Fixing the Future

The places David Brancaccio visited are Bellingham Washington, Lummi Island, Cleveland Ohio, Berkeley California, Austin Texas, North Dakota, Minnesota and Portland. The names of the people he interviewed are: Michelle Long which is the Balle Business Aliliance Director, David Korten which is an Economic Analyst, Riley Starks which is the owner of Lummi Island Wild, Dan Pike the Mayor of Bellingham, Keith Carpenter which is the president of Wood Stone Corporation, Medricj Addison the Evergreen cooperate laundry, Ted Howard the cooperatives advocate, Jeanetter Monsalve, Sylvia Barrios and Raquel Rodriguez- Yo mamas cooperative cafe, Carlos Perez DE Alejo (Co director), Jessica Holmes (Eco-wise), Ron Mueller a banker, Randal and Michelle Thompson,Matthew Bishop- US editor, economist magazine, Robert Ellis, Richard Rockefeller, Jenifer London, Jane Darista, Stephen Beckett.

The main street economic approaches are local living economy, where David Korten mentioned that there is a natural connection between making decisions to how we operate our enterprise and the broader public interest. Also another approach was to change the saving institutions method so they have a long-term interest to do investments in jobs in the communities. Also, the time banks approach and the community garden where it is a community that works like a circle and the idea is that whatever you get from the community you have to give back hourly. It doesn’t matter what type of job it is. Also, sharing economy were multiple people can share things like cars. Another approach was the B-notes which was a local currency used in Baltimore to keep the money in the local economy. 

The first thing that struck me in this video was the interview with David Korten about living in a community.  As he mentioned that there is a natural connection between how you make your financial decisions and how you operate your enterprise and the broader public interest if you are part of the community. None of these are things that we can find outside of the community like in “Wall Street”. Ted talked about the circle of the generation poverty in the community and they cannot get out. The strategy was to cause to the big institutions to understand that in order for them to be successful, they will have to encourage the community’s success as well. I have never thought about this way since I always assumed that for a small community to be able to make money, they need the big corporations to be successful, and now I understand that they need each other in order to grow. The third thing that fascinated me was the measurement of GDP video. GDP is measured by the amount of money spent in the economy. The comparison of the bike ride to the grocery store vs the car ride helped me understand the “mistake” that occurs while calculating GDP and avoiding the harm or benefits to the environment, and as the video claims, I agree that we have to fix our indicators of what we measure in our economy.