The Value of Everything

The Value of Everything

Making and taking in the global economy

"In this thought-provoking book, Mariana Mazzucato argues that it is far too easy for those operating in the market economy to get rich by extracting value from those who actually create it, not by adding it themselves. We need to return to the question: what creates value?”
Martin Wolf, Financial Times

“The Value of Everything” has been published in 21 countries: Brazil (Companhia das Letras), China (CITIC), Finland (Terra Cognita), France (Fayard), Germany (Campus), Greece (Epikentro), Italy (Laterza), Japan (Keiei Kagaku), Korea (Minumsa), Netherlands (Nieuw Amsterdam), Poland (Heterodox), Portugal (Temas e Debates), Russia (Higher School of Economics Press), Spain (Taurus), Sweden (Verbal), Taiwan (China Times), Turkey (Koc University Press), Vietnam (Tre), UK (Penguin Allen Lane) and USA (Harper Business).

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Synopsis

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today’s financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight.

In modern capitalism, value-extraction is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. From companies driven solely to maximise shareholder value to astronomically high prices of medicines justified through big pharma’s ‘value pricing’, we misidentify taking with making, and have lost sight of what value really means. Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value – what it is, why it matters to us – is simply no longer discussed.

Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism – radically to transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it – we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Which activities create it, which extract it, which destroy it?

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

Passionate, infectious, timely ... An exposé of how value extractors and rent-seekers have been masquerading as value creators in the global economy.
Prospect
She is the sort of critical friend capitalism needs.
The Times
A compelling call to reinvent value as a key concept to help us achieve the world we all want.
Nature

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