The Road to Wellbeing PART 1: A journey worth taking
Image by Ugne Vasyliute (Unsplash)
A few weeks after the Australian 2022 federal election, which saw a Labor government come to power for the first time in over a decade, along with the ‘teal-slide’ of Community Independents, I attended a conference of civil society CEOs in Canberra. We were there to share strategies, lessons and explore ideas for the country under this new, more progressive government and cross-bench. What was possible? What were we ready to prioritise?
On many incredibly important topics, the room was full of shared analysis and agendas: the importance of a First Nations’ Voice, ambitious climate action, ending various forms of discrimination, getting money out of politics and leaving the previous government’s hostile attitude towards charities, protest and dissent behind.
However, when it came to wider discussion of our economy, I noticed something: we didn’t have that same clear, strong, shared analysis of what needed to change. There were a few exceptions to be sure, but on the whole, if you had polled the room and asked, ‘what are the top five economic reforms to champion under a new government?’, I reckon you would have received a mix of timid and varied replies — despite the calibre and shared ideals of people in the room.
Image by Maggie Yap (Unsplash)
Some of this is the by-product of years of playing defence (‘stop the Stage 3 Tax Cuts!’), with little breathing room to imagine proactive reform, beyond begging for more crumbs from the table (‘raise the rate of JobSeeker!’). But much of it is a by-product of the air we breathe: money talks. It practically has its own language: the mind-numbing jargon economist Richard Denniss calls ‘Econobabble’ that is designed to keep mere mortals out.
Decades of neoliberalism have conditioned us all to know our place. We’ve been taught the economy (as valued and measured by Gross Domestic Product, GDP) is the most important thing, and it must be left to the experts. Advocates and others work for good things like clean energy, and to stop bad things like poverty and homelessness, and the people in charge tell us what’s doable for ‘the economy’.
“This is the real power of economics,” said Denniss when I spoke to him for the reMAKERS podcast. “It’s to tell people that their good ideas are actually stupid, and just sit up straight and listen to what your ‘betters’ tell you.”
No wonder we’re all now very adept at framing our arguments in economic terms. There’s not a worthy goal under creation that hasn’t been described or justified for its boost to economic growth or productivity. It’s also become de rigueur to explain ‘the cost to the economy’ of any number of social, physical or environmental ills — as if the real tragedy is we’re not making as much money as we possibly could.
‘Economy-first’ has become so ingrained that when we do encounter a problem like rapidly rising inflation, or a dire shortage of affordable homes, or even a truly wicked problem like a boiling planet, we are limited to ‘economy-first’ solutions. Even when they don’t work or hurt people who haven’t caused the problem in the first place.
Suggest anything too outside the box and you get slammed down with ‘how will we pay for it?’ — a question that never seems to stop politicians from purchasing new submarines, cutting taxes for the wealthy or subsidising the coal, oil and gas industry. Debt-obsession is largely unfounded in a country like Australia, but it’s made for good headlines and great scare tactics.
All of this adds up — the ‘econobabble’, the ‘economy-first’ world order, the ‘how-will-we-pay-for-it’ police…to keep us timid and believing we don’t have choices. To make us feel naive and scared, instead of angry at the decisions that are being made.
“In Norway, they tax their fossil fuel industry and give their young people free education,” Denniss says. “In Australia, we subsidise our fossil fuel industry and charge young people a lot of money to go to uni.
“That’s why politics matters. That’s why democracy matters. And neoliberalism’s greatest legacy is to convince people that we don’t have those choices. It’s to convince people that politics is boring. It’s to convince people that governments can’t help people live their lives better.”
The big recent exception to economy-first, at least within Australia, was the early response to the pandemic. It wasn’t just that a conservative national government doubled the rate of unemployment income overnight and introduced JobKeeper; it was that our entire narrative around what was important changed. ‘Lives and livelihoods’ replaced deficits and debts. Pundits began gleefully pronouncing that neoliberalism was dead and buried, as if we’d all be ‘society-first’ aficionados from now on.
At Australia reMADE we actually wrote an article at the time asking: is this a turning point, or just a hiatus from business as usual? Would the neoliberal drivers of our economic system rev back up, as soon as the crisis had passed?
From ‘The Recovery Begins Now’ - published in 2020 by Australia reMADE
Yes and no. Where we’re able to, more of us are still prioritising quality of life over long hours and crowded commutes to the office. We’ve elected new leaders with some different values and policy agendas. We’re arguing over how to best deal with problems like housing and aged care with renewed urgency. But the climate crisis is still escalating, inequality is skyrocketing and democracy is under pressure — both structurally and at flashpoints around the world.
The thing is, we know this is all connected. That we can’t keep pretending our economic system is basically okay (or that even if it could be better, there’s not much we can do to change it). We can’t keep acting like the economy operates ‘over here’ and the issues we care about are ‘over there’.
