Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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economic thinking and taxation systems to fit with nature.
We also need many centres of decision­making so that
no one individual or group becomes too powerful or is
overburdened with functions.
The fact that the money supply must keep on growing
leads in turn to a growth imperative for the GDP. So it is
also necessary to change the way we measure the success
of our economy, as the GDP or Gross Domestic Product is
fundamentally flawed as a yardstick. Although one of its
main architects, Simon Kuznets, warned of it limitations
sixty years ago, the GDP is still the chief economic
measure of wellbeing and politicians still call for
‘economic growth’. What needs comprehension now, and
what many will be surprised to learn is that the origin of
the growth imperative lies in the way money is created as
interest­bearing debt.
We can’t go on growing the economy forever. It
damages our beautiful planet as one of its beings we are
called to live in harmony with other creatures. However,