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Comment by jomamaxx | Hacker News Reader

"Growth is not a very beneficial situation to be in."

Again this is false.

There are so many financially illiterate people here on Hackernews.

Growth is a great situation to be in. When there is growth - there is money for projects, hospitals, infrastructure etc.

When there is no growth - everything goes out the window, and the first thing to go are longer term things like 'sustainability'.

You want to switch to solar - then you need a lot of 'growth' - why? Because the US cannot function on 40 cents/kwh electricity.

Now - growth by 'adding bodies' - which is where most growth comes from in the West - is bad. Immigration is where 80% of GDP growth comes from and that is definitely a Ponzi scheme.

IF you normalize for growth across US and EU countries, it's much more similar. The US simply imports people to grow the GDP whereas EU does less of that.

So, to your point, measuring GDP/capita would be a good start for 'sustainable growth'.

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As someone else pointed out "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell".

"As someone else pointed out "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell"."

Not really. Cancer cells are destructive.

Growth in and of itself is not.

In some ways - i.e. 'deforestation' - yes.

But almost all medical advances for example amount to 'growth' and almost all of them are 'great'.

Most of the economy is now in services and not things tied directly to 'energy or resource consumption' - ergo, growth is almost entirely positive in the general sense.

'Growth' usually means: better meds, better entertainment, faster and safer travel, more access to education, less poverty, cooler stuff. Usually.

More hours worked, more stress, more environmental destruction.

"More hours worked, more stress, more environmental destruction."

We have been working fewer hours for about 30 years.

You're stressed because your too busy doing to much stuff.

No we haven't been working less hours. Women have been added to the workforce, so we have close to twice as many people working now. Stress is increasing in society generally.

> There are so many financially illiterate people here on Hackernews.

it's people using misappropriated financial terms to describe their social ideologies, even though the financial terms are ideologically neutral. they can be used to describe many different social configurations, not just the ones that currently exist.

I'm financially illiterate, so you'll have to pardon me. But why is growth necessary for spending? If my income is steady at $10,000,000 a year, I have money for projects, hospitals, and infrastructure. No growth, but I do have money.

+ Buying a ticket to ride the bus is 'consumption'. + The gas is 'consumption'. + Buying medical devices, medical equipment, paying for doctors - is all 'consumption'. + Food, clothing, internet, your mobile - it's all 'consumption' + Almost everything you buy is 'consumption' + Consumption drives most of the remaining parts of the economy - so no consumption, no B2B = no economy.

+ You will not have a $100K job of consumers stop buying things, you will have a $1K a year job.

Not sure I'd call myself financially literate, but I do have an MBA and computer science degree for whatever that's worth.

The short answer to that is it's necessary to encourage people to invest. $10,000,0000 is only a meaningful figure if it is spendable ... which means that people want to receive that money and others want to spend it. In order for someone with excess money to spend it, they need to be incentivized to do so. If they get no return on their money, then why would they spend? If on the other hand, they can grow their money by spending it, they will. That's why, for example, a VC would take the risk of spending it on a startup (or someone more risk averse would spend on bonds). If you're just stashing money under your mattress, then the economy comes to a halt. For the most part, people don't need $10,000,000 to live a happy life so the excess money they have will not be spent unless there is a growth opportunity to use it.

Having said that, I agree with many others on here that "growth for the sake of growth" is dangerous and I'd like to see more focus on happiness (rather than money) and sustainability rather than growth. The growth spurt we had in the 20th century is likely not going to be reproduced in this century (the industrial revolution is a rare and unusual event). We need to find some way to keep this world moving forward in a low growth era, but I don't necessarily know how that will happen.

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