Deficit

In the book Deficit by Emma Holten, she focuses on everything that the established economy cannot measure, including care, warm hands and invisible work in the home. The language of economics is everywhere. When politicians, managers and economists say that “there is no money” or something “cannot be paid for,” it sounds factual and unassailable to most of us. But value is not easy to measure. Certainly not the value of care. The Enlightenment’s ambition for a society that could be managed like a factory has made people, hours, relationships and ultimately the entire future into priced products. This worldview lies behind almost all the big decisions that shape our lives. And yet we rarely talk about it. Deficit is a book about everything we take for granted, suffer and lose when we cannot measure its value.