Amanda Janoo: A Wellbeing Revolution

Amanda Janoo, Economics and Policy Lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, looks at how we can reshape economic models to align with both ecological preservation and human flourishing.

Amanda takes us on a journey through the wellbeing economy movement, scrutinising how the conventional emphasis on growth and wealth maximisation has exacerbated crises like climate change, inequality, and mental health issues. She dissects the impact of the current failing economic and financial systems on the environment and human lives, highlighting the urgent need for a paradigm shift towards a wellbeing-oriented economy.

Drawing parallels between Wales and Canada’s alternative national performance frameworks to GDP, Amanda underscores the need to integrate social and ecological wellbeing into decision-making processes. She champions participatory democracy, citing Spain’s citizens’ assembly on climate as an empowering example.

Voiceover 1:
For the benefit of ordinary people. I believe the economy should be much more tailored to individual needs and community services. People shouldn’t be struggling to pay their bills, choosing between heating the homes or eating for a week. 

Voiceover 2:
Starting that with the taxes, like the way that they are taking taxes, I think is not fair. I think is not based on your income and how much you spend because, for example, in my case, I feel like they take a lot of taxes because at the end of the month, after paying rent and food and transport and all of these, I don’t have enough like I have enough to survive, but I don’t have enough to live. 

Voiceover 3:
Stop rich people being in charge of the government. Yeah, stopping rich people being in charge of the government would improve our economic system. People who have actually grown up and been educated in a public system where they have experienced real world problems.

Carl Schlyter:
Welcome back to SystemShift. Many ordinary people feel overwhelmed by the many crises they face, including a cost-of-living crisis that has many of us struggling with our immediate needs. On top of this, we have the existential threats such as war, climate change and loss of biodiversity. So many people are asking themselves how can we reshape the economy to align with human flourishing within planetary boundaries? To take a look at how the economy should work for the benefit of the many rather than the few. I’m joined by Amanda Janoo, an economic policy expert and a passionate advocate for transformative economic systems and sustainability. Amanda worked for the United Nations and the African Development Bank as an industrial policy and structural transformation expert. She’s now economics and policy lead at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, which is not just working towards a different economic system, but it’s looking to shift how we live together so that we become caretakers and creators of flourishing world. Amanda is known for her advocacy work for Indigenous wisdom, participatory processes, and redefining the purpose of economic structures. In this episode, Amanda takes us on the journey through the wellbeing economy movement, challenging the conventional emphasis on growth and the maximisation of wealth. She reframes the economy as a tool to serve society and the planet and underscores the need to integrate social and ecological well-being into decision making processes. Join us on this enlightening journey to a more holistic and thriving economic future, a future that champions human prosperity while safeguarding the environment for generations to come. So, without further ado, very welcome Amanda Janoo.

Amanda Janoo:
Thank you so much, so great to be here Carl.

Carl Schlyter:
It’s really nice to have you here and let’s hope we can spread the well-being of the wellbeing economy to our listeners today.

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely.

Carl Schlyter:
So, what is wellbeing economy for you? 

Amanda Janoo:
A wellbeing economy is an economy that supports the thriving and wellbeing of all life. And I think to begin with, and never we want to talk about the economy. I think it’s important to ask what is the economy, first of all, and the way I like to describe it is as the way that we produce and provide for one another. It’s just the system and interaction between people and our natural environment and the ways in which we improve our collective quality of life. And so ultimately, it’s success should be evaluated by whether or not we are thriving as a society and as an ecosystem. But the reality is that for quite a long time we viewed the purpose of the economy as purely to grow itself, as purely to create profit and wealth maximization, with the belief that that was ultimately what was going to be most important for our happiness or our wellbeing. And I think what we’ve been seeing and we’re now really reconciling with is that it’s not leading to the expected improvements in our wellbeing in many ways are leaving us worse off. Obviously with the climate crisis, inequality crisis, cost of living, mental health crisis and many others.

And so, the wellbeing economy movement has really emerged and it comes under so many different banners that you’ve been exploring within this podcast of post growth, degrowth, solidarity, economy, economy for the common good and many others. But at its heart, is this recognition that we have to stop treating people and planet like they’re here to serve the economy and start treating the economy like it’s here to serve us? 

Carl Schlyter:
How come we have an economy that is actually not designed to serve us and the planet?

