John Mitchinson’s

Zeitgeisters

Profiles of the people whose ideas are helping to shape the future

KATE
RAWORTH

Economist

The most powerful tool in economics is not money, nor even algebra. It is a pencil. Because with a pencil you can redraw the world.

Even if you have only the most glancing interest in economics, you are likely to have heard of Kate Raworth and her doughnut. Her idea was first presented in a paper written for Oxfam in 2009 called ‘A Safe and Just Space for Humanity’ and, in 2017, became the basis for a bestselling book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist.

Both were inspired by her frustration at the whole academic pseudo-science of economics and, in particular, the visual representations that it presented as timeless truths: “At the heart of mainstream economic thinking is a handful of diagrams that have wordlessly but powerfully framed the way we are taught to understand the economic world – and they are all out of date, blinkered, or downright wrong.”