The WEAll report Failure Demand: Counting the true cost of an unjust and unsustainable economic system (WEAll, 2021) shows how countries are caught up in a cycle of “paying to fix what our current economic systems continue to break”. A narrow focus on economic growth is causing harm to people and the planet, requiring governments to spend money to respond to these harms (almost inevitably inadequately) - which in turn becomes a justification for needing more economic growth.

Using case studies from Scotland and the Canadian province of Alberta, the Failure Demand report illustrates the billions of dollars spent annually to tend to the impacts of poverty and precariousness, housing insecurity and homelessness, and of the environmental destruction generated by our current economic systems. 

For example, the report found that in Scotland, due to the existence of low pay and poor work quality, the government spent over £774 million in 2018/19 on welfare payments, free school meals and treating work-related ill health. In Alberta, Canada, weather-related disaster costs increased by 2,500% between 2010 and 2016, to a total of approximately $9 billion, with the Alberta government incurring an estimated $2.3 billion within that time (Johnson, 2020).