Amanda Janoo:
Well, and I think this first point is to be very clear on what really matters for well-being. And so, this process is going on within a lot of communities and countries around the world who are starting from a different North Star, a centring of social and ecological wellbeing and really clarifying the things that they feel are most important for their societies and ecosystems now and for generations to come. And so, by clarifying and within the wellbeing economy movement, we speak about five needs, for example. But there’s many other kinds of frameworks that you can find within the wellbeing economy governments, for example, and others I can speak to more, but if we even see, I would say that this podcast is part of the wellbeing economy movement in the sense that if we are starting from a point of saying how would we design and evaluate our economy by its capacity to ensure that everybody has the necessary foundations to live a life of dignity and purpose. 

Carl Schlyter:
You showed to me, a really interesting contrast in one of your speeches I listened to and that was what happens when the tradition and wellbeing focus in the economy clashes with the current economy. And that was in Mozambique regarding work ethics. So, I would love you to tell that story again.

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely, I was working in Mozambique and they were talking about how the issue was that cultural change takes time and that they would need time for their culture to change in order to achieve the level of development that we have achieved in the United States or Europe. And they gave the example of how foreign investors would come in and set up production or factories or different businesses, and people would come to work for a couple of days, maybe a week, and then would go back to their families and communities and wouldn’t return for weeks, sometimes months, until they needed more money. And in their mind, they lacked a work ethic. And what I realised in that moment was that they had a concept of enough. A culture that understood how much was enough. And I realised that in the United States we don’t have any notion of enough, there can never be enough because it conflicts with this cultural sort of idea of ambition and progress and success and so in that moment, it really made me realize there was a lot more that I had to learn than I could teach about achieving true sustainable development or a good life in line and in harmony with our natural world. 

Carl Schlyter:
That’s interesting. I mean, WHO recently said that depression is the main cause of disability today, and this culture of never feeling sufficiency, never having enough.

Couldn’t that be part of it? Like you always have to chase the next goalpost, never to reflect on what you have and how you live and what you appreciate? Could that be part of the problem in that culture?

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely, and this is something for me, having worked in international development for a long time now coming back and living in the United States again, that I, I probably felt most heavily is the level of anxiety and depression here. And I think one of the challenges is that the emphasis and the culture of individualism means that everybody feels like it’s their fault, that they have to eat better or work harder, meditate more, do whatever to try to find that happiness. But if everybody is feeling this and clearly there’s something larger and systemic going on, but because we can’t see that, I think it creates this burden and it makes it very hard on ourselves and so therefore very hard on others as well. And it creates and perpetuates a lot of social isolation, disconnection, mistrust and yeah, obviously, as you say, mental health challenges as well.

Carl Schlyter:
In the first season we talked about the financial system, the money generation system and other problematic aspects of today’s economy. But this podcast is also about finding solutions, a way forward and there is actually something we can spread regarding wellbeing economy. So, let’s say that our listeners now know already that we have a problem with the current economic system, and they may even feel it themselves that it’s actually not really to the benefit of me, my neighbourhood, my community, country, nature around me. None of these are actually benefiting in the proper way from the current system. So, what would be the steps and the definitions of a better economy? How could we focus more on wellbeing?

Let’s take this step by step. So, wellbeing economy what do you hope for that to deliver? 

Amanda Janoo:
So, if we take it step by step, then the first step is to really be clear on what matters for wellbeing. And so, across countries, many of them are now developing alternative national performance frameworks to GDP, for example, and it all starts with that question. So, in Wales, for example, they asked what kind of wealth do you want to leave for your children and grandchildren as a way of really identifying what are our longer-term wellbeing goals? What is our North Star by which we want to orient ourselves? And there are some commonalities, I would say, around health and time, social connection, trust, clean air, clean water, a restored and thriving ecosystem. And then each one also has different sort of framings, depending on, you know, our global responsibility or meaning and purpose, these sort of aspects. And to be clear, that that’s what really matters for a good life. And I think everybody can connect with this because when I have to have ask somebody, what do you love about where you live, people always talk about their communities or the natural environment around them. And then when you ask, okay, so then why aren’t those the things that we’re really prioritizing most in our decision making? It starts to unlock and make people realize that, yeah, okay, why isn’t that ultimately then our metrics and our focus of success. And so, it’s about the downgrading of the economy. Now, we’ve held it as supreme for so long that even as we develop, let’s say, these national performance frameworks that emphasize the importance of health, we still feel the need to make the case for why health is good for the economy, rather than feeling like we can swap that burden of proof and ask, how would we evaluate the economy in terms of its contribution to our health? And so, what the Wellbeing economy movement is doing is to illustrate all of the different initiatives, concepts, theories that we would say maybe we’re in the new economy space, but that are showing how we can build a more equitable economic system, not just through redistribution of funds by the government, but through employee owned or cooperatives of how we can protect and regenerate our environment, not just through mitigating or adapting to climate change, but really fostering regenerative production processes and circular economy processes and how we can ensure that people really have a voice in these processes by re-localising and embedding economies so that people have the capacity to mold and direct that system of production and provision in line with their histories and geographies, cultures and values. And so, I think what you are doing in this podcast, for example, we’ve heard from so many different amazing geniuses in this space around a wide range of different ideas on how to achieve this and examples of where we’re seeing experimentations like universal basic income, community wealth building, regenerative agriculture and many, many more that we see as all pieces of this alternative economic system and paradigm that is designed to foster social and ecological wellbeing. 

