Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Help build a world based on flourishing well-being for both the human family and nature
In the face of political, financial, and environmental upheaval, it's difficult to slow down and build lives of mindfulness and joy. These things are within reach, but how can we go about creating a new world, using common-sense economics?
In An Economy of Well-being, author Mark Anielski presents a practical guide for building a new economy of well-being to help communities and nations become more flourishing and happier places to live. In this follow-up to his best-selling The Economics of Happiness, Anielski addresses key questions including:
- How can our personal and family assets be strengthened for a more fulfilling life of meaning and purpose?
- How can neighborhoods and cities become flourishing economies of well-being by making the best of abundant community assets?
- how can organizations, communities and financial institutions measure, manage and finance assets to achieve high levels of well-being?
An Economy of Well-being responds to a common yearning for common-sense tools to orient our lives, our businesses, and our communities towards well-being. This is ideal reading for anyone who wishes to contribute to building happier, more mindful communities, and ultimately lives of joy and meaning.
"Economists often admit the many shortcomings of GDP, but then say, however it is the best numerical proxy we have for unmeasurable welfare. Anielski demonstrates that there are other better proxies, not to mention direct experience, common observation, and traditional wisdom. This is a book to be taken seriously."
— Herman Daly, Emeritus Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland
"It's time we measured how organizations in all sectors are contributing to the five capitals that matter. Mark shows how."
— Bob Willard, author, The Sustainability Advantage
"One powerful answer to the struggling financial world around us. It very thoughtfully and clearly identifies how our existing debt and wealth measurement systems no longer serve our communities and our ability to live together in a just and balanced society. This is a great book, gracefully written, founded on doable optimism."
— p>
-Peter Block, author, Flawless Consulting and co-author, The Abundant Community
"Mark has been implementing happiness-creating economic system redesigns with towns, provinces, tribes, and nations. Mark has identified the major aspects of the current system that we must change to create a stable and happy society and what to do instead."
— Gifford Pinchot III, author, Intrapreneuring and President Emeritus and Co-founder of the world's first school with an MBA of Sustainable Business
"Mark Anielski is one of those rare human beings who is equally at home with his First Nation peoples of North America as he is with European Canadians, with the indigenous people of Bhutan, as he is with the Chinese and the Tahitians. As such his work is uniquely all encompassing, a gift to those many worlds of which he is able to take integral account."
— Ronnie Lessem, Co-Founder, Trans4m Centre for Integral Development, and Professor of Management, Da Vinci Institute
"Mark Anielski has written a book that will, if attention is paid, open a new era in economics that will emancipate us from the lose-lose calculus of our current reasoning. His argument is compelling, rooted as it is in lived social reality."
— Walter Brueggemann, Professor of Theology, Columbia Theological Seminary
"You hold in your hand a rare synthesis between the deep understanding of the workings of our economy and a pragmatic methodology of implementation and integration towards a systemic well-being economy."
— p>
-Robert Dellner, Head of Impact Strategy at Lintel Capital, Co-Founder of the Centre for Integral Finance Economics (CIFE)
"A 21st century manifesto that addresses the problem of economic inequality. Those who turn to Anielski will find the rationale for demanding change in the relationship between government and its citizens back to its original intent—government that utilizes its economic tools to build an economy of well-being for its citizens."
— Luke Eckblad, Investment Banker, Boustead Institute
"This book redefines what we mean by "The Wealth of Nations." It is a wonderful guide for people who want to take a path away from the monetization of everyday life."
— -John McKnight, co-author, The Abundant Community and author, The Careless Society
"Anielski has been a leading innovator on the cutting edge of well-being studies for three decades. I have been recommending Mark's work to people for decades, and now have another book to suggest."
— Marilyn Waring, Professor, Auckland University and author, If Women Counted
"Mark Anielski calls us to radically realign our economics with our anthropology, gives us a toolkit and the metrics to do so, and demonstrates different possible outcomes through concrete case studies."
— Seng-Kong Tan, Biblical Graduate School of Theology, Singapore
"Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, would have applauded Mark Anielski for writing this book. Building a world of hope, where neighbours help neighbours is to look beyond monetary profit."
— Alfred Nikolai, CEO of Habitat for Humanity, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
"Like a pamphleteer of old, Anielski pushes into your hands a challenge to the existing system with a bold proposal of how it can be changed."
