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Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

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Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#61

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

dharma1 wrote: post #10
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's obviously possible. "Just" require prefunding without any growth assumptions. Of course, it would be tremendously expensive and workers would not appreciate the effect on wages.

Imagining zero growth (-2% or so with inflation) and long life spans, I think the numbers would look pretty bad for most people

Zero real growth is 0%, not -2%. -2% would be contraction. Even still, yes, it's pretty bad. People would have to work longer. Assuming kids account for about 25% of consumption during child rearing years, and assuming 40 years of work and 30 years of retirement (i.e. you live to 90), you wouldn't quite have to save 50% of your net, but the fraction would be significant. Many Americans do not have the head room to make the type of sacrifice. But many do and choose not to.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#62

Post by aww_dang »

ericmay wrote: post #40
aww_dang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malthus was proven wrong by productivity gains. England did not starve due to a rising population, but went on to become an industrialized nation. Increased population allows for greater specialization. This only holds true as long as free markets are allowed to operate somewhat unimpeded. Typically the Malthusian position is one that advocates excessive government intervention. When taken to an extreme this can make…

> Increased population allows for greater specialization Can you elaborate on this point w.r.t the OP you’re discussing?

Yes, but it would help if you could be a bit more specific. I fear this reply may be too general.

The post above suggests that we cannot have a sustainable, prosperous growing population. A rising population allows for greater specialization in that the general population can rely on specialists (auto mechanics, computer programmers, bakers, farmers) to handle their respective field of expertise. You do not need to farm wheat to eat bread in a modern society. Bread is lined up waiting for you in the nearest market. You can go online and have your groceries delivered by a truck.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#63

Post by nickik »

ericmay wrote: post #40
aww_dang wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malthus was proven wrong by productivity gains. England did not starve due to a rising population, but went on to become an industrialized nation. Increased population allows for greater specialization. This only holds true as long as free markets are allowed to operate somewhat unimpeded. Typically the Malthusian position is one that advocates excessive government intervention. When taken to an extreme this can make…

> Increased population allows for greater specialization Can you elaborate on this point w.r.t the OP you’re discussing?

His point is that you need less human labor to produce the same amount of stuff. Thus with a growing population you have ever increasing productivity, helping you offset potential negative effects of population.

That is just one of the effect that work together to over and over again prove the 'over-population' crowd wrong.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#64

Post by nickik »

_red wrote: post #2

Debt-based monetary systems will skew towards ever increasing growth.

Any economic system where their is a will to improve lives will skew towards growth.

Debt has been a fundamental part of what allowed our society to even talk on this forum, its crazy to me what it reputation is now.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#65

Post by adolph »

mjburgess wrote: post #46

As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which tend to reduce energy use (per item produced). We consume more energy net because we produce more. If, eg., products became more expensive because of limited energy (or relevant taxing of externalities) then we would grow more slowly -- we can still produce more through in…

You might enjoy or be thinking about this episode of the Econtalk podcast “ Andrew McAfee on More from Less”:

http://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#66

Post by thanatropism »

mech1234 wrote: post #55

Lots of people underestimate the degree to which economic growth fuels good life outcomes for wide swaths of people. -Even though many people live paycheck to paycheck at many different income levels, enough income growth can get you out of a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and enable you to have real financial autonomy. -One thing that has stuck in my mind over the last few years is that one of the worst outcomes of…

More importantly, you can enjoy (maybe exploding inequality moderates this a bit) a rising standard of living while living from paycheck to paycheck.

Growing up I was raised by classical musicians permanently on the bleeding edge of solvency (not with debt either) but new stuff kept coming that increased both their quality of life and ”nonmonetary” productivity: microwave ovens and computers that my dad could use to take his orchestral compositions (in sheet music for all parts) to part sheets (for individual players) automagically whereas this was work before.

We weren’t in the kind of self-reproducing poverty because my parents had a high “cultural level”, but we were definitely cash poor, and yet kept getting wealthier and wealthier.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#67

Post by coldtea »

adolph wrote: post #58
b0rsuk wrote: post #28

Growth is an international arms race. I think the biggest problem is that economic growth gives countries a (military) advantage. If you opt out of growth-based economic system, your neighbors will have more army or resources or manpower. They will eventually invade you or dominate you economically. This is similar to the situation Africans were during Industrial Revolution. Europeans needed a lot of workers for fact…

Perhaps a shorter way to put it is that without growth the allocation of resources is zero sum. In a fixed sized pie any increase for one slice is a decrease for another. This begins a downward spiral since defection rather than cooperation is rewarded.

>Perhaps a shorter way to put it is that without growth the allocation of resources is zero sum.

That's not a problem when there are plentiful resources.

It's also the only option when many resources are not renewable, and this zero-sum themselves.

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#68

Post by paulintrognon »

b0rsuk wrote: post #28

Growth is an international arms race. I think the biggest problem is that economic growth gives countries a (military) advantage. If you opt out of growth-based economic system, your neighbors will have more army or resources or manpower. They will eventually invade you or dominate you economically. This is similar to the situation Africans were during Industrial Revolution. Europeans needed a lot of workers for fact…

> The only country I know that comes close is Switzerland

Another example is Bhutan, which implemeneted Gross National Happiness [1] as their primary goal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#69

Post by ericmay »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #56
ericmay wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a perfect scenario you’d just have people have fewer babies. The issue is that countries want growth at all costs - the incentive is always more, bigger, faster.

> fewer babies That is happening. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate

Yes but is it happening fast enough, and at what level does the population stabilize at?

Re: Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?

#70

Post by coldtea »

merpnderp wrote: post #38
b0rsuk wrote: post #28

Growth is an international arms race. I think the biggest problem is that economic growth gives countries a (military) advantage. If you opt out of growth-based economic system, your neighbors will have more army or resources or manpower. They will eventually invade you or dominate you economically. This is similar to the situation Africans were during Industrial Revolution. Europeans needed a lot of workers for fact…

1% growth difference over 100 years is the difference between the per capita income of the US vs Mexico. So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-science theocracy, people are going to look at countries growing faster than them and wonder why they have to slum it like peasants without their flying cars and vacations o…

>So yes, unless you arbitrarily limit the entire globe to some level of prosperity like a novel about a disutopian world ruled by an evil anti-science theocracy,

I don't see much evil to that (limiting the "the entire globe to some level of prosperity"). Nor it has anything to do with being anti-science. You could be pro-science (pro understanding the world, physics, math, etc), and against continuous growth.

Better that models that treat the environment as externalities, or which convolute and stress the daily life for ever more trinkets to fuel the growth machine...

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