Carl Schlyter:
And when you come to like grabbers, research on bullshit jobs that actually have a life satisfaction and what you spend a lot of your time doing, and then all this, what you mentioned here in the beginning of your answer, you start to talk about like nature, health, wellbeing, community. This is never part of a standard economic calculus. It’s just side effects at most. So, when you talk about wellbeing economy, you normally have five or six pillars that you describe. One of them is, for example, nature. Let’s start with that one.

How would the wellbeing economy be in relationship to nature? How would you integrate nature’s needs into the economy? 

Amanda Janoo:
Let me start by saying one of the things that we’ve helped in starting as a lobbying economy alliance is the wellbeing economy governments, and that is currently comprised of Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Scotland and Wales and they’ve all developed alternative national performance frameworks to GDP. And in Canada, for example, they have 12 domains and one of them and this is related to the point around bullshit jobs is around meaning and purpose. And so the reason why I think this is significant is because, as you said, David Graeber, what he found is that in countries like mine, the majority of people believe that they now have a job that may not or should not exist and a job that is contributing nothing to the world or actively making it worse off. And if that is not a sign of a broken economic system, I do not know what is, right? But at the same time, you have in the United States, for example, nine out of ten people saying that they would actually take a lower salary in order to have more meaning in their work. And that’s a lot of the ways in which we’ve sort of designed our economic system now where the question that I hear most from young people are how can I do good and do well? Because it feels like you get one or the other, because we’ve designed a system were there seems to be almost perfect inverse relationship between how much you earn and how much you’re contributing to society with the most exploitive and damaging and destructive industries garnering billions. Whereas the kind of work or effort or activities that hold this world together that are cantered in care or stewardship or regeneration seem to be paid next to nothing or sometimes nothing at all. And the point here is that that is not inevitable. That is a product of our design, of our current system, because for a long time, if our goal was GDP growth rate to just produce more, then we were always focusing on encouraging the big corporations, entrepreneurs, investment firms that we saw as most efficient at generating the profits and wealth that were going to stimulate growth. But once you centre social and ecological well-being, then the type of economic activities or work that you see as most valuable is ultimately going to change. And so the space and the value that will be put on work done for regeneration, for a rewilding, for stewardship, the work which is done for care and connection and the reproduction of society in some way in terms of social services, etc., starts to come in view as the kind of work we really want to value and encourage and reward. And it also shines a light for us as well. On what are the kinds of activities are actually damaging to our current wellbeing. And I think that’s the other flip-side of it as well, because there are a lot of jobs that people themselves realise are actually quite damaging. And the point is that we need to also think about how do we hospice and phase out those kinds of activities so that we have the energy resources and creative skills to put our time towards those more generative and collectively oriented sort of areas of work. And so, when we start with that different entry point, I think it shines a light on different kind of work and can ultimately ensure that we build an economy where we’re valuing economic activities and behaviours by their contribution to those social and ecological goals.

Carl Schlyter:
And how would that actually work and how can we upgrade things that are useful for humanity and downgrade things that are destructive for humanity, our planet and equality?

Amanda Janoo:
Wales is one of my favourite examples from a national level, kind of government initiative were Wales, on the basis of the citizen engagement I mentioned, develop these seven high level well-being goals. But what was even more significant is they passed legislation which required different ways of working, a different governance system in order to achieve those goals. And so they recognise they needed longer term thinking, right? So to set goals that were 25 years. So for the next generation that they needed to embrace a preventative mindset. So to not just have the government just constantly there to put out fires, but actually to move upstream and prevent those crises from happening in the first place, and that there needed to be an integration of a greater collaboration across government. So every government agency was collectively responsible for all seven goals. So the health ministry was not just responsible for achieving health, but needed to consider all seven of the goals in terms of biodiversity in terms of, you know, global responsibility, in terms of equity, etc., when they were designing those goals. And one of the ways that this ended up manifesting was the creation of a Future Generations Commissioner whose job was to represent the interests of those who have yet to be born and just oversee this system of governance reform. And at one point the Welsh government wanted to build a big new highway that was going to go through a natural reserve. 

