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Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

nytimes.com

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Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#111

Post by aaomidi »

TheCowboy wrote: post #98
aaomidi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn’t a single person though. How about the ones that are actively wanting wage labor to keep going so they can keep getting richer? I do legitimately wonder, after you’ve earned your first few hundred million, why tf do you keep going.

We are likely considered 'the elites' by wage labor. Even though neither one of us have made a hundred million. There exist many working class people who wanted to get back to normal (polling demonstrates this), or at the very least wanted policies that tried to keep schools open. They also believe the things you're saying make you one of the elites. It's also easier for 'established elites' to want perpetual work-fr…

Arguably what people “want” is also extremely impacted by the “elite”.

The way we consume media and culture is controlled by a very small group of people.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#112

Post by wahnfrieden »

whimsicalism wrote: post #100
dataflow wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really read it to know the relevance, but I think this is the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber...

The author of that article would not know a steelman if it hit them in the face. The "conventional account" of human history they describe is one that I personally have never heard espoused and I am not quite sure if anyone really ever believed. I think I would prefer to read the general source material, I find professional "essayists" often tiresome to read.

“the dawn of everything”, or you can find papers they’ve published

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#113

Post by arecurrence »

moffkalast wrote: post #67
supernovae wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn’t that a 401k? I wish they raised the limits.. it’s woefully inadequate after years of inflation.

Yeah we don't get that one nor Roth IRA in most of Europe. Afaik it's only a USA thing (though on second thought I do think pensions are optional in the UK so they may have a similar system). The main difference between this and a 401k is that the money you pay into it isn't yours and doesn't affect what you get in the end, only your work years fed into some chart determine that. The taxes go directly to current payo…

Canada has similar in the TFSA and RRSP.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#114

Post by caramelcustard »

bergenty wrote: post #103
caramelcustard wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise." which implies that the interviewer and the economist are acting in good faith and are not financially motivated to push certain ideas. "The biggest problem is the rich have created a system in which people's future (retirement) is basically linked to "the market" growing over their lifetime." ah so trade and supply/deman…

What are you smoking? The rich pay capital gains which is way, way less than the average person is paying.

"The latest government data show that in 2018, the top 1% of income earners—those who earned more than $540,000—earned 21% of all U.S. income while paying 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earned 48% of the income and paid 71% of federal income taxes." https://www.heritage.org/taxes/commentary/1-chart-how-much-t...

Nice of you to imply that only "the rich" can buy/sell assets, especially in a post-Gamestop world.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#115

Post by nicodjimenez »

moffkalast wrote: post #88
nicodjimenez wrote: post #20

The only real alternative to growth is decline and eventually death. This is true for companies, individuals, and even countries. I say our obsession with _not_ growing must end!

Well there is another option: finding a balance and keeping it. There's nothing wrong with keeping a replacement level population and producing enough goods for everyone, instead of trying to achieve some kind of maximum output while destroying the landscape around as quickly as possible. Doesn't mean improvements can't be made to quality of life despite that.

In nature, nothing is constant for very long.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#116

Post by mrharrison »

orev wrote: post #93
mrharrison wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's obvious. Growth and innovation go hand and hand. A tug of war between capitalism and socialism is essential for a healthy society that can solve exciting problems via markets. It's not perfect, but the growth model keeps society agile, with many options via startups and market competition. It gives us the toolbelt to solve complex problems quickly. It's challenging to start up industries and mainta…

False Dilemma fallacy: capitalism vs socialism

I didn't say VS, I said a tug of war. Meaning they pull at each other, and play with each other well. Growth and government stability via policy, keeping each other in balance. Too much socialism leads to a central authority with too much power, too much capitalism leads to monopolies with too much power. And yes there is more than capitalism and socialism. But the author was OP was focused on growth and socialist policies.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#117

Post by sangnoir »

Barrin92 wrote: post #81
pm90 wrote: post #24

The pandemic made it clear that elites are ok with mass death and debilitation. It may not be a conspiracy, but people in power simply don’t care. So the logical conclusion is that a lot of the most vulnerable people are going to perish, the hardier ones will hobble by in filthy conditions like what you see in old age homes today (but there will be a gun around if they wanna quickly end their misery). Structural chan…

