Objective Prosperity

Regardless of how you earn a living, you have likely taken time during the pandemic to take stock of where you are and where you want to be in the future. These evaluations inevitably lead to the question: “How do I get there?” The answers may seem hard to find at times, and for a good reason. Every person comes from a different background, with different skillsets, constraints, weaknesses, and strengths. Identifying ways to increase your prosperity is made even more challenging by the reality that the success of your nation’s economy can have a dramatic effect on your own success. Politicians, prickly pundits, and pompous TV personalities will promise answers for you and your nation, but consider this: Are there really one-size-fits-all answers to improve prosperity? To be clear, this is not a book of simple answers to all of the world’s problems. There are certainly enough “expert opinions” on the planet to go around. Instead, this book provides a method for you to arrive at your own answers not driven by upcoming elections and TV ratings. Throughout the text, there will be a number of explanations, recommendations, and examples to identify solutions to improve your own prosperity and to evaluate the policies that seek to improve the economy around you. If you want to get the most out of this book, consider a few ground. First, try to approach the examples with as little bias as possible. Consider that this is far easier said than done. Biases, positive or negative, are learned predispositions to the environment around us. Just like every person has different strengths and weaknesses, every person also comes with different biases. Strong beliefs about the way things should be should not stop you from being able to evaluate a situation thoroughly and carefully. This book provides a behavioral-economics-based (data-based) view of prosperity that avoids the pitfalls of using preformed opinions and subsequent biases. In short, drop the dogma and dig into the data! Second, this book will walk you through the opinions of multiple sources. Evaluation of the authoritative opinions of others allows you access to valuable information you may not otherwise consider. However, like every person, these sources will frequently have a slant to them (politically or otherwise), and yes, some may even include false or misinterpreted information! To help maintain objectivity, you should consider sources from different perspectives, not just those you are most comfortable with. The frequent quotes and references in the text provide further resources, but also highlight the importance of evaluating expert opinions in drawing conclusions for yourself. In addition to the above, each chapter includes a few “Keys to Prosperity.” These examples, quotes, and discussions are provided as practical insights from the authors. Consider these a base point to work from as you evaluate your own situation, the situation of those around you, the current state of your nation’s economy, and how you might take action to improve your prosperity in light of these things!

Regardless of how you earn a living, you have likely taken time during the pandemic to take stock of where you are and where you want to be in the future. These evaluations inevitably lead to the question: “How do I get there?” The answers may seem hard to find at times, and for a good reason. Every person comes from a different background, with different skillsets, constraints, weaknesses, and strengths. Identifying ways to increase your prosperity is made even more challenging by the reality that the success of your nation’s economy can have a dramatic effect on your own success. Politicians, prickly pundits, and pompous TV personalities will promise answers for you and your nation, but consider this: Are there really one-size-fits-all answers to improve prosperity? To be clear, this is not a book of simple answers to all of the world’s problems. There are certainly enough “expert opinions” on the planet to go around. Instead, this book provides a method for you to arrive at your own answers not driven by upcoming elections and TV ratings. Throughout the text, there will be a number of explanations, recommendations, and examples to identify solutions to improve your own prosperity and to evaluate the policies that seek to improve the economy around you. If you want to get the most out of this book, consider a few ground. First, try to approach the examples with as little bias as possible. Consider that this is far easier said than done. Biases, positive or negative, are learned predispositions to the environment around us. Just like every person has different strengths and weaknesses, every person also comes with different biases. Strong beliefs about the way things should be should not stop you from being able to evaluate a situation thoroughly and carefully. This book provides a behavioral-economics-based (data-based) view of prosperity that avoids the pitfalls of using preformed opinions and subsequent biases. In short, drop the dogma and dig into the data! Second, this book will walk you through the opinions of multiple sources. Evaluation of the authoritative opinions of others allows you access to valuable information you may not otherwise consider. However, like every person, these sources will frequently have a slant to them (politically or otherwise), and yes, some may even include false or misinterpreted information! To help maintain objectivity, you should consider sources from different perspectives, not just those you are most comfortable with. The frequent quotes and references in the text provide further resources, but also highlight the importance of evaluating expert opinions in drawing conclusions for yourself. In addition to the above, each chapter includes a few “Keys to Prosperity.” These examples, quotes, and discussions are provided as practical insights from the authors. Consider these a base point to work from as you evaluate your own situation, the situation of those around you, the current state of your nation’s economy, and how you might take action to improve your prosperity in light of these things!

