You cannot reduce inequality you do not account for
Ben Carpenter, CEO of Social Value International, responds to the open letter from 40 economists calling for a UN International Panel on Inequality, and adds the point it cannot do without.
Social Value International - the global network working to change the way society accounts for value - welcomes this week's call by 40 economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, Mariana Mazzucato and Kate Pickett, for a new International Panel on Inequality: an independent, global evidence base on what drives inequality and what reduces it.
SVI would add one point the panel cannot do without. You cannot reduce inequality you do not account for.
Company profit is still calculated before the harm that widens inequality - to workers, communities and the environment - has been paid for.
Those costs are real, but they sit outside the accounts, so they are neither counted nor compensated. They fall instead on the public and on future generations.
A panel on inequality will need that measurement question at its centre. While the way we account for value treats social and environmental harm as someone else's problem, the numbers guiding capital, policy and corporate behaviour will keep pointing the wrong way.
Changing how society accounts for value is SVI's mission. We would welcome the opportunity to bring that measurement and accountability expertise to this initiative.
Ben Carpenter
CEO, Social Value International
Check out the full article about the open letter.
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