The value of everything: makers and takers in the global economy

Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? At the heart of today's financial and economic crisis is a problem hiding in plain sight.

In modern capitalism, value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders' dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than value-creation: the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society.

We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what value really means.

Once a central plank of economic thought, this concept of value - what it is, why it matters to us - is simply no longer discussed.

Yet, Mariana Mazzucato argues, if we are to reform capitalism - to radically transform an increasingly sick system rather than continue feeding it - we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from.