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As the subtitle of her new book suggests, Mazzucato aims to distinguish value creators from value extractors. This distinction between making and taking, between earning and deserving, between rent-seeking and value-contributing, is posited as crucial, yet it can no longer be made from within the paradigm of neoclassical economics, which has defined the distinction out of existence. Mazzucato shows this was not always so: classical economists did make the distinction, as did preceding economic schools such as the Physiocrats. This, however, is not a purely intellectual exercise; Mazzucato seeks to influence public debate, stating that "only by debunking ideas about value … can a long-lasting solution be found" (213), the problem being that what the financial sector, pharmaceutical companies, and national account statisticians call 'value creation' is in fact typically the opposite.

At least since the publication of 'Rules rather than discretion' by Nobel Prize winners Kydland and Prescott (1977), an undisputed principle in monetary economics is that central bankers should be politically independent. Politicians have an electoral incentive to jack-up the money supply to finance programmes the electorate favours, ignoring the inflation this will result in. Monetary policy is therefore best separated from fiscal policy, leaving the latter to politicians, while entrusting the former to central bankers, whose sole calling is to ensure moderate inflation and financial stability by determining the conditions (i.e., interest rate and collateral) under which private banks can borrow from the central bank. Although central banks' independence might be undemocratic, it is nonetheless in the long-run interest of the citizenry.