If you're living in the community and you own your local businesses and you're engaged in the local economy you should have a definite interest in the strength and health of your community, the caring relationships that bind people together.

Moreover, statistics can be deceiving: the growth of jobs in the US in the 90s was due to many part-time jobs, with no benefits and generally low pay.

As an economy measures performance in terms of the creation of money, people become a major source of inefficiency.

If you look internationally over the last 50 years there have been improvements in the third world, but in the last 20 years the reverse has happened, with debt crises and increased poverty.

Europeans say they are proud of their social fabric, of strong rights for workers and the weak in society.

Money is a mechanism for control.

But we can also take the radical view that the test of an economy has to do with the extent to which it is providing everybody with a decent means of living.