Climate Change is an Opportunity: Why We Need Principled Capitalism

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Remarks by President Biden on Supporting Ukraine, Defending Democratic Values, and Taking Action to Address Global Challenges | Vilnius, Lithuania | The White House | July 12th, 2023.
Prologue
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Ten Learning Points about Economics
Five Axioms of Systems Thinking
Part 1: Thinking
	Preamble to Part 1
		End Notes
	Chapter 1: Be Careful What You Think Because Your Thoughts Run Your Life (Proverbs 4:23: ICB version)
		An Aesop Fable
		Parable of the Sadhu
		Life on Earth is Endangered
		We Killed Nauru’s Golden Goose
		Thinking about Ourselves—We Become What We Think
		Social Media is Changing Social Norms
		Our Personal Assumptions Help us to Live in Hope and Fulfillment
		Social Norms—Good and Bad
		Professional Assumptions Set Standards of Competence but can Generate Silos
		Be Critical of Your Own Assumptions
		Natural Law is a Good Starting Point
		Thinking about Nature
		Life is both Simple and Complex
		Thinking about Systems
		Thinking about Engineering and Economics
		Economics and Engineering are Bedfellows
		Thinking about Economics
		Beware of being Selfish—It can Lead to Greed
		Thinking about Democratic Capitalism
		Leaving Violence and Selfishness Behind
		We Must Learn to Agree to Disagree without Killing Each Other
		End Notes
	Chapter 2: Models are Cool—There is no Getting Around It: The Wise Doubt—Judge to Make the Complex Simple and not the Simple Complex
		An Aesop Fable
		Models are Cool
		A Very Brief History of Capitalism
		Some Economic Models
		Scarcity is One Important Factor
		Is There a Free Lunch?
		The Basic Four Causes of Inflation
		Types of Unemployment
		Should We Just Go Shopping?
		Seven Learning Points
		Economics is both Very Simple and Very Complex
		Three Examples of Complexity from Simplicity
		End Notes
	Chapter 3: Rational People are Irrational: Nothing is Perfect—Excellence is Purposeful Progressthrough Learning
		Nothing is Perfect
		Our Rational Economic Decisions are not Always Rational
		Science is a Form of Sense Making
		Rationality does not Preclude Irrationality
		We have no Choice but to Embrace Uncertainty—Purposeful Progress through Learning
		Coping with Uncertainty Requires us to be Aware of Our Obligations
		End Notes
Part 2: Testing
	Preamble to Part 2
		The need for Government Investment and the Deficit Myth
		End Notes
	Chapter 4: Knowing the Price but not the Value: Some People are so Poor, All they have is Money—Big Sean (American rapper)
		You Don’t Know What You have Got Until Its Gone
		Recognizing Value Over Price Requires Understanding
		The National Balance Sheets
		Statistics in Economics—Econometrics
		Economic Indicators
		End Notes
	Chapter 5: Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff: Anyone Who has Never Made a Mistake has Never Tried Anything New—Albert Einstein
		Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff
		Our Brains are Built to Learn and Adjust to Change
		Has the Capitalist System Gone too far in the Pursuit of Profit?
		The Citizen Story
		End Notes
Part 3: Acting
	Preamble to Part 3
		End Notes
	Chapter 6: Gimme Money: That’s What I Want —The Beatles
		Make Your Money Work for You
		Money and Wealth are Different
		Investing
		Fiscal and Monetary Policies are Blunt Instruments—We Need Better Automatic Stabilizers
		Banks can Change the Amount of Money in Circulation
		Boom and Bust
		Hedging Your Bets
		Debt
		Bookkeeping
		End Notes
	Chapter 7: Is the Genie Already Out of the Bottle: Emerging as an Increasing Number of Extreme Weather Events
		Crises are Opportunities
		Is the Climate Change Genie Already out of the World’s Bottle?
		What Needs to be Done to Prepare us for a Changing Climate
		What can I do?
		Does Life have a Price?
		Net Worth is a Better Metric than Net Profit
		Reliability or Responsibility and Our Obligations to the Natural World
		Better Metrics are Needed
		How to Become Resilient
		Grand Challenges
		Learning Together Requires Leadership
		The Citizen’s Story—Mobilising the People
		Change Requires Leadership
		War, Crime, and Corruption are Unsustainable for Human Flourishing
		Citizens are Together People
		End Notes
Appendix: The Flow of Money
	Everything Must Come from Somewhere and Then go Somewhere—Wynne Godley
		Stocks
		How is Money Exchanged?
		Stock and Flow Models are Processes
	End Notes
Glossary of Technical Economic Terms
Index
Praise