Whatever we care about, it’s time to admit that if it’s all connected, then all roads lead back to economic systems change.
So it’s back to that conference room, and the Very Big Question I couldn’t answer at the time: what does an economy for the people actually look like?
How is an economy that serves us, and the natural world on which we depend, even possible? What are the systemic changes that get us there? Where are bright spots, and where is the momentum building for wider reform?
I’ve spent this year diving deeper into these questions, because just knowing the economy is a key terrain of transformation for the world we want isn’t enough.
My goal, for those of us who care about building the country of our dreams, is to become just as fluent and confident talking about economic change as we are talking about climate change. It’s to recognise that together we really can:
Put the economy in its place, as an enabler of the world we want, not master of our fates.
Create wellbeing societies — with the public good before private profits; services we cherish, growing trust and equality between citizens, and overall peace of mind.
Become confident ambassadors, bridge-builders, practitioners and advocates for the economy we need next.
Make this transformation something we’re all part of and inspired by, rather than believing it’s impossible or must be left to a few experts.
But to do this, we also need to face what we really are up against. That there are those quite delighted with plutocracy, and quite determined to amass both money and power. And right now their values, agenda and influence go largely unchallenged in our political system.
“What the ultra-rich want is to sustain and extend the economic system that put them where they are. The more they have to lose, the more creative their strategies become.”
We have already seen plenty of examples of what Nancy Fraser calls “progressive neoliberalism”: leaders who wrap themselves in the rainbow flag, use all the inspiring and inclusive language; who are themselves or appoint more women, people of colour, or LGBTQI people in visible positions… all while leaving neoliberalism unchallenged or even doubling down on economy-first.
So if we’re only talking about who gets a seat at the table, and not challenging what’s being served, we’re missing something core. ReMAKING economics therefore is also fundamentally about strengthening democracy: recasting the role of government, repairing the social contract between citizens and those we elect; as well as rethinking the role and responsibilities of business.
Image: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona (Unsplash)
Personally, when I hear of disputes between Jeff Bezos and Amazon workers wanting to unionise for a living wage, or highly-paid Hollywood CEOs and the creatives who want fair pay and healthcare, I just scratch my head. Surely these executives have an embarrassment of riches that depend on the labour of others. Why is sharing the wealth even a fight?
Yet as greed is worshipped, the individual lauded over the collective time and time again, the social fabric begins to tear.
Extreme wealth’s sponsors in the Murdoch media and elsewhere have now perfected the art of wedging, distracting, titillating and generally keeping the rest of us busy with other things…from carbon footprints to culture wars. Polarisation as a political strategy fuels the real economic agenda — particularly in America where voting isn’t mandatory, electoral boundaries aren’t independent, politics is awash with corporate money and ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ have huge platforms.
But even in Australia, we have reason to be concerned: with a mining and resources lobby confident to topple multiple Prime Ministers, groups copying the Trump disinformation playbook to spread lies about the Voice, and a documentary film as well as civil society experts sounding the alarm about the extent to which money has infiltrated our politics.
The forces trying to consolidate money and power go to all this effort precisely because they understand something huge: that if we all paused, looked up, came together across our differences long enough to ask, ‘what do we actually want? What good things do we want to have and how can we pay for them?’ that democracy would triumph.
But in order for this to happen, those who are more motivated by justice than by money need to stop being bored and intimidated by ‘econobabble’; stop leaving ‘fixing the economy’ in the too hard basket; and get equipped.
Our current system has been described as a snake eating its own tail. Neoliberalism is giving us gated suburbs next to underpass tent cities, aggressive consumers and passive citizens, ‘pay-to-play’ corruption and captured government.
No one wants to live in places where the pursuit of money and status, or basic economic security, increasingly crowd out everything else that matters to a good life. Where our natural world burns, floods, dries up and dies around us and we grieve the very sky.
We can see what we don’t want, but as Naomi Klein has long argued, no is not enough. We need to get clear about what we do want, in order to lead from where we are. Alternatives are indeed possible, real and already at work around the world (more on this to come). We just need to get a whole lot better at talking about this stuff for a start, instead of believing that we couldn’t possibly understand it, much less reMAKE it.
Because we can, and we are.
Imagine, for a moment, a different set of drivers guiding all that we do:
From ‘The Recovery Begins Now’ - published in 2020 by Australia reMADE
It’s already happening. From towns and cities to national and transnational governments, people are excited by business models that don’t cost the earth; by communities that are keeping the wealth; by governments that are delivering for their citizens, instead of their corporate sponsors. Younger, older, richer, poorer, different races and classes and genders — this is a movement for all of us.
We don’t have to ignore, be intimidated by or be angry at the economy anymore.
We can lace up and join the journey to a different kind of economy, in service of life itself.
Read the Road to Wellbeing: Part 2
LILIAN SPENCER
Lily Spencer is the Co-Director of Australia reMADE. She believes that the secret to change is to, ‘focus your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’
