Economy

Introduction

“Economy” is generally thought of as the range of formal monetary transactions in a local, national, or international financial system. But as a global issue, economy can be considered in a much larger sense.

The word itself comes from the Greek “oikonomia,” meaning management of a household. In that context, economy would include not only financial exchanges, but also a range of social and environmental transactions people undertake to make a living. These “external” transactions may include industrial output and energy consumption, as well as the unpaid work of women and children hauling water or fuel-wood, the burning of rainforest to clear land on which to grow food for one’s family, drug-trafficking and other crime, traditional barter, and cooperative labor exchange.

There are many ways we could restructure our current economic models that might better serve people and the environment. For example, we can restructure our current tax system and we can use new models to indicate a community’s health and well-being that take into account external factors in addition to the GNP. These measures would provide a better indication of the true costs and progress of our actions and would help to influence them.

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