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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

#121

Post by prichino »

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…

The problem is when a civilization stops providing ways for its inhabitants to keep winning inside of it, the civilization collapses. In Western civilization, if there is no growth, how will you motivate people to keep working? The only thing left is to steal from the people who already have things.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#122

Post by narrator »

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.

I think the WEF (World Economic Forum) is who I think of when I think of "the elites.". They have Xi Jinping give key notes and most recently had Henry Kissinger debate Soros over what to do with Ukraine at their annual private jet fueled get together in Davos. Many major government leaders like Trudeau are listed on their website as "WEF Young Global Leaders.". Vladimir Putin was even in there, but his page got deleted when the Ukraine war started.

I struggled through Klaus Schwab's "Covid-19: The Great Reset." Klaus talks about Degrowth as a future economic model. He also talks about the Doughnut which is the gap between abject poverty and the limits of the Earth's resources as determined by earth system scientists that everyone must live between. He also says that workers will not be advantaged due to large numbers of them dying during COVID as they were advantaged after the bubonic plague because they will be replaced with automation. I'll say that none of their programs and goals would be benefited by there being more people around.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#123

Post by chobeat »

uhuruity wrote: post #82

As someone with a graduate degree in economics: often when people think about 'growth' in a negative light, they're imagining an ever increasing use of resources to produce more output. But the desirable type of growth (in the economic discipline) is generally Total Factor Productivity growth: (very) roughly speaking, being able to produce more output with the same input. This is basically akin to technological progr…

under capitalism, this simply doesn't happen. More efficiency due to automation or other factors always result in constant hours worked, resources exploited more efficiently, humans squeezed harder and less worker's autonomy.

Any reduction in the work time was won by unions and as soon as they were destroyed, we got stuck with the 40 hours workweek.

Your narrative worked maybe one century ago: now the world is on fucking fire and everybody is in therapy. Nobody believes this stuff anymore.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#125

Post by orwin »

caramelcustard wrote: post #114
bergenty wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Now, add VAT to income taxes, and change the referential. Top 1% gives back X% of their income as taxes, top10% gives back Y%. If Y>X, you have inequality issues.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#126

Post by seoaeu »

gryn wrote: post #87
ekkeke wrote: post #71

Can someone explain to me why we can't keep growing until the death of the sun? Growth doesn't mean more materials or natural resources necessarily, a microprocessor uses some of the cheapest and most abundant materials and uses less of them now than before. Why might we not continue to find new designs and discoveries that allow us to make ever more efficient and complex objexts, that in turn are worth continually m…

sure the end result (microprocessor) don't use too much resources, but the process that produces it does. you can keep improving but a point you reach physical and economist limit that you just can't outrun. the second thing economist usually talk about a growth in profit, and that can't always go up.

“There exists a limit to growth” and “we are remotely close to hitting the limit” are vastly different claims.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#127

Post by marcell »

Author's premise is wrong.

Once growth ends, the pie isn't growing. Pie not growing means the focus becomes dividing the pie. Dividing the pie means endless infighting, politics, and anger in a society. This may work in certain societies, but it will never work in America.

Second, a growth-oriented society will naturally outgrow and overtake a non-growth oriented society, by definition. Societies choosing low growth will fall to the side.

Third, you need an outlet for people in society who are entrepreneurial. Steve Jobs starting Apple is the exact same mindset as a punk kid spraying grafitti on a billboard. It's just a different implementation ambition and rule breaking. If you impose a non-growth mindset on society, what will all the glorified "crazy ones" [1] do? Nothing good.

The answer, of course, is space exploration. Elon Musk has talked about this in detail many times: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1544720926020968453

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4NS2zdrZc

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#128

Post by seibelj »

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…

You can have endless growth as long as productivity is increasing faster than population loss. Increasing productivity needs technological advancement. Alternatively we can stem the tide of population loss by having humans live longer, or by waiting for the current generation of non-breeders to die off allowing the breeders’ children to reproduce. Likely they are more genetically predisposed to reproduction.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#129

Post by dionidium »

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…

> Honestly I think this is obvious to anyone who is not financially motivated to think otherwise.

The problem here is that there's no grand conspiracy to pursue growth. People make the individual decision to pursue growth because of the individual benefits.

Re: Pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end

#130

Post by nostromo »

Ok, but...

You better get used to higher taxes when you're of working age. And you better get used to reduced Social Security payments. Because these things rely on growth.

You better get used to a flat stock market. If you want to live off your investments when you're old -- you're going to have to save a whole lot more.

Growth helps governments inflate away their (very large) debts. In a static economy, this won't work -- so you better get ready to pay off all that money our government has borrowed.

People are not "obsessed" with growth -- growth is built into our economy in a fundamental way -- and ending growth would be extremely painful to regular people.

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