Building A Healthy Economy From The Bottom Up

The global economy has witnessed important changes in recent years. In the United States, enterprising communities have transitioned from tobacco farming to growing organic produce, from extractive fishing to vertical farming, from nonrenewable energy consumption to the implementation of solar cooperatives—and have transformed from impoverished neighborhoods into green development zones. Yet these promising achievements remain a small part of the total economy and are largely ignored by policy makers, pundits, and economists. In Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up: Harnessing Real World Experience for Transformative Change, Anthony Flaccavento introduces readers to the innovators who are creating thriving, locally based economies and provides a road map for others who are interested in doing the same. He demonstrates that, despite the success of local initiatives like farmers' markets and clean energy cooperatives, true and lasting change of this type stalls without the appropriate discussion and implementation of public policies that define their lasting impact. He shows how active citizens can spur essential changes, generate community capital, increase civic dialogue, and foster sustainability efforts. Flaccavento skillfully combines economic analysis and public policy recommendations with practical solutions. His call to collective action will appeal to scholars, entrepreneurs, policymakers, community activists, environmentalists, and all citizens passionate about the health of their communities.

As a backdrop of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2016-2030), the United Nations pointed out that more than 6 million children still died before the age of five by 2015. At least 1.8 billion people across the world still consumed fecally contaminated drinking water and 2.4 million lacked access to basic sanitation services such as toilets or latrines, while nearly 1,000 children died every day of preventable water and sanitation-related diarrhoeal diseases. Rural areas fare far worse: Children in rural areas are about 1.7 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday as those in urban areas. About 16 per cent of the rural population do not use improved drinking water sources, compared to 4 per cent of the urban population. About 50 per cent of people living in rural areas lack improved sanitation facilities, compared to only 18 per cent of people in urban areas. Far too many one-off rural on-site public health knowledge transfer projects fail to deliver results in the long run, and the knowledge in question cannot be retained in the rural communities after the NGO and development workers are gone. In addition to external constraints, this is often due to a lack of theoretical understanding among NGO practitioners and volunteers and basis for evaluation and improvement of health relief programmes. Based on public health theories and illustrated by relevant examples, this book introduces how health, emergency and disaster preparedness education programmes could be organised in remote rural Asia, which could become useful reference materials for organisers and volunteers of rural development projects. This book is an introductory to intermediate level textbook and reference book for healthcare professionals, fieldworkers, volunteers and students who are interested in promoting health and emergency and disaster risk reduction. The book is developed from the experience and insights gained from the long-established CCOUC Ethnic Minority Health Project in China. It also incorporates new lessons from CCOUC's recent projects in Asia countries like Bhutan, Nepal and Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

How we can achieve healthy growth--more regenerative than destructive, restoring equity rather than exacerbating inequalities. In Tomorrow's Economy, Per Espen Stoknes reframes the hot-button issue of economic growth. Going beyond the usual dialectic of pro-growth versus anti-growth, Stoknes calls for healthy growth. Healthy economic growth is more regenerative than destructive, repairs problems rather than greenwashing them, and restores equity rather than exacerbating global inequalities. Stoknes--a psychologist, economist, climate strategy researcher, and green-tech entrepreneur--argues that we have the tools to achieve healthy growth, but our success depends on transformations in government practices and individual behavior. Stoknes provides a compass to guide us toward the mindset, mechanisms, and possibilities of healthy growth.

Bestselling author John R. Talbott, who predicted the housing and mortgage crisis, pictures in Obamanomics--written well in advance of the historic 2008 elections--a Barack Obama presidency based on justice and cooperation—principles that have not held sway in Washington, DC, for quite some time. Talbott's powerful grasp of finance allows him to connect the issue of financial inequality in America with our need as a people to embrace change. Obama has shown he knows that divisions among races, religions, and political views have prevented Americans from coming together to solve the most important problems of our age. Obamanomics, infused with Obama's speeches, campaign policy statements, and other writings, describes a government acting according to democratic principles to enact lobbying reform, get our economy moving again, fix our healthcare system, slow global warming, prevent unnecessary wars, improve education, address the aging of our population, find alternative energy sources, and bring about housing, mortgage, and banking reform.

A profound look at the crisis of work and the collapse of the safety net, and a vision for a better way forward, rooted in America’s cooperative spirit, from the founder of the Freelancers Union “Read this essential book to see how we can and must build the future.”—Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin Mutualism: It’s not capitalism and it’s not socialism. It’s the future. The twentieth century changed every facet of life for American workers: how much they could expect to earn and what they had the right to demand. But by 2027, a majority of Americans—from low-wage service workers to white-collar professionals—won’t be traditional employees. Benefits like paid sick leave, pensions, 401(k)s, disability insurance, and health care will be nearly extinct. To meet the needs of this new generation of workers, the government has done almost nothing. In this book, labor lawyer, former chair of the board of the New York Federal Reserve, and MacArthur “genius” Sara Horowitz brings us a solution to the current crisis of work that’s rooted in the best of American traditions, which she calls mutualism. Horowitz shows how the future of our economic safety net rests on this approach and demonstrates how mutualist organizations have helped us solve common problems in the past and are now quietly driving rural and urban economies alike all over the world, inspired not by for-profit corporations but by labor unions and trade associations, religious organizations and mutual aid societies, and vital social movements from women’s suffrage to civil rights. Mutualism is for anyone who feels that the system is not working for them, and is looking for a new way to build collaboratively, create the new American social contract, and prosper in the twenty-first century.

Critical Perspectives on International Political Economy considers and revises the progress of critical thinking within IPE and engages with issues such as finance, the practices of health and work, the relevance of new social movements and the political economy of the Internet. In so doing it provides a possible map for the next stage of critical development in the study of International Political Economy.

Creating Good Work is a practical guide book, that recounts the stories of some of the most successful social entrepreneurial programs operating today, with real life examples of and how they overcame both physical and societal barriers to create a lasting impact on the world they encounter.