Our narratives of postwar Japan have long been cast in terms almost synonymous with the story of rapid economic growth. Scott O’Bryan reinterprets this seemingly familiar history through an innovative exploration, not of the anatomy of growth itself, but of the history of growth as a set of discourses by which Japanese "growth performance" as "economic miracle" came to be articulated. The premise of his work is simple: To our understandings of the material changes that took place in Japan during the second half of the twentieth century we must also add perspectives that account for growth as a new idea around the world, one that emerged alongside rapid economic expansion in postwar Japan and underwrote the modes by which it was imagined, forecast, pursued, and regulated. In an accessible, lively style, O’Bryan traces the history of growth as an object of social scientific knowledge and as a new analytical paradigm that came to govern the terms by which Japanese understood their national purposes and imagined a newly materialist vision of social and individual prosperity. Several intersecting obsessions worked together after the war to create an agenda of social reform through rapid macroeconomic increase. Epistemological developments within social science provided the conceptual instruments by which technocrats gave birth to a shared lexicon of growth. Meanwhile, reformers combined prewar Marxist critiques with new modes of macroeconomic understanding to mobilize long-standing fears of overpopulation and "backwardness" and argue for a growthist vision of national reformation. O’Bryan also presents surprising accounts of the key role played by the ideal of full employment in national conceptions of recovery and of a new valorization of consumption in the postwar world that was taking shape. Both of these, he argues, formed critical components in a constellation of ideas that even in the context of relative poverty and uncertainty coalesced into a powerful vision of a materially prosperous future. Even as Japan became the premier icon of the growthist ideal, neither the faith in rapid growth as a prescription for national reform nor the ascendancy of social scientific epistemologies that provided its technical support was unique to Japanese experience. The Growth Idea thus helps to historicize a concept of never-ending growth that continues to undergird our most basic beliefs about the success of nations and the operations of the global economy. It is a particularly timely contribution given current imperatives to reconceive ideas of purpose and prosperity in an age of resource depletion and global warming.

Society today faces a difficult contradiction: we know exactly how the physical limits of our planet are being reached and exactly why we cannot go on as we have before – and yet, collectively, we seem unable to reach crucial decisions for our future in a timely way. This book argues that our definition of prosperity, which we have long assimilated with the idea of material wealth, may be preventing us from imagining a future that meets essential human aspirations without straining our planet to the breaking point. In other words, redefining prosperity is a necessary and urgent task. This book is the fruit of a long debate among 15 scholars from diverse fields who worked together to bring the depth and nuance of their respective fields to questions that affect us all. The result is a rich, transdisciplinary work that illuminates the philosophical and historical origins of our current definition of prosperity; identifies the complex processes that gave rise to the problems we face today; elucidates the ways in which our contemporary environmental, social, nutritional, economic, political, and cultural crises are interconnected; and explores why a half-century of economic growth has neither increased life satisfaction in the West nor vanquished world poverty. Approaching these broad-ranging questions from the specific standpoints of their disciplines, each of the authors offers thoughts for the future, considering possible escape routes and proposing changes to the way we live, behave, and organise society and public action – changes that actually respond, in an equitable way, to our deepest aspirations. Ultimately, in laying the groundwork for a public debate on this subject, this book poses a question to its readers: what is your definition of prosperity, and what can be done to promote it?

