What Would a Well-Being Economy Look Like? Reimagining It Through Poetry, Stories, and More

The economy is not an abstract machine or a set of growth charts—it is the everyday system that shapes how we spend our time, care for one another, and show up for our families and communities. When GDP growth or wealth maximization become the primary goals, we lose sight of the real purpose of economic life: enabling people to thrive on a healthy planet. 

A well-being economy asks a different question: not how much the economy is growing, but whether it is creating the conditions for lives that feel whole, meaningful, and worth living.

So what would it take to design economic systems that truly serve our shared well-being?

For New America’s family economic security and well-being portfolio, this question brought together 32 writers to explore what a well-being-centered economy might look and feel like. The cohort was designed as an experiment in how we show up together. We intentionally invited vulnerability, to build trust and encourage generous sharing and feedback on one another’s work. Rather than defaulting to reactivity, quick problem-solving, or ideological debate that permeate many conversations about social change, participants were engaged in long-term reflection and imagination.

Together we explored how the work of shifting economic narratives requires bold imagination, and how moments of crisis can serve as gifts of disruption—interrupting not only dominant cultural stories baked into our collective programming but also the assumptions we carry within ourselves. These themes—time, freedom, and belonging—help us move the economy from abstraction to something more intimate, lived, and fully human. And they give us a framework for exploring how we might actively craft an economic life that values creativity, care for ourselves and others, and our collective well-being.

Below is a gripping poem from a member of our cohort, Nairuti Shastry, titled “On Thin ICE”—the first of three pieces we will share from this group’s writing on more vibrant, people-centered economies. As the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) dangerous activities intensify nationwide, debates over immigration, identity, and freedom have once again moved to the forefront. National organizations, like ReFrame, along with their local counterparts such as LUCE in Massachusetts, are working to reframe how America views immigrants and immigration.

In the poem, Shastry uses the extended metaphor of a frozen lake to expose the divisive “good” and “bad” immigrant narrative and the tensions and contradictions it fuels within immigrant communities. She challenges the false binary of “innocent” versus “criminal,” and calls for solidarity across all non-white communities in the United States. For, in the end, aren’t we all immigrants?

—Elizabeth Garlow

“On Thin ICE: Negotiating Belonging in Trump’s America,” by Nairuti Shastry

Have you ever
fallen into
a frozen lake? 

Deep in the woods,
engulfed by towering pines,
a layer of ICE
seemingly thick,
fortified,
separating the underworld
from the heavens
perched delicately
above. 

I have. 

It feels
illegal—
this breaching
of two worlds,
as if one
was never meant to know
the Other. 

Above:
the sky, the trees, and me—
all aglow,
bathing blissfully
in the white light
of the sun.

Below:
the algae, the fish, and you—
suffocating in darkness,
in a wasteland
of a dream deferred. 

You, me,
all amnesiacs,
hypothermic with
snowed-in,
numbed out
hearts,
because how else
does one survive
the cold? 

Before the breach,
there I was floating
as carefree as
the mountain chickadee—
the precarity of the ICE
unbeknownst to her,
for she could fly. 

My wings forgone,
it wasn’t until
I pierced through
that I became aware
of my legs,
how deceptively grounded they could be
on thin ICE. 

All that ever truly separated
me from you—
us—
was paper thin.
For what is ICE
besides a frozen layer
of the same water
in which the Devil swims?

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