>The pandemic made it clear that elites are ok with mass death and debilitation I don't know what elites you have in mind but the average Spring Break attendee seemed to be significantly more okay with an uncontrolled pandemic than Bill Gates the few members of the political elite who were okay with it usually happened to be put in their positions of power by the not-so-very-elite section of our democratic electorate…

I see your Bill Gates and raise Musk, Murdoch and whichever billionaire is in meat-packing plants who were all against shutdowns. Let's be honest, (today's) Gates is an outlier among billionaires.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#118

Post by jrochkind1 »

mc32 wrote: post #36
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #8

Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise. The biggest problem is the rich have created a system in which people's future (retirement) is basically linked to "the market" growing over their lifetime. And the hopes that if they get lucky enough with the market they can retire early (or at all). This system of course is built 100% on governments/employers not wanting…

I'm not an economist and don't pretend to be... For thousands of years of our existence, progress was very slow and sometimes we went in reverse in some regions. Economic growth plus innovation resulted in progress and pulled the 99% who were not wealthy out of utter subsistence poverty over the last few hundred years. Also, we cannot grow forever (unless we figure out how to colonize other planets). We have to figur…

> New generations don't have to be richer than the last. We can achieve some maintainable level of comfort and be okay with that.

I think 1950s USA middle-class was probably comfortable enough, certainly it was far far from "utter subsistence poverty" -- if the entire world population can live at 1950s USA middle-class levels, without destroying the ecology that sustains us, we should count ourselves lucky (it's not clear we can).

Note that was without computers, cell phones. It was much more expensive clothing you'd keep until it wore out. Maybe only one car per family (or less) with more public transportation. Fewer airplane flights. Etc.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#119

Post by rr888 »

PeterisP wrote: post #101
rr888 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest problem is the rich have created a system in which people's future (retirement) is basically linked to "the market" growing over their lifetime. Not really, half retired Americans live off Social Security alone, and another big chunk I'm guessing a quarter rely on it. Many others have property, business or keep working. I'm guessing its about 10-20% of Americans really have enough 401k savings to live o…

I don't know much about details of the USA Social Security model, however from what I recall doesn't it effectively require continued economic growth to plausibly be able to pay out what it should without significantly raising the starting age to decrease the number of years it pays out?

There is definitely a problem with people living longer and bulge of baby boomers. There are alternatives to fund this such as raising taxes or debt, but yes likely people will have to work longer if they keep living longer.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#120

Post by bko »

TheCowboy wrote: post #68
pm90 wrote: post #24

The pandemic made it clear that elites are ok with mass death and debilitation. It may not be a conspiracy, but people in power simply don’t care. So the logical conclusion is that a lot of the most vulnerable people are going to perish, the hardier ones will hobble by in filthy conditions like what you see in old age homes today (but there will be a gun around if they wanna quickly end their misery). Structural chan…

I really wish posters on HN would be forced to specify who they are talking about when they say "the elites" because it's often so vague as to be meaningless grandstanding and allows people to engage in goalpost shifting. No one can even have a meaningful interaction with this comment. It's also trivial to come up with 'elites' who were not okay with mass death and debilitation.

Elite is a loosely formed group of individuals that has a lot of influence on culture and government. There's concentration everywhere you look. For instance there's 6 companies that control almost all of media [0]. There are 10 companies that own nearly all global food products [1]. Look at ETFs and you'll see they own the majority of all stocks (on behalf of others), but they exert a lot of influence on corporate governance. If you look at the board of directors of any of these firms, you'll see the same people and more importantly the same general thinking.

There really aren't any firebrands or unconventional thinkers, so when someone like Musk came around and wanted to wield control over a tiny sliver of the media, people were freaking out. Think about it, even the former president voiced concern[2]. If you look at political donations of the major influential orgs, they're all highly skewed to D [3]. In fact, if you do donate ($534) to R at a large org (Goldman), you'll risk having some editor in the NYT choose to publish your name and donation which could get you fired [4]. You have to admit, something is weird.

Everywhere you look you'll see the same kind of people saying the same ideas. It's not so much that it's centrally organized. It's just that you wouldn't ascend in any of these organizations without holding completely orthodox views on the topic-du-jur.

[0] https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...

[1] https://www.good.is/money/food-brands-owners

[2] https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3463150-musk-buying-twit...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.in/this-graph-shows-90-political...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/nyregion/donald-trump-nyc...

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