Carl Schlyter:
As always there’s never, ever any other place to build them, apparently. 

Amanda Janoo:
Yeah exactly, and they had to make the case for how it would contribute to all seven wellbeing goals, and they couldn’t make the case for contributing to any of them except for maybe one. And so as a result, they ended up putting a freeze on any new infrastructure development for the next, I think it was maybe three or five years, so that all of that money would go through to active travel and public transportation and so that that they could make the case for contributing to a wide range of wellbeing goals. 

Carl Schlyter:
That’s actually really interesting because Maine did a similar thing regarding external shopping centres, they needed to show that they were net beneficial to the local economy. But of course, if you have an external shopping centre, you always have the same chains there and that will the money disappears from the community. And after they introduce this law, it’s just impossible to show that they were actually benefiting the local economy. So like bringing in this more holistic analyses of what you’re investing in is probably a really important step. 

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely, and I think this is what we’re seeing at this moment. And what I think this podcast also is an illustration of is a paradigm shift where we’re moving from very linear, mechanistic, siloed, hierarchical ways of thinking and organizing processes towards more holistic, systemic, compassionate, I would say forms. But the challenge is that a lot of times the tools and also the institutions that we have are not fit for purpose. But what we’re seeing is that more and more governments, what they are realizing is that even the richest governments in the world realize that with the increasing severity and frequency of the crises we’re facing, they just don’t have the resources to keep growing the economy so that they can take some of that wealth to fix the damages that were done to people and planet and in the process and really have to start getting the economy to do more of the heavy lifting in terms of ensuring that they are producing the things that are most essential for people’s wellbeing providing them in a way that ensures that security, but also ensuring production processes that are actually going to be respectful of our natural environment and regenerated. 

Carl Schlyter:
And why isn’t the current model of just letting everybody buy what they want and see how the market solves that good?

Amanda Janoo:
Well, I think that probably the major issue you’ve seen is that so much of the past, let’s say 30, 40 years has been based on this assumption that if you just take this hands-off approach and allow for big private enterprise to lead this process and for individuals to assert their power purely as consumers, that ultimately it would be fine because that all of this wealth would trickle down, that even if our wages weren’t increasing, things were cheaper, so we didn’t really have to worry about it. And from a societal point of view, we’ve now hit this tipping point where people now realize that once they don’t just want to be consumers, they do want work that has meaning and purpose and that they feel like is genuinely contributing something to others, that the cost of things is actually not cheap anymore. And so that argument is failing in terms of our basic needs of food, energy, housing really becoming out of control and then you put on top of it the climate crisis. And it’s very clear that the system is failing, right? Because the system is not delivering on what it had promised in terms of forever improving our collective sort of quality of life, and that it’s really only working for a very small segment of our global population. 

Carl Schlyter:
Already in the first season of this podcast we conclude that trickle down theories is actually really flooding up theory. But yeah, one thing you mentioned it when Wales designed this was participation, empowerment and influence by everyone. I think this is a really important part of any change because if you feel empowered, you are more engaged in changing stuff and spending your time in helping your community to change things. So, what kind of experiences do you have with empowerment and local involvement? 

Amanda Janoo:
So, the topic participation is probably the area that I’m most passionate about because I do think that one of the greatest consequences of the form of corporate globalization that we have encouraged over the last decades has been that people no longer feel like they have any voice or power over their livelihoods, that they are subject to the whims of the market or of forces that are so beyond their control. And so one of the things I always want to remind people is that the discourse that dominates economics and the economy really feeds into this, because whenever we talk about the economy, we hear GDP growth rates or stock market values, something about mergers and acquisitions, etc., and it tends to make the economy feel like something that’s out there, beyond our control.

And I want to just remind everyone that we are the economy.

Yeah, we have the power to change it again. It’s the way we produce and provide for one another. And what we’re seeing in our modern era in line with, I would say, a renaissance and sort of new economic thinking is also a renaissance in participatory democracy. And so the OECD for example, did a research paper which was looking at participatory democratic experiments since the 1950s and just the past few years, it’s been exponential. It’s been all over the world at different kinds of levels. And this is because the need for political sort of reform is the flipside of also the need for economic reform, because we’ve concentrated so much wealth and power into the hands of fewer and fewer institutions, entities and individuals that in order for us to meaningfully create this transformation, we also need to then redistribute power back to people in order to make those types of policies that they feel are aligned. And I think one of the challenges nowadays is that we’re seeing people can go both ways, right? Like the voicelessness can also feed fascism, right? A desire for looking inward and protecting our own communities and trying to shove everybody back out and so some of the examples that I think are most powerful come from, let’s say, for example, I would say for your audience and particularly the Greenpeace audience. So, Spain recently held a citizen’s assembly on climate. And so what they did was they chose 100 randomly selected citizens to really go through a process of identifying what were the core policy priorities in order to deal with the climate crisis. And what was amazing, so again, with this point of once you start with the environment, with the natural world, what was clear was that so many of these recommendations were fundamentally about economic system change. They proposed circular economy reforms, regenerative agriculture, green infrastructure, proposals around outlining human health and ecological restorations. And all of these proposals, because it was instigated by the government, were then sent directly to Parliament and to the Prime Minister’s office for deliberation and consideration. And so when we see people being given the voice and the power to really think about what kind of reforms are necessary for the social and environmental crises or priorities of our time, they naturally and just intuitively understand the kind of areas of the economy that need to be changed. 

