1 Here's the dirty secret:  In the neoliberal era, today, economists work only for big corporations and billionaires.  Your comment?

 

2 In the last 30 years, in the USA alone, the top one percent has grown 21 trillion dollars richer while the bottom 50 percent have grown 900 billion dollars poorer, a pattern of widening inequality that has largely repeated itself across the world.  Do you see this pattern in your country?

 

3 Neoliberal economists continue to warn that the only reasonable response to the painful dislocations of austerity and globalization is even more austerity and globalization.  This can be seen in the EU. Bailouts = greater debt and no spending to stimulate the economies creating debt slave countries.  Your comment?
 

4 Hanauer says traditional economic theory is bad.  it isn't capital that creates economic growth, it's people; and it isn't self-interest that promotes the public good, it's reciprocity; and it isn't competition that produces our prosperity, it's cooperation.  Sound good? 

 

5 Flawed neoliberal economic assumption number one is that the market is an efficient equilibrium system, which basically means that if one thing in the economy, like wages, goes up, another thing in the economy, like jobs, must go down.  Have you heard about this equilibrium system?

 

6 The second flawed assumption is that the price of something is always equal to its value, which basically means that if you earn 50,000 dollars a year and I earn 50 million dollars a year, that's because I produce a thousand times as much value as you. This is nonsense.  Do you know that CEO pay has increased by 500% in the last 30 years while workers wages have stayed the same?

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/50-years-of-us-wages-in-one-chart/

 

7 Hanauer says that neoliberal economic theory became essentially a protection racket for the rich. What do you think?

 

8 The third assumption, is a behavioral model that describes human beings as something called "homo economicus," which basically means that we are all perfectly selfish, perfectly rational and relentlessly self-maximizing.  This way of thinking which has produced economic policies which have enabled the top one percent to grab virtually all of the benefits of growth over the last 40 years and makes it seem normal and natural.  Your comment?

9 Hanauer proposes a new economics says:  our problems and solutions become more complex, and this increasing technical complexity requires ever higher levels of social and economic cooperation in order to produce the more highly specialized products that define a modern economy. What do you think this means, and how could it work?

 

10 The old neoliberal economics is correct that competition plays a crucial role in how markets work, but what it fails to see is that it is largely a competition between highly cooperative groups.   Yes, it seems that we only think about competition.  Do you agree?

 

11 The market is the greatest social technology ever invented for solving human problems, but unconstrained by social norms or democratic regulation, markets inevitably create more problems than they solve.  Have you ever considered this?  Do you agree?

12 Hanauer asserts that inclusion creates economic growth.  Do you agree?

 

13 Hanauer redefines  the purpose of the corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders: customers, workers, community and shareholders alike.  How does that sound to you?

 

14 Rule four: greed is not good. Being rapacious doesn't make you a capitalist, it makes you a sociopath.  I've read that 21% of CEOs are sociopaths. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-psychopaths-australian-study-finds/

 

15 And fifth and finally, unlike the laws of physics, the laws of economics are a choice. Now, neoliberal economic theory has sold itself to you as unchangeable natural law, when in fact it's social norms and constructed narratives based on pseudoscience. If we truly want a more equitable, more prosperous and more sustainable economy, if we want high-functioning democracies and civil society, we must have a new economics.  Do you agree?