The economy is stuck: it’s struggling to grow, productivity is falling and people are suffering as a result. Our living standards haven’t improved in years, and we don’t believe the government can help.
At Demos we believe one underexamined problem is that Britain’s economic settlement has been designed around people as ‘consumers’ rather than ‘citizens’, who are complex political and moral agents, with community ties and a national identity. By relegating citizens to passive beneficiaries of, or contributors to, the economy, consecutive governments have operated without the democratic legitimacy to navigate hard economic trade-offs.
To rebuild trust between citizen and state, Demos is working to design a new economic deal, focusing on transforming the role people play across each of the economy’s core pillars: labour, capital, markets, and fiscal transfers. Not tinkering at the edges, but systematically redesigning each component, securing national prosperity according to parameters set by citizens themselves.
The citizen economy means: A resilient citizen-powered workforce capable of navigating a labour market on the precipice of generational disruption; Citizen-stewarded capital mobilised in the interests of the nation; A citizen-legitimated fiscal contract governing who receives support from the state, on what terms, and how that is fairly funded; and citizen-centric markets and regulators that serve consumers as active participants in the economy, not passive recipients of a compact they had no hand in.
Contact Joe Martin, Associate Director of Policy, for more information.
