Economy |
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Created: 2020-06-25
How do we encourage investment in people and their skills, not just in automation and robotics?
Economics Is
“economics is how we organize ourselves to sustain life and enhance its quality. It’s a way of considering how we provide for ourselves.”
The three interrelated goals of ecological economics are sustainable scale, fair distribution, and efficient allocation. All three of these contribute to human well-being and sustainability.
Some of the eight, including Fuelers and Financiers follow traditional sector lines, but others look quite different.
- Discoverers have high R&D, intellectual property, and capital income. They include pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as well as some household products companies that rely heavily on R&D and intellectual property to differentiate their products. *Deliverers have high employment levels and large supplier costs typical of retail and distribution. They include some manufacturers, such as footwear and luxury apparel companies, that also have high marketing costs; while Deliverers account for 16 percent of revenue, they employ 29 percent of workers in our data set of large corporations.
- Technologists—who range across hardware, software, digital retailers, and media—have high R&D and have enabled productivity growth in the economy; they have also contributed to consumer surplus through steep price reductions (as well as quality improvements) over time.
- Experts include for-profit hospitals, health services, business service companies, and private universities, among others. Experts particularly rely on high-skill workers and devote the highest share of their value added to employee compensation.
- Fuelers are oil, gas, and coal companies that extract, distribute, and sell fuel. They make large physical investments, have the highest labor productivity and wages, pay the highest production taxes, and have the highest emissions.
- Financiers are banks, insurance, and real estate companies. They help price risk and provide capital and financial services for economic activity of households, businesses, commercial ecosystems, and government. They have the highest total capital income of all archetype and the highest taxes. They also pay high wages.
- Builders include utility, telecommunications, and transportation companies that construct, use, and operate physical infrastructure, as well as manufacturers of materials and chemicals. They have double the physical assets of the average and, along with Fuelers, the highest scope 1 and 2 emissions.