Carl Schlyter:
That’s interesting, you had almost exactly the same results when Macron did same thing in France and however, those policy recommendations in the end, the government didn’t really implement them then. But that is another example of when people are given the full picture and you can see the consequences of what you recommend. People generally tend to recommend sensible stuff.

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely. There is another good example which has been kind of beautiful again with this this future orientation I recently learned about in Japan, where they’ve been hosting these participatory processes with young people and it’s based on some sort of tradition that they had already. But what they have is the young people first consider the kind of strategies that are needed for the current society, and then they have them put on different robes and dress differently and consider what kind of strategies or priorities are needed for a society in 60 years. And what they realize is when you consider the society in 60 years, the kinds of proposals are a lot more transformative and a lot bolder and more ambitious. And so I think that’s also the point of the importance of moving beyond just problem solution to also really thinking about a future orientation and also a positive orientation of where we want to go, because that, I think, also unlocks our imaginations a lot in terms of moving from a fight or flight and anxiety response to just dealing with the crises, to really saying this is the world we want to create, and this is where we see already the parts that are in our communities and in our world that we can build upon to get there.

Carl Schlyter:
Yeah, I recognize this way of thinking from some North American indigenous populations where they have this similar logic of before they considered making a decision, they checked like what happened three generations ago and three generations ahead and how this is in practice. I think that’s kind of the more long-term thinking is crucial at finding the right policies. 

Amanda Janoo:
Yeah, the seventh generation thinking, and that’s something I really want to emphasize as well, is that the wellbeing economy movement, I would say that it’s probably its strongest and it’s accelerating most quickly in high income countries because we are in a state of existential crisis in the sense that we’ve built these systems that are really good at generating wealth, but everybody’s miserable and our planet is on fire. And so we’re starting to question what’s the point of life? But ultimately, this idea is not new, it is not our own. It heralds from indigenous and alternative development philosophies like Ubuntu, Swaraj, Buen Vivir that are really centred in understanding that to live a good life is to live in harmony and balance with others, oneself and the natural world. And so a lot of what I’m seeing a great amount of inspiration is in the decolonisation movement, because this is not just about rebalancing historical injustices and power relations, but also empowering different paradigms and systems that we have marginalised for so long because they didn’t align with the modernity narrative that we’ve held. And to see that there is incredible wisdom in the ways that so many in the majority world is functioning in terms of their cultural and systems. That can ultimately be the blueprints for the better world we envision.

Carl Schlyter:
Yeah, if listeners want to learn more about imperialism and colonialism, we have a really interesting episode with Kojo Koram from season one, so I can highly recommend that one. Okay, so let’s say we started with nature, we went through participation. What other aspects characterises a wellbeing economy? 

