Creating Alternative Futures

This was the first book that made me realize that GNP figures include traffic accidents, natural catastrophes (like hurricanes) etc. as positive growth additions. In other words the costs incurred cleaning up the devastation of Katrina added to economic growth figures. Once I became self-employed and could analyze what economists were saying, I realized that most of them live in an idealized Platonic universe and not in the actual, economic reality of real human beings. Economic growth is based on innovation. Innovation is based on cultural values, constitutional protections and human imagination. Henderson's insight have made me suspicious of economists whose theories contradict common sense (e.g. if you had one teacher per 20 students and now have one teacher per 40 students you have doubled teacher productivity). They have also made me suspicious of social reformers who similarly believe that increased education and health budgets will solve our problems (what I call in my own book "The Optimistic Jew" the quantitative fallacy). What is needed is the imaginative and innovative rethinking of the entire social welfare issue.