— Ian Glassford, Chief Financial Officer, Servus Credit Union
Mark Anielski is President and Chief Well-being Officer at Anielski Management Inc. He consults and speaks internationally on merging and measuring happiness, well-being and economics, including at Harvard, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the University of Texas in El Paso, the Harbin Institute of Technology in China, Shanghai Normal University, University of Alberta, and the School of Business in Innsbruck, Austria. He has served as an economic advisor to China and Bhutan in their efforts to adopt new measures of well-being and happiness. He is the author of the award-winning The Economics of Happiness. He lives in Alberta, Canada with his family.
List of Figures
Foreword
Introduction: A New Economic Paradigm Based on Well-Being
1. Reclaiming Economics for Happiness
Reclaiming the Language of Economics
Happiness: Well-Being of Spirit
A New Index of Well-Being
Measuring Well-Being Objectively
Alberta's Economic Growth, Disease and Income Inequality
Exposing the Myth of Productivity
Measuring Happiness is All the Rage
People Prefer Happiness Over Wealth
Who Are the Happiest Canadians of All?
Happiness as the Ultimate Objective of Economic Development
From Financial Capitalism to Well-Being
Drowning in Debt
The Inconvenient Truth: How the Hidden Costs of Debt are Killing American Happiness
The Path Ahead
2. A Roadmap to Well-Being
Can Well-Being Be Measured?
The Science of Well-Being: What We Measure Affects What We Do
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and an Indigenous Model of Well-Being
The Util: Measuring Real Utility
Without Virtue, Happiness Cannot Be
The Five Capital Assets of Well-Being
Well-Being Accounts
The Five-Assets Sustainable Livelihood Model for Measuring Assets
The Well-Being Economy and UN Sustainable Development Goals
Well-Being-Based Governments
3. Bhutan, Edmonton and Alberta: Models of Well-Being Economics
Back to Edmonton: The City that Could
The Promise of Alberta
Alberta's Preliminary Asset Accounts
4. The Well-Being Community
The Edmonton Social Health Index
Measuring the Well-Being of Valleyview, Alberta
Edmonton's Well-Being Index and Measuring the Well-Being Return on Taxes
Community Asset and Well-Being-Impact-Based Governance
Well-Being-Based Governance and Budgeting
Designing a New Economy of Well-Being for Tahiti (French Polynesia)
5. Well-Being for First Nations
Measuring What Matters to Community Well-Being
Why a Community Asset Assessment?
Natural Capital Assessment
The Well-Being Community Planning Process
Benefits of a Well-Being-Based Approach to Community Development
6. The Well-Being Workplace
Well-Being at Work
Businesses That Operate on Well-Being Principles
The Well-Being Corporation
Doing Well By Doing Good: The Flourishing Well-Being Enterprise
Well-Being: The Best Interest of Business
A Corporate Culture of Well-Being
Well-Being By Design
7. Accounting for Enterprise Well-Being
The Origins of Auditing
Toward Quality-of-Life Auditing and Accounting
Well-Being Inventory
Five Assets of Enterprise Well-Being
Measuring Workplace Well-Being
Enterprise Well-Being Index
True Pricing: Full-Cost Accounting
Making the Business Case of Well-Being
Asset Valuation and Verification with Well-Being in Mind
8. Well-Being Impact Investing
Virtuous Financial Leadership
Lintel Capital LLC: Investment for Good
Well-Being Impact Investment Funds
And the Times, They are a-Changin'
9. The Community Asset Well-Being Fund
Eliminating Poverty in Cincinnati within a Generation
10. Banking on Well-Being
All Roads Lead to London: The Queen's Banker's Wife
Freeing Economies of the Burden of Interest from Debt-Based Money
A Public Bank for Well-Being
What is a Public Bank and Could It be Structured to support the Economy of Well-being?
The Bank of North Dakota and ATB (Alberta Treasury Branch): The Most Important Public Banks in North America
Alberta Treasury Branch: North America's Best Kept Secret
Why Could ATB Financial Become the Model for Public Well-Being Banks Across North America?
The Future of Money: Well-Being Currency
11. Personal Well-Being
Well-Being is a Choice
Money, Your Life and Happiness
Epilogue
Index
About the Author
About New Society Publishers