A Tree is a Tree: Growthmanship in the Developed World

Maslow's theory is that needs form a hierarchy and that it is necessary to satisfy the lower tiers at some minimum level before any satisfaction accrues at the higher levels. So it is not that self-esteem and self-actualization are achieved via income, it is that they likely cannot be satisfied when a person is hungry and being hounded by bill collectors for satisfying basic human needs.Perhaps you disagree with Maslow, but what he says is not the same thing as saying that self-esteem comes through income. Maslow is saying that sufficient income comes first.

Well you can't just look at the shapes of the lines. You have to look at the values those lines represent.They tell the same story in every case: Once well-being rises into that 100 to 130 range further economic growth in and of itself does not improve well-being.In the cases where well-being has surged upward there is always a non-growthism explanation. (Indeed, we see the UK's surge happening during a slow-down in growth, so growth obviously cannot explain it.)Thailand is interesting, because we see it's well-being often increase without similar degrees of increased economic growth.Which is what prompted me to point out that:

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Jon in Message 20:

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GDP has been rising steadily in all of these countries, while well-being has been doing its own thing.

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Economic growth for the sake of economic growth doesn't increase well-being.

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And I believe this supports my assertion that: Increased growth no longer leads to increased well-being. When the relationship between them cannot be demonstrated beyond a certain point, then it is safe to claim that increasing one does not increase the other (beyond that certain point).I think there's a really good reason for this, of course, and it has to do with some of the economic principals I've mentioned, such as marginal utility and marginal returns. It is almost certain that there is a given level of underdevelopment under which any form of economic growth appears to boost well-being. But once that level is reached, the growth must be targeted to continue to raise well-being, and even when targeted, it cannot increase well-being at the same rate as before.Whether this line exists by necessity or whether it has something to do with the nature of production in underdeveloped economies (for example, they focus on providing high-demand goods such as clothes, food, etc. first, and so it may be that even then growth for growth's sake is not helpful.)Anyway, cases such as the UK might very well demonstrate that there is room for substantial improvements in well-being, but the rest of the evidence tells us that simple economic growth like the kind pushed on us by policy makers and economists (i.e., growth for growth's sake) is not the way to get us there.Growthism is dead. It's time for the coroner to sign the papers. I disagree that policy makers are well aware of this. In fact, I think part of our system's lock-in with growthism stems from the fact that up to a certain point of development growthism isn't actually all that bad of a strategy.Some folks just can't tear themselves away from that notion and continue to believe that just because growth used to raise well-being it always will.This article shows how devoted people are to growthism: Eurozone Pins Hope on Long Awaited Economic ReboundOf course these kinds of things do give one hope: Beyond GDP from the European CommissionIt does measure stuff, including GDP (which might explain some of the trends). It also tries to account for all sorts of things related to well being, such as health care, environment, etc.

Well I wasn't debating Maslow; I was debating Tangle.So...

Nevertheless, it's a researched and proven fact that employment has many benefits from health to self-esteem and the lack of a job creates economic hardship and depression - do I really have to google all this to provide the evidence? People who retire with nothing else to do, tend to die early and those that find other occupations like volunteering and hobbies that occupy them live longer and more contedly.We're gradually replacing the dangerous, labourious and degrading jobs with more humane ones, with employment laws to protect against the worst abuses. Liberal societies pay pensions, reduce working hours, and have minimum pay laws. These things are only possible through economice growth. There are many people who do not wish to give up their jobs. It's a common experience for people not to want to retire. But it depends on the individual and the job. Some jobs are just crap and we need to find ways of getting rid of them - which is why we invent better coffee machines. But the only way we can do this is to have economic growth. It pays for the things that we need and value - hospitals, roads, educations, parks, holidays, art, - whatever you can think of. Without it we'd still be in caves. It also improves our wellbeing.

Exactly. Outside of an economic system that hangs the ability to survive on the performance of work, a job offers no benefits not offered by volunteering or hobbies.And people who don't have to work to survive don't actually sit around depressed questioning their worth. Instead, they devote their time and energies to activities that maximize their sense of self worth.A world that works on 100% unemployment is not the world of misery and depression that you suppose it to be. Instead, it is a world of high self-esteem and maximized perceptions of self worth. Where people choose how their time will be spent and can choose to spend it in the way that maximizes its value to them.

