Sarah Wong

Decline of communities and local economies : globalization leads to the fragmentation and hollowing out of local economies, and the urban and rural communities they support, as multinational corporations move operations around the planet in order to increase profit margins and as they make it increasingly difficult for locally owned business to... See more

map complex wicked problems and their countless interrelated and interdependent issues within 5 archetypal areas:

1) infrastructural/science/technology issues; 2) political/legal issues; 3) social; 4) business/ economic; 5) environmental. And, these systems problems are permeated by social and cultural norms, practices, beliefs, assumptions,... See more

“We will never win against extractive capitalism if it’s a matter of power versus power,” Kelly writes. “The real power we the people possess – the ultimate power – is legitimacy. When we withdraw legitimacy, we fatally weaken the system, turning its cultural foundation to sand.”

In the 1950s, U.S. GDP was about equal to the value of assets. Today assets are valued at five times GDP. To keep those assets growing, more and more wealth is transferred upwards to the top 1 percent.

In current economic data, the growing wealth and income of the FIRE sector are added to GDP as economic growth, even though they in fact take the form of a steepening liability for households and businesses in the rest of the economy, leaving less income for consumption or productive investment. “This financialized overhead is not real growth,”... See more

asset-price gains in the FIRE sector – Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate – far outpaced the gains (or shrinkage) in reported GDP.

Financialization – the diversion of financial flows away from production and consumption towards asset markets in pursuit of capital gains