The Cost of Everything. Who Creates and Who Gets in the Global Economy. Mariana Mazzucato

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we determine the value of what is produced? At the heart of the current financial and economic crisis is a problem that is hiding in plain sight.

In modern capitalism, the extraction of value is rewarded more than its creation. We mistakenly equate acquisition with creation and lose sight of what value really means. Once a central element of economic thought, the concept of value is simply no longer discussed.

However, Mariana Mazzucato argues, if we are to reform capitalism—to radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue to feed it—we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. What activities create it, which extract it, and which destroy it?

The answers to these questions are key if we are to replace the current parasitic system with a type of capitalism that is more sustainable, more symbiotic—one that works for all of us. This book reignites a long-needed debate about what kind of world we really want to live in.