Amanda Janoo:
So, I would say the third aspect that we talk a lot about is fairness. And so the idea of really holding justice at the heart of the economic system so that we are ensuring a just distribution of not just income but of time, of voice and a power within our economic system. And so, I know that you had spoken some and Pickett I think really speaking so beautifully of the consequences of inequality. And so, again, part of this, of course, is the need to ensure more redistribution. But for us, it’s also about where you’re supporting more economic democracy within firms themselves, within building a really diversified and locally embedded communities that are multiplying wealth and ensuring that we’re fulfilling the needs of one another in a way that’s not going to be so insecure. And I would say the other aspect as well is about connection, right? So this deep need that we have to be connected to one another and to be in right relationship with others in our society and with our natural world. And this is one where I think there’s a lot that we can find inspiration from within the care economy, and the core economy, which recognizes and breaks down the sort of duality of the state in the market. So, it’s not just about more government or more business, but also of recognising how the incredible value that comes in non-monetary systems of provision and care. And so how do we protect and really value those as well, the ways that we provide for one another as families and neighbours and communities, because that’s really the magic. I read a paper quite a long time ago which showed that when we engage in a gift exchange, like we give somebody a gift, it reduces our stress levels and boosts our immune system and it reinforces social trust. Whereas when we engage in a market transaction, seemingly, you know, as if I am just going and buying something at a store, it does the opposite. It actually increases our stress levels, reduces our immune systems and reinforces social distrust. And that’s a lot of what the new research in neuroscience is showing is that we’re really hardwired to want to give. That’s a big part of our economic system and is also then comes back to, I think, one of our earlier points, which is around from a personal to purely personal perspective. The one thing that we know and that has been illustrated from spiritual scholars, I think throughout time, is that the two qualities that are most highly correlated with happiness are generosity and contentment. And our current economic system does not encourage us to be either of those things. We should never be content, and we should try to just hoard as much as we can for ourselves. And so pining, you know, just these small spaces where we see the ways in which we do hold regard for people in our lives, in our communities who are generous, that we see the wisdom, right? In people around us who have contentment and being able to hold and to recognise that as much as we emphasise competitiveness and selfishness and might be encouraging or warning us behaviours, there are still very strong social systems and wisdom that recognises the power of the other motivations as well. 

Carl Schlyter:
But unfortunately, psychopaths are more common in the top-level CEOs than in the general population and really wealthy people think they deserve it. So going for the redistribution agenda was possible. It was possible after the Second World War when everybody came home, sacrificed their life for the country and they said, I will do a fair share of the economy now. And you had this incredibly high marginal tax rates of 80-90, even 99% in some countries. But what about trying a pre-distribution schedule and pre-distribution mechanics where you actually don’t create the inequality from the beginning? And we already talked the financial system and changing that in other episodes but what other methods of pre-distribution could you have so you actually don’t create the conflict from the outset. 

Amanda Janoo:
How do we move upstream and build an economic system that itself is really designed to ensure a more equitable outcome. And so, part of that is around different types of enterprise structures which are more democratically owned. And so, you’re ensuring a just distribution of the wealth and the income either through employee ownership or cooperatives or an increasing amount of not-for-profit companies that are emerging as well, that are utilizing any of their profits actually go back directly into social or collective sort of aims. I think there’s also the revitalisation of the commons of community owned governance systems and processes and of, you know, really ensuring also, I think, universal basic services in certain areas. And so, I think that with the current cost of living crisis, it’s hitting us so hard because it’s in many of the areas that are the most important for our lives, like food or for housing. And so in the United States, for example, the cost of living crisis is actually largely being driven by increases in the cost of housing and accounts for about 40% of our consumer price index. And this rising cost of housing. I don’t know if anybody’s ever experienced housing insecurity, but when you don’t know where you’re going to be living or you’re not sure you’re going to be able to pay your rent or your mortgage is totally consuming. Yeah, it takes over your entire nervous system. To not be clear about, ensuring that basic need is there. And we do have a universal guarantee to water. And there is no reason why there shouldn’t be a universal guarantee to housing and to food and to the basic sort of goods and services that we need within our society so that we don’t have to feel that insecurity. And that is provided as a right of every individual, regardless of their income and status. But housing is one we don’t want to talk about because I’m sure as others will be speaking to that, a huge part of the speculative financial revolution that we’ve allowed for. It’s a big part of the rentier economy. So the ways in which we’ve legitimized people not making more money off of their wages is to say, we’ve built this system where you make money off of money. So the rentier economy is pretty much where you are making money off of charging somebody to use something that they need, as opposed to really producing or providing something of genuine value to others. And so, I think obviously everybody would understand this in the sense of rent, right? If you’re the landlord, the rent that they get from you is purely just because they own the building and they had that asset to begin with. But the problem is that we’ve created a huge system that actually provides way more benefits to the owners of that asset relative to the users. 

Carl Schlyter:
And then you can turbocharge this using tax havens and holding companies in order to extract even more wealth from people.

