BUFFETS AND BREADLINES

About the Book

Conventional wisdom claims that the world is going broke, and that we must tighten our belts and accept poverty as the new normal. In a direct challenge to this view, Kimon Valaskakis, Professor of Economics, Futurist and former Canadian Ambassador to the OECD, claims the very opposite. Never in the history of civilization has Humanity been as rich as today. With an 70 trillion in world economic output for only 7 billion inhabitants of Planet Earth, there is a potential annual income of $10,000 per person. Instead, what we see is the juxtaposition of what he calls Buffets and Breadlines. A small percentage of the world population enjoys all-you-can-waste economic buffets, while the rest may be increasingly condemned to 1930’s style breadlines. This gross mismanagement of the earth’s resources masquerades as ‘scarcity’, which is then used to justify harsh austerity policies hurting everyone except the very rich. If the analysis of this first book is indeed valid, much of present public policy is doomed to fail and bound to lead to counter-productive results for the world economy. Couched in a new, yet old, genre of a philosophic play, emulating the Socratic dialogues , this book, part of a trilogy, depicts the deliberations of two dozen fictional characters who meet in Corfu, to ‘change the world in three weeks.’ The first book chronicles the findings of their first week, in colorful and dialectal style, with opposing ideas and opinions expressed, though in the friendly conviviality of a beautiful beach resort. The second and third books, which have yet to be published, will identify desirable alternatives to the status quo, and ultimately how do we get from here to there.

About the Author

Described by The Economist as one of Canada's most perceptive thinkers, Kimon Valaskakis, is a Cornell PhD has been a Professor of Economics at the University of Montreal, the President of a futures think tank the GAMMA Institute, Canada's former Ambassador to the OECD in Paris, and the founding president of the New School of Athens, a 21st century version of Plato's ancient academy as a contemporary think tank plus do tank. He has written 11 books and over 150 papers and articles on economics, politics and philosophy.