Modern economies reward activities that extract value rather than
create it. This must change to ensure a capitalism that works for us
all.
Shortlisted for the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
A scathing indictment of our current global financial system, The Value
of Everything rigorously scrutinizes the way in which economic value
has been accounted and reveals how economic theory has failed to clearly
delineate the difference between value creation and value extraction.
Mariana Mazzucato argues that the increasingly blurry distinction
between the two categories has allowed certain actors in the economy to
portray themselves as value creators, while in reality they are just
moving around existing value or, even worse, destroying it.
The book uses case studies-from Silicon Valley to the financial sector
to big pharma-to show how the foggy notions of value create confusion
between rents and profits, reward extractors and creators, and distort
the measurements of growth and GDP. In the process, innovation suffers
and inequality rises.
The lesson here is urgent and sobering: to rescue our economy from the
next inevitable crisis and to foster long-term economic growth, we will
need to rethink capitalism, rethink the role of public policy and the
importance of the public sector, and redefine how we measure value in
our society.