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely. And so, the other night I was reading John Kenneth Galbraiths The Great Crash, because there’s this term in the US right now that’s coming about around how we’re in a silent depression. And it was shocking to see that the major factors he saw as underpinning the Great Depression were very similar to the ones that we are in today in terms of really high levels of inequality, lower wage increases relative to profit increases. And so because you had a smaller group of people really holding all that wealth, one, it creates instability because if anything changes in their behaviours, it ripples across a much larger area. But also when that level of wealth is controlled by a small number of people, there’s only so many things they’re going to buy before they put it in the stock market. And when there’s more money in the market, they’re going to start lending it out and it’s going to end up creating one like a sort of debt crisis, but also what he called the pyramiding of companies, where they were increasingly owned by fewer and fewer investment firms. And it’s like this whole situation, this is really the same thing, once again, repeating a similar phenomenon. And the nice thing, I guess, is that we can learn from history in this regard. But also, you know, we have the additional climate crisis. So the kind of strategies and solutions that we need to be focused on are different because the other part of this is that say we have the food crisis, then we need to really focus on how do we ensure food security for all people. But also the production of it in a regenerative manner. So how do we really encourage and reward regenerative agricultural practices so that it becomes, let’s say, the new organic food in some way and protect the regenerative production practices that are already existing in many areas of the world currently that have yet to transition to really large like industrial production. Or with energy, I mean, that increasing energy prices is because of profiteering and a huge concentration and control by a few industries we know that we need an energy transition, right? So how do we leverage upon this moment to really build the political will on the public demand for new systems of energy, provision and security, not just now for generations to come?

Carl Schlyter:
Well, at least you convince me because I don’t want another second depression. Great Depression, and then World War, and then aggravating that would biodiversity collapse and climate crisis. It doesn’t seem like a wonderful future. So let’s say we try to look for other solutions, going further in the wellbeing economy. So we talked about science, nature and participation. What would be the next pillar?

Amanda Janoo:
Dignity. Yeah. So the five needs we talk about are dignity, fairness, participation, nature and purpose, right? And so, dignity is what we’ve been talking about already as well, which is how do we really build an economy that ensures everybody has the foundations needed for a life of dignity and purpose. And that actually was one of the original definitions of political economy. So around the time that Adam Smith was writing, there was also this guy, Sir James Stewart, who defined the purpose of economics, or at that time that was turned political economy as figuring out a way by which to inspire the natural and reciprocal relations in society so that people would provide for one another’s wants and needs in a way that did not threaten poverty or insecurity for that population. So our economy should be designed and evaluated by its ability to ensure that everybody has what they need in a way that is not threatened or volatile and that might, you know, push them into poverty. 

Carl Schlyter:
Yeah, that’s a good case for basic income, I would say also, because if it’s unconditional, then you have dignity. You have the trust to spend this money in a wise way. And it doesn’t matter where we tried basic income schemes in Namibia or India or Finland or other countries, we always see the same, people are much more responsible than what economists think they are, that what politicians think they are.

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely. And then that brings us back to the point around participation, right? Because there is a paternalism which often, I think undermines really progressive agendas, because we believe that we know better than others. And one of the experiments that we all did, which I really love, was in a community in Scotland, which is sort of a historically more marginalised economically community. And in Scotland they recently have a whole thing around children’s human rights. And so we went through a process of asking children what they really felt mattered for the wellbeing of the community, so that that would be a foundation for developing a wellbeing economy strategy and new systems of sort of accountability within the City Council and within the local government. And the children they got it, gathered natural systems thinkers, people were like, they’re just going to want sweets or something, no. They realized that the major things that were important for their community was closer access to the goods and services they needed. Yeah, so they didn’t have to travel so far to get things that there was a need for more social connection and trust within the community and that there was a need for more play and time for adults and children together. And the thing that they ended up proposing is one of the immediate short-term steps were a Christmas festival and market because they felt like that would support local businesses. It would provide a space for people to connect with one another and to spend time joyously. And that was what was really important because there’s a lot of crime and drug use and, you know, insecurity and things in that community and what a beautiful illustration to combat that paternalism because if children get it, people get it, they understand what is really needed.

Carl Schlyter:
It comes natural to us, I mean, one of the better definitions of intelligence I’ve heard was that how much time you’re able to set aside to play and leisure. 

We still need to have a purpose, that last point here so how is that defined?

What’s the purpose of having purpose here?

Amanda Janoo:
Well and that’s really around this beyond GDP, I would say, or post growth or degrowth. How do we move beyond the economic ascendancy or prioritisation to really decentring of social and ecological wellbeing as the purpose of the economy? And that’s were by then we can begin to design and evaluate our economy’s success accordingly and to really identify the economic activities and behaviours that we see as positively or negatively contributing to our collective wellbeing. We’re pretty much redefining value in many ways so that we are able to see and celebrate the types of areas of the economy that are positively contributing wellbeing while discouraging the others. And I think that actually COVID was a really good example in this regard because around the world it did not take policymakers very long to identify which sectors or workers they viewed as the most essential.

Carl Schlyter:
You mean investment bankers?

Amanda Janoo:
Actually, yeah, it was not the hedge fund managers way. Yeah, you know, it was farmers and healthcare workers and delivery drivers. 

Carl Schlyter:
What a shock to society to discover this.

