For years, economists and others have tried to avoid the question of what a just and fair distribution of wealth would look like by holding tight to the tacit assumption of unlimited exponential growth of both the US economy and the global economy. This is not only the worldview of trickle-down economics or of the American Right. It is also the worldview of poverty alleviation strategies (from the individual to international development) that rely on theories of change that move people up the economic ladder through asset-building – as if all people can eventually become middle-class, or all countries can eventually consume as much per capita as the United States. Even those strenuously arguing that we must change how we are cutting the pie slices rarely question the need for (or the ability of) the overall pie to grow. Yet the protracted global economic downturn must give us pause to at least ask, “What happens if the pie cannot grow? What happens if the pie must shrink?” What would justice and equity look like in a global economy that must go through a long and deep contraction? What if that contraction, in fact, is permanent?