Five Economic Questions For All of Us

1. As a baby, would you have survived without the unpaid work of a person who most likely was your mother and who, at least partly, worked in a household?

2. Did this person care for you because she or he faced what economists call “financial incentives”? If no, then why did she or he make you survive?

3. By doing care-work for you as a baby and young child, what did this person produce? What was her or his position in the market?

4. Can you imagine a market without humans? No? – So, why is the core business of the human economy, the production and maintenance of humans and human wellbeing, defined as something outside the economy, as “family”, “love”, “motherliness”, “private sphere” or “consumption”?

5. Finally, why do people, in mainstream economics, deal with markets and money only? Although the original meaning of the notion “economics” is not “theory of market and money” but oiko-nomia that means “rule of the household”, or in other words: fulfilling the needs of (presently about seven billion) bearers of human dignity?