Economics of Happiness Fundraiser for Yarra Valley Ecoss

Both hard‐hitting and inspiring, ‘The Economics of Happiness’ demonstrates that millions of people across the world are already engaged in building a better world – that small scale initiatives are happening on a large scale. The film shows that countless initiatives are united around a common cause: rebuilding more democratic, human scale, ecological and local economies – the foundation of an ‘economics of happiness’.

Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic conflict; climate chaos and species extinction; financial instability and unemployment. There are personal costs too. For the majority of people on the planet life is becoming increasingly stressful. We have less time for friends and family and we face mounting pressures at work.
‘The Economics of Happiness’ describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re‐regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re‐build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization.

We hear from a chorus of voices from six continents including Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Michael Shuman, Juliet Schor, Zac Goldsmith and Samdhong Rinpoche ‐ the Prime Minister of Tibetʹs government in exile. They tell us that climate change and peak oil give us little choice: we need to localize, to bring the economy home.

‘The Economics of Happiness’ restores our faith in humanity and challenges us to believe that it is possible to build a better world.