This book explains China's new common prosperity policies—their significance, connotations, and goals—and explains the economic logic behind these often misunderstood policies. First, the authors explain the theory behind common prosperity. Why is the Chinese government changing its economic policies now, and what is its objectives and metrics? The authors then go on to explain how the new policies are being designed, what the test cases are across the country, and how the government, businesses, families, and individuals are working together to promote common prosperity. An important book that will help scholars around the world understand China's new economic bottom line. This book will be of interest to economists, sociologists, and sinologists.

What is business for? Day one of a business course will tell you: it is to maximise shareholder profit. This single idea pervades all our thinking and teaching about business around the world but it is fundamentally wrong, Colin Mayer argues. It has had disastrous and damaging consequences for our economies, environment, politics, and societies. In this urgent call for reform, Prosperity challenges the fundamentals of business thinking. It sets out a comprehensive new agenda for establishing the corporation as a unique and powerful force for promoting economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense - for customers and communities, today and in the future. First Professor and former Dean of the Säid Business School in Oxford, Mayer is a leading figure in the global discussion about the purpose and role of the corporation. In Prosperity, he presents a radical and carefully considered prescription for corporations, their ownership, governance, finance, and regulation. Drawing together insights from business, law, economics, science, philosophy, and history, he shows how the corporation can realize its full potential to contribute to economic and social wellbeing of the many, not just the few. Prosperity tells us not only how to create and run successful businesses but also how policy can get us there and fix our broken system.

Tried-and-tested approach for transforming unsustainable economies that are based on natural resource extraction to create long-term prosperity The process focuses on regional economies. Designing Sustainable Prosperity (DSP) is a step by step blueprint for transforming economies from being dependent on short term natural resource extraction into long-term sustainable prosperity. The outcome is the creation of sustainable, circular economies that prioritise waste reduction and use recycling and renewable resources to actively implement climate change solutions and where appropriate developing technical know-how. A key feature of the process is collaboration between local people, investors, appropriate experts, government & academics. The DSP method outlines seven steps in creating a plan for long-term sustainable regional development, illustrated by several case studies from North and South America which identified potential economic transformations. Designing Sustainable Prosperity explores topics such as: How to determine if and when a region is ready for DSP, by analyzing factors such as climate, geology, natural resources and human potential Case studies highlighting different aspects of the DSP approach, and how to achieve true prosperity which is beyond short-term financial performance "Hard" resources and industries that can fuel a circular economy, such as metals/mining, water/energy, value added food products and other innovative enterprises "Soft" enabling factors such as workforce availability, educational systems, and socio-economic conditions and how to develop these factors in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) DSP shows how to align economic goals with sustainable development including all the UNSDGs. Designing Sustainable Prosperity is an essential and timely resource for professionals and organizations aiming to develop regions sustainably.

Sustainability Ethics is a comprehensive exploration of the ethical dimensions of sustainability. The book delves into the complex relationships between ethics and sustainable development, examining the role of ethics in promoting a better world for all. The lens of sustainability ethics considers the interdependence of environmental, social, and economic factors. This provides a holistic understanding of the subject matter. Issues covered include the interconnectedness of people's rights, planetary wellbeing, prosperity, responsibility, and service to future generations; protecting sustainable human security, preserving biodiversity and nature rights; welcoming forced migrants and climate refugees, promoting labor and children's rights, advocating for human and indigenous rights, and fostering the inclusion of women and LGBTQI+ rights. The author concludes by synthesizing the various themes, and offers insights for ethical discernments and sustainable ethical decision making, and for building a better world for everyone. Throughout the book, readers will find references to relevant literature, providing a solid foundation for further exploration of sustainability ethics. The audience for this important book includes academics, researchers, students, policymakers, and practitioners in the fields of sustainability, environmental ethics, and social justice, and for anyone interested in understanding the ethical dimensions of sustainability, and exploring practical solutions to create a more just, inclusive, and sustainable world.