When American consumers can’t—or won’t—borrow to purchase the goods and services they’ve come to consider part of their standard of living, how does the economy get back on its feet?

The answer lies in consumers following the example of corporations—that is, becoming more efficient. The reaction to extended leverage and foolish borrowing isn’t to stop consuming and buying; it is to consume and buy more intelligently. That’s what the Rentership Society is all about. And it starts at home.

Ashenfelter comes up with a clever way to measure wage growth, or purchasing power parity, across the globe. By recording wages and Big Mac prices over time, he computes how many Big Macs one can buy on an hour’s salary in the U.S. vs. Western Europe vs. the developing world. Tracking Big-Macs-per-hours-worked, he says, should tell us who’s really rich, who’s getting rich, and who’s not.

And, as it turns out, Big Macs and McWages explain three of the most important ideas in international economics: (1) The Rise of the West; (2) The Rise of the Rest; and (3) The Great Recession.

We need to begin by abandoning the fruitless quest for gainful corporate employment, and instead start working for ourselves and one another. We must stop outsourcing our savings and investments to bankrupt corporations, and instead invest in the people and businesses in our own communities — however we define those. In doing so, we will very quickly create demand for the kinds of networks, supply chains and services that only larger companies can provide. We will give the 1% an opportunity to re-educate themselves, to find a path to success, and — for the first time in centuries — to experience the guilt-free satisfaction of working for a living.