Campaigning for Impact Investing & Qualitative Economics

What many of the grandiose candidates showcase about political campaigns is that they are not set up to deal with leaders grounded in the here, now and coming -- factors which, as I like to say, are about the bight of the river ahead.

I’d be curious to know if any of the major contenders have had any substantive discussions on Impact Investing or Qualitative Economics? Or more basically, have they been asked about what they think of these issues?

These are serious questions, folks, and ones that some candidates ought to be struggling with. Particularly for those like Bernie Sanders (or the tRUMP if he actually had a finance brain). These ideas are the pumping blood of the bleeding hearts of the finance and marketing sectors rapidly heading our way; they are the very core of what the most compassionate of excessively wealthy but concerned individuals are looking at to help get them out of their binds about being exploitive profiteers. And someone with grand ideas about putting participatory socialism into action ought to have wet dreams about the concepts.

To be honest (IMHO), the one most likely to “get” such a question would be Hillary. It is feasible that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio might know the references given their academic foundations, but once again it is Hillary and her philanthropic foundation (literally and figuratively) that have likely been most exposed to program-related investments and such, a second cousin of sorts. But I digress....

These topics are very much the soul of the ways and the means of the future. Impact Investing is the art of figuring out how to fit sustainable and planetary awareness (humane and humanitarian costs) onto a finance spreadsheet. As it stands now (often by law), most investor dollars by and for corporations must be directed to monetary ROIs (Returns on Investments), not socio-cultural outcomes. Failing to do so could constitute fiduciary fraud (seriously). If Impact Investing ruled the finance roost, considerations of the wider benefits and costs of placing money would be more equality factored in -- no small boat to be riding.

Qualitative Economics, on the other hand, takes similar considerations to broader degrees of economic interactivity. It (as a much newer viewpoint) extends a similar reach across virtually all the layers of capitalism, possibly communism, and definitely deep into a living and breathing democratic socialism.

Yet we hear so little (or actually nothing) of these important, nay, these Earth-saving conceptualizations by those fighting to guide us into the smarter, more balanced future that is around the bend. 

Why might this be? Is it because they don’t get it or because they fear we won’t? Either way campaigns pretty much ensure that we won't know and will thus have to head blindly into whatever lies ahead.

And you thought the tRUMP was the only scary factor!