(Notwithstanding transitionary points like "but this other country is still growing and will displace things," and "but who will take care of those decaying cities," etc)
There's plenty of room at the bottom, the sky's the limit, etc, etc. Technological improvement is the main (arguably only) long-term driver of growth and there's every indication that we're nowhere near done tapping what's available. Energy consumption per capita in the United States has been trending down for decades now. The "infinite grown in a finite world" criticism of economic growth may have merit thousands of years from now, but it certainly has no merit today.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.PCAP.KG.OE?locat...
Though, OP, there are geopolitical issues with this, as Australia was extremely close to discovering in 1941. That's why Australia opened its immigration policy.
Because there are more people who'd like their children to live a better life than them; than who'd like the opposite.
And while some of that will be intangible things like good friends and a feeling of community, some of it will be things like education, dental services, high speed internet, and working fewer hours - things that cost money.
A politician who can promise growth can promise a better life for rich and poor alike. That's a much easier message to sell than a zero-sum policy.
In a pyramid scheme, it is required.
In a "greater fool" scheme, it is required.
In a political campaign, it is required because it provides a justification for lowering taxes.
However even if we except your premise that an increased GDP will help to fulfill this is highly doubtful. A increased GDP can (and does) very well decrease quality of life. Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants.
In fact one of the reasons why the US has been so successful at increasing GDP is that the population has an increasingly unhealthy livestyle.
For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true; compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US).
Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at some stage should require evidence.
>Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants.
Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.
> For evidence, look at the average savings rate in developed countries. It wants were limited, it would be higher. It's also the case that savings rate doesn't increase as income increase (in fact the inverse is often true; compare savings rates in poorer China and Indian to the US).
That's a giant leap, to get from savings rates decrease in some countries to human wants are unlimited. Moreover, savings rates are quite country dependent (e.g. Germany has very high rates). Might it be that people in the US have been led to believe that they can make up for their unhappyness by buying more things?
> Clearly humans want things; this is the default case. To show this stops at some stage should require evidence.
I can easily think of many people who are quite happy without having more things. So I just falsified your claim. Moreover there is significant research showing that having more things beyond some point does not increase happiness.
> >Traffic accidents, environmental pollution, obesity, divorce all increase GDP, not sure if they fulfill human wants.
> Driving, cheap energy, tasty food and divorce clearly satisfy human wants.
If human wants were limited, we'd expect to see, for any given country, savings rates increasing as incomes increase. We have not seen this, and in fact have seen the opposite (even in America, savings rates now are less than 50 years ago, when Americans were much poorer).
>Moreover, savings rates are quite country dependent (e.g. Germany has very high rates). Might it be that people in the US have been led to believe that they can make up for their unhappyness by buying more things?
Someone could just as easily suggest that German savings rates are too high because Germans are too fearful about the future so they save more. There's no objectively correct savings rate, so we can't say one country's rate is better than the other's.
>I can easily think of many people who are quite happy without having more things. So I just falsified your claim.
My claim is that "human wants" are unlimited, which does not imply that every human's wants are unlimited. If some people have limited wants, and some don't, we'd still expect the sum of human wants to keep increasing. And savings rates suggest that the majority of people don't have limited wants (or at least have not fulfilled those wants).
>Moreover there is significant research showing that having more things beyond some point does not increase happiness.
We're talking about wants here, not happiness. Who are we to say that somebody can't have what they want just because there's a chance it will make them unhappy?
I think a more fruitful direction would be to distinguish between empty dopamine, and the kind of want that you can look back on and feel like it was aligned with your broader interests.
I don't want to be dismissive, but this is basically page 1 of any Econ 101 book ;-)
As much as we make fun of economists, it's basically the only thing almost every economist out there will agree on.
Sure, some examples of GDP growth are win-win, like the ones you've listed. But those improvements--when discovered--will happen whether or not people have growth as a goal. They're good ideas independently.
But making growth a goal on its own is a good way to wind up with more toll roads, more complexity that requires an industry to help citizens navigate it (e.g. realters, tax preparers), more cases where the consumer's decision making is tampered with (e.g. advertising, the sale of addictive things), and the creation of problems just so there will be a market for solutions thereto (e.g. Hallmark).
These are all cases of GDP growth that I think most of us can agree we'd be better off without.
The point is that measures that limit GDP will generally also limit the rate at which these things occur. An idea by itself is rarely enough: it needs capital to execute. Things that limit the growth of GDP limit the growth of a nation's capital.
Only if people get their hair cut more as a result. If haircuts take less time, become cheaper and people get their hair cut just as often surely GDP would go down. Same for package delivery.
If demand is not saturating your efficiency improvement then you are maybe capturing a bigger piece of the pie but the pie may shrink or grow. Isn't the pie the proper measure? Why are we measuring scoops of pie passing back and forth?
People's preferences for family size in a developed world seems to be providing a much more tangible limit to population growth than resources. People simply don't want to have as many children as it takes to substantially grow population when they're rich enough.
I have one. Productivity gains are mostly granted by energy (AKA bigger machines). W/capita is imo a better approximation to a nation wealth than GPD/capita in socialist countries, but even in the us you can see the strong correlation.
80% of this energy come from fossil fuel, coal and gaz make 60% of world