Amanda Janoo:
Yes. Absolutely. And that was only thinking about how do we just in this very moment maintain social wellbeing. And so we need to expand that to the environment as well. But the point is that we logically know and that I think we’re also seeing that process of identification of essential workers. It’s leading to another big upswing, I think, in the labour movement, but also this sort of reflection on what kind of work really matters and where we want to put our energies, how we want to contribute to the betterment of society. And so, yes, to your point around dignity, I think part of that is UBI, so really transforming and getting rid of this whole idea, of a labour market which is honestly pretty gross. The idea that we have a market for people that’s fundamentally it’s like a false commodification of us, of ownership, of our time, of our energy to say we are going to ensure that everybody has the basic security that is needed through a universal basic income, a universal basic services, so that then the kind of work that we want to that encourage and reward is in the provision of those sort of basic services in goods or in the kind of creative, intrinsically motivated activities that people want to pursue. Then I think we’re starting to see as well is transformation in accounting systems and the ways in which values are redefining value. And so there’s a great article which is by the Prime Minister of Iceland talking about that gender mainstreaming experience and the ways in which, through a process of having similar sounds like tier governments reflections on recognizing that the tendency to view physical infrastructure like roads and bridges, etc. as an investment and social infrastructure, which is health education as an expenditure was inherently gendered because men have traditionally worked in physical infrastructure and women have worked in social infrastructure. And so they redefine those codes to say that social infrastructure is investment as well. And so that allowed them to pass much more progressive policies that would have otherwise been viewed as too expensive. And another one of my favourite examples is from a community in Costa Rica where they gave citizenship to all their pollinators, sort of the bees and the butterflies, etc. And as a result, then had to redefine infrastructure so that it was no longer just a road or a building. It was also the green space. The green space was infrastructure. And so it completely revolutionised their urban planning on that basis. And so I think our minds can be sometimes limited of what is possible once we open ourselves up to really consider ethically what is important.

Carl Schlyter:
That reminds me of the German Village of Grafenau that said that pollination services are a key societal function that the municipality must make sure it happens. So let’s say you managed to convince people that these aspects of the wellbeing economy is something to strive for, and people self-evidently understand that the current economic system is actually not working for them or the planet. How would you motivate someone to take the first step?

What would be the first natural steps to take?

Amanda Janoo:
If you want to participate in this process. Might be helpful To also share a little bit about this is what the Wellbeing Economy Alliance was really developed to try to help with, because it’s not about just finding the perfect alternative economic model or theory that can be transplanted on to this one, because it’s really about starting from recognition that we are the economy. It’s a system that we design that we are a part of every day, but that also is constantly transforming. And then we have the power to redesign in line with different goals and objectives. And so the point here is, yes, we need to amplify the incredible new economic ideas and theories, amplifying showcase the incredible examples of transformation we’re seeing within business and environmental spaces. And then you know, policy. But at the end of the day, what we ultimately need is a movement and we have people come from all different walks of life. So many come from the environmental movement because they’re frustrated with feeling like they’re constantly just combating symptoms and not able to sort of move upstream and look at the system. Are people working in mental health or working in gender equity, racial justice, in business and finance, in academia and government and many more? But the point is mostly that the coming together and the being able to see and imagine that a different system is not only possible, but already underway to believe that that is happening and to see the ways in which we can collectively use our power and our voice, to push for that transformation is what is going to be ultimately needed, and to find the different avenues by which I can in my roles as friend, a community member, a business owner, as an expert in my space, whatever it might be, to start to challenge some of the dominant logic and to try to find more allies, right? We’re seeing changes at the community level around recognising that we don’t want to have just a few big box chain stores to be all of our high streets. But we really want to support more diversified and local economies. We’re seeing community wealth building initiatives and people joining more labour unions. There’re so many different avenues that this, I would say resistance or movement is starting to manifest. But more than anything, if I could leave people is, yeah, just remember that you’re the economy and that you have the power and the right to have an opinion about it and to engage in these discussions and be part of that transformation. 

Carl Schlyter:
Thank you. I really agree there. You don’t need to be an expert on everything, having a pre-planned utopia and so on. Just need to take the first steps with people that you want to take the first steps with and you will move ahead. And this saying about Henry David Thoreau, like what you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. So, you just start moving and you will learn so much and grow in the process.

Amanda Janoo:
Absolutely. My favourite quote is the process we use to get to the future is the future we get.

Carl Schlyter:
Well, thanks so much, Amanda, and that was really nice to have you here as our guest today. 

Amanda Janoo:
Thank you so much Carl, absolute honour and I really appreciate you having me.