This appears to be a meaning you've imposed on the data, rather than one that's there. Chile's GPI does seem to match the trends in GDP very well, for example, but with the swings more huge. The GDI estimate ends in the 90s, so we can't see if the big subsequent rise in GDP would have matched a GPI increase. But I don't think it would be useful to do so. For most countries there isn't much of a noticeable connection between the measures.You've dedicated most of your reply to the idea that GDP doesn't necessarily result in increased wellbeing, which is strange, because I'm not disputing that. What I'm disputing is whether this study is of any relevance to the question, and that you only address in passing: Stuff is measured in the process of calculating GPI, but this is not the same thing as GPI measuring something. You can't just meaaure a bunch of things and then tell me what the resulting index is; you need to find a way of expressing all these things in the same units, and then you have to decide how to weight the different concepts. Changing the weights, and changing the ways you quantise them, will completely change the relative measures for different countries at different times, whilst changing nothing about the underlying data, which means these numbers are somewhat arbitrary.This is compounded in a study like Kubiszewski's, which is a metastudy combining estimates for different countries which used different measures to gather data and different ways of putting it all together. She does acknowledge this, but handwaves the problem away with the unsupported assertion that they're probably finding a similar result. I find it deeply questionable that at no point does the article even acknowledge the fact that both before and after the dramatic collapse and recovery around the time of the 1989 revolution, Poland has a GPI much more than double that ever acheived by any country at any point - more than five times that ever acheived by the US.Bluntly, these different studies are clearly not measuring the same thing as each other, and combining them in some sort of meta-analysis produces a meaningless result. The same thing applies to the concept of GPI, and unfortunately several other measurements of 'well-being'. Combining different measurements together in an index gives you a number which changes dramatically depending on the arbitrary decisions you make as to weightings and how to make incommensurate numbers make sense on the same scale, and the final product is not really a measure of anything.Again, I'm not disputing your general point; just pointing out that this article is not foolproof, objective evidence. On the contrary, I'd say it's devoid of meaning. I haven't looked at the others yet.

Er, you've conveniently forgotten the fact that work PAYS. It pays so that you can have the comforts of feeding your family, paying for health care and buying that car you've always wanted. Once you're financially secure with a guaranteed income, you can afford the luxury of persuing your hobbies. I don't know how to respond to that - it's pure fantasy; you've been reading too much science fiction.

You seem to be missing Jon's point. He hasn't forgotten that work pays - he's arguing that's the only reason we do it, which point you don't seem to disagree with. The idea is to decouple work from income - that's the basis of the guaranteed minimum income idea the Greens have campaigned for for a while. Admttedly, I'm a bit dubious about how this could work in practice, but the benefits of full employment stems from the fact that this is how people pay for things.

I certainly am. Someone has to produce something. I don't agree that it's the only reason that we do it. It's far more complicated than that. Some jobs are done for reasons of vocation, desire to improve society, the need to understand how things work and so on. Even some undeniably awful jobs - such as coal mining - seem to have built complex reasons for people to want to do it; stuff like solidarity, community, tradition and so on.The test is whether an individual would work if they were paid the same not to do it. I don't doubt that most wouldn't. But they would most likely do something else - if they simply slumped in front of the TV, the evidence is they would not feel fullfilled or happy. But someone has to produce. Therin lies the fantasy. We've seen variants of that ideal in communism - human nature intervenes. We're stuck with capitalism for a few more generations yet.

GPI in Chile goes up and down, with a flat line average at roughly the 125 mark. It does not trend with GDP. That was my point . Is there an alternative measure of well-being you'd rather we use?There are subjective components to well-being, so there will always be some means to manipulate the graphs a little, but unless you are arguing that all the measures used (which, beside GPI include, in the U.S. for example: HDI, ecological footprint, life satisfaction, and biological carrying capacity) are similarly biased, the trend that I argued for initiallythat in spite of ever increasing economic growth, well-being hasn't increased since around the 1970sseems supported by the charts.Now I know that you don't need convincing, but since you find this source I've presented unworthy, would you care to elaborate on what types of evidence you would consider proof?In fact, since you more or less agree with my general point, perhaps you can tell us some of the evidence that personally led you in that direction.If you want to... I don't mean to zap up more of your time, especially since you've clearly done the work of understanding my arguments and providing thoughtful replies.

Why? Someone doesn't have to haul in ice to keep the meat cool.An ideal society is one where all production is mechanized to the point that the labor required (pushing a button to get your meal, for example) is negligible.Is that ideal one we can get to? Probably not, at least not with our current technology, but a rational economic model should move us toward the ideal and not further from it (or worse, hold up the antithesis of the ideal as being ideal). And people can still do those things in a world of 100% unemployment. And people who want to mine coal can still mine coal in a world of 100% unemployment. It's a fantasy because we still live in a world where human labor is a required input in maintaining standards of living. However, it is equally a fantasy to believe we must always live in a world that requires 40 hrs of labor a week from every able bodied person despite the lack of a link between that labor and any real improvement in well-being.

Remember the lotus-eaters?

So now we're discussing sci-fi fantasies? Fine. When the world has economic homogeneity, class is no more, poverty, criminality and disadvantage gone, disease cured, envy, greed and ambition are no more and man wishes all men well, then sure, paid jobs are an anachronism.Meanwhile democratic, regulated capitalism, plueralism and economic growth are what improves man's lot here on planet real.

Then you can present evidence showing that the economic growth in the last several decades has improved 'man's lot'.This is, after all, the only thing that's really required of you.Without such evidence, then the question as to whether or not our societies should continue devoting resources to increasing economic growth can only rationally be answered with a 'no'.

Why is it important that I disprove your staw man? If it could be proven that the subjective opinion of the first world countries was that people still feel somewhat dissatisfied, sometimes, in some countries - why would it matter? The fact is that most people in first world countries are already pretty damn happy and those that aren't have aright to be.We could also show that regardless of subjective assessments over short timeframes and with such dubious measurements, objective benefits have accrued - such as increased life expectancies, lower child deaths, less discrimination, better treatment of the disabled and so on.Where we seem to be making less progress is in equalising wealth and opportunity which is not a function of growth but one of political and societal will - a completely different issue.Then, of course, you would like to forget the aid that growth provides to the developing world.