corresponding increase in global well … More
The Missing Sector
Enlarging Our Sense of “the Economy”
Meet Us at the Zocalo
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Economic Indicators
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Looking Backward: Economics and the Cult of Yesterday
GDP and productivity don’t measure what’s really going on in the economy—or in people’s lives. Jonathan Rowe on measuring what matters.
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The Gross Domestic Product
Testimony of Jonathan Rowe Co-director of the West Marin Commons Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade and Tourism March 12, 2008 … More
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Is Happiness a Commons?
Gunnar Myrdal, the late Swedish economist, once noted the strange tendency of his profession to barricade itself against human reality. In true sciences, such as biochemistry and physics, hypotheses are … More
Economics
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Pre-Distributive Economics and Sufficiency for the Long Haul
Part I: Inequality, The Iatrogenic Spiral, and Systemic Diminishing Returns The problem is that the explosive growth of the global economy has not brought a corresponding increase in global well … More
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The Missing Sector
Enlarging Our Sense of “the Economy”
-
Looking Backward: Economics and the Cult of Yesterday
GDP and productivity don’t measure what’s really going on in the economy—or in people’s lives. Jonathan Rowe on measuring what matters.
About
Jonathan Rowe was a writer who wrote about the commons, diseconomy, economics, economic indicators, corporations, and many other subjects.
Jonathan was an editor at the Washington Monthly magazine and a staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor. He contributed to Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, American Prospect, Adbusters, and a host of other publications.