A Tree is a Tree: Growthmanship in the Developed World

How stupid of me, I forgot to check a simple factor in your arguments.From: UKSince 1980 almost all measures of health and "democracy" in the USA, have accrued to the top 0.01% who can afford to buy and sell both at monopoly-level prices. Presently due to privatization, it should soon apply to education as well, regardless of consequences to national or economic security or even Maslow's hierarchy of needs.David Cameron is what you call conservative? He is Bernie Sanders here. In the USA, conservative means a combination of Torquemada and Mussolini.

I've already agreed with you on that - the treatment of native Americans (and native Australians) was and is appalling, but you've ignored everything else I said.

You can't easily transpose political descriptors between countries - for example the word 'liberal' seems to be a swear word in the US. UK conservatives are towards the right of politics but are in no way related to fascists - most of them at least. We do, of course, have our own wingnuts.Economic growth CAN and does continue to improve society and its well-being, even in developed countries - as demonstrated by the Scandanavian economies. The issue, as you point out, is the unequal distribution of that created wealth. That's not an issue for growth, it's an issue for political decision making.

Meanwhile....It might help your case if you could explain how the normal downsides of economic stagnation and recession (negative growth) - unemployment (with its associated human consequences of depression, stress, falling quality of life) reduction in public services (from budget deficits), falling incomes, political instability, bank and business failure and so on - are no longer the problem they were.Recessions have been the enabler of devastating political opportunism - the rise of fascism in Japan and Germany for example.It's really hard to find a good thing to say about lack of growth and unemployment, yet you want both. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

This is a discussion, Tangle, not a Q & A.I've probably put in several hours total writing up posts for this thread and you have effectively ignored everything I've written.I'm more than ready to go back to our unfinished lines of discussion and continue with them, but I won't be engaging further with you until those are resolved.

So, no answer to how the third world survives the first world's decision to destroy their fragile economies and no answer to how the known consequences of no growth and/or recession can be coped with within the first world.It seems that your idea has fallen at the first hurdle.Is there anything else to be said?

In broad philosophical terms, growth for growth's sake is what we call life and life expands to fill it's environment. While it is critical that our growth not exceed our resources it is folly to pursue no growth in the long run. Instead, we need to expand our resource base to allow for growth.Stasis equals death and if we do not expand along with the expanding universe we shall disappear. Where will we be in a 1000 yrs if we don't reach for Mars and Io?

In broad philosophical terms, perhaps. But in economic terms as it relates to developed societies? Perhaps not.Even in the here and now resources are limitedwe are limited in how much lumber we can use, for example, by the land space that can grow trees and by the time it takes trees to grow. Even seemingly unlimited resources, such as sunlight, are limited by our abilities to capture and make use of those resources.The notion that we can expand our resource base to accommodate never ending economic growth is surely the folly.Further folly is the notion that we can infinitely expand our abilities to absorb ever increasing production; we can't. This all makes me think you are talking about 'growth' in terms of technological progress, which is not at all the same as growth in economic terms. Technological progress is important, but it does not require growthism, because as we progress in our making of gadgets that are more and more sophisticated, we regress in our making of gadgets that are less sophisticated.So yes, let's progress. Let's move forward to making things of ever increasing utility. But while we do, we should keep in mind that, as you said, we have a thousand years to figure out a way to Mars; we don't need to burn through all of our resources trying to figure it out today.So, in fact, arguments for technological advancement are arguments against economic growthism, which believes in burning through tomorrow's resources today regardless of any real benefit obtained from doing so.

Jon writes: We could switch to hemp products which can grow back faster than trees, for paper and even particle boards used in housing.But, yes - the population growth is an exponential curve. 3-D or even 11-D Space is polynomial at best and will succumb to exponential growth.

Even with no population growth, continued economic growth is unsustainable.Whether it's using more resources for more people or using more resources per person, the results are the same.I think, however, that the latter scenario is the more disturbing since there is actually a limit to how much benefit we can consume out of resource use and at some point the additional resource use per person becomes waste.

As usual the thread has moved on and left me behind, so I'll just quickly respond to this question: I don't think that GDP and general well being do not necessarily correlate because of any particular evidence - I'd consider it evident from first principles. The classic example is that GDP can up as a result of horrible catastrophes, due to the money spent on repairs. While finding out what GPI was after you first posted about this, I stumbled across some comments made by Simon Kuznetz, the guy who created the GDP measurement, in his testimony to Congress. As he put it:

quote:

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Economic welfare cannot be adequately measured unless the personal distribution of income is known. And no income measurement undertakes to estimate the reverse side of income, that is, the intensity and unpleasantness of effort going into the earning of income. The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined above.

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"Happiness" is a thoroughly subjective situation, so your blanket claim that "economic growth produces happiness" is just foolish.

Now that's a really odd position to take.Firstly the thread is about how economics affects happiness and well-being. If you dismiss the concept out of hand, you need to be arguing with the OP, not me.Secondly, subjective opinions can be, and regularly are, measured and evaluated scientifically and denote trends in society over time.

Trends in society over time aren't necessarily an indication of something that is "necessary" overall. At one time, a newer, bigger fridge meant happiness. At another time, a more environmentally friendly fridge might mean happiness.

Happiness is only part of the well-being picture. The measurements of well-being that have been mentioned so far (GPI, HDI, life satisfaction, ecological footprint, etc.) take into consideration many factors related to living standards, such as access to health care and clean water, food security, etc.These are objectively-measurable, have significant impact on well-being, and are, at least up to a point, directly tied to economic factors such as growth and overall GDP (= the production and consumption of goods/services).