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The Case for Degrowth

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Re: The Case for Degrowth

#121

Post by selestify »

kmeisthax wrote: post #101
imtringued wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine there is a leech stuck on your body sucking blood. You will now have to eat more to replenish the blood. Here is the kicker though, the leech gets bigger as it sucks out more blood out of your body and therefore it will start draining more blood from your body. You go to your doctor and he says take these pills they will make your body grow bigger. As the leech gets bigger you must get bigger which means you…

The problem with the leech analogy is that we can't actually tell what part of society is "the leech". Society and economics can be best described not as a human with a leech on it, but a writhing mass of leeches all sucking each others' blood. In other words, mutual parasitism. What parts of the economy can be "gotten rid of" - as in, the people who run them being socially marginalized or worse - depends solely on w…

Is there a mathematical proof that that is the optimal strategy for zero growth resource economies?

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#122

Post by WalterBright »

cudgy wrote: post #99
satyrnein wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accepting immigrants who desperately want to come is nothing like taking resources by force.

True, but the parent post did not mention use of force. We cannot deny that there is a brain drain in many third world countries that desperately need well trained workers that is accelerated by acceptance of immigrants into developed nations like the US. Who’s going to lead these countries into better governance and economic improvement if all the talent is incentivized to leave their home countries for greener past…

Who's going to lead them - they are. It's up to the citizens of those countries to select the government and policies that do not drive away their brains. Usually that means rejecting socialism.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#123

Post by WalterBright »

pessimizer wrote: post #12
impossiblefork wrote: post #6

The problem with ideas like this is that it takes the ladder away from middle class and the poor. Both need growth in order to improve their conditions, and their place in society exists only because they can produce growth. Without it the power of the wealthy over them would become a weight pressing down with such force that it would intolerable.

The conditions of the middle-class are actually too luxurious. Everybody in the world can't have a suburban lawn. What the middle-class (and the poor) don't have is security . They live in a state of fear that the entire bottom will drop out of their lives if they get fired, or have a heart attack, or any of a million things. Supplying security to people is actually cheaper that what we do now, just as socialized hea…

Free market health care is far cheaper than socialized health care.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#124

Post by ETH_start »

roflyear wrote: post #65
thematrixturtle wrote: post #51

Japan is a living case study of degrowth: GDP has been essentially flat for the past 20 years. The scale below exaggerates small shifts, but it was $4968B in 2000 and $4937B in 2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp On the ground, this has translated into flat or deflating prices (until very recently) and an increasing bifurcation of society into salarymen, with low but stable incomes anchored on jobs-almost-fo…

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

I mean Japan has a much lower crime rate than the US, and no massive opioid epidemic, huge homeless camps in the middle of major cities or elderly Asian people being randomly assaulted on the streets like the US does, so I don't know why it should follow in the footsteps of the US. The US should set an example that others want to follow.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#125

Post by WalterBright »

juve1996 wrote: post #66
nickff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to be willing to trade some level of security for some level of luxury. This is why people take out the largest mortgage they possibly can given their income, and spend money they don't have on cars (which they will take a long time to pay off). These revealed preferences are hard to deny, and it would be quite presumptuous to impose a different trade-off on a plurality/majority of the populace.

What choice do people have? It doesn't make sense to trade anything for security because that security is non-existent anyway. Losing your job & health benefits for much of the middle class would be a death sentence regardless if they bought a 35k car or a 10k beater.

A death sentence? Very few middle class people are at death's door and require constant medical intervention.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#126

Post by ralph84 »

roflyear wrote: post #65
thematrixturtle wrote: post #51

Japan is a living case study of degrowth: GDP has been essentially flat for the past 20 years. The scale below exaggerates small shifts, but it was $4968B in 2000 and $4937B in 2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp On the ground, this has translated into flat or deflating prices (until very recently) and an increasing bifurcation of society into salarymen, with low but stable incomes anchored on jobs-almost-fo…

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

Call it whatever you want but by and large people prefer to live around other people with whom they share the same culture and language. Even in countries with large amounts of immigration people self-segregate to be around people like themselves.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#127

Post by alfor »

roflyear wrote: post #65
thematrixturtle wrote: post #51

Japan is a living case study of degrowth: GDP has been essentially flat for the past 20 years. The scale below exaggerates small shifts, but it was $4968B in 2000 and $4937B in 2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp On the ground, this has translated into flat or deflating prices (until very recently) and an increasing bifurcation of society into salarymen, with low but stable incomes anchored on jobs-almost-fo…

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

We are headed for a massive population collapse everywhere

Countries get richer, people move to small apartments in cities, birth rate drop below replacement.

Japan, China, Europe, Russia.

The US are less bad, people want to go there and the birth rate is not as bad (more suburbia?)

We are headed toward very different times with degrowth all over and a lot of infrastructure to maintain.

Here (Canada) ’we are hiring’ signs are everywhere a lot of places will close soon for lack of workers. Then the government funds will dry up (less income tax) at the moment they need it the most to support the aging population.

Japan is just a bit ahead of the rest of us.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#128

Post by jay80 »

flaque wrote: post #68

Here's a few cases against degrowth: - https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-... - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-23/econom... The TL;DR is "the idea that economic growth requires growth in resource use is false; rich countries have started to grow while using less and less of the planet’s most important resources."

Not really, they are just outsourcing resource intensive manufacturing processes to developing countries and then reimport the finished products thereby making it appear they achieve their growth by using less resources.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#129

Post by smcf »

roflyear wrote: post #65
thematrixturtle wrote: post #51

Japan is a living case study of degrowth: GDP has been essentially flat for the past 20 years. The scale below exaggerates small shifts, but it was $4968B in 2000 and $4937B in 2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp On the ground, this has translated into flat or deflating prices (until very recently) and an increasing bifurcation of society into salarymen, with low but stable incomes anchored on jobs-almost-fo…

There is an obvious way out. Increase immigration. The US does this well. Why doesn't Japan? Because of racism and xenophobia. No one talks about it (wouldn't be surprised if I got downvoted for mentioning it) but Japan is mad racist. They do not like foreigners.

I see this stated often, but it doesn't seem right to me. Almost any professional with a job offer from a Japanese company can get a work visa. Incoming software developers (and other in-demand workers) can probably rack up enough points to qualify as an HSFP/高度人材 and get permanent residence after 5 years. With enough points you can get it in one.

Meanwhile in the US, H1B issuance is not only more onerous but only accepts some 30-40% of applicants last I checked. And this is the "specialty occupation" visa for skilled workers! Japan really seems like the easier country to immigrate to from what I've seen.

Re: The Case for Degrowth

#130

Post by DubiousPusher »

WalterBright wrote: post #123
pessimizer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conditions of the middle-class are actually too luxurious. Everybody in the world can't have a suburban lawn. What the middle-class (and the poor) don't have is security . They live in a state of fear that the entire bottom will drop out of their lives if they get fired, or have a heart attack, or any of a million things. Supplying security to people is actually cheaper that what we do now, just as socialized hea…

Free market health care is far cheaper than socialized health care.

I'm not sure there's an advanced "free market" bealthcare system in the world we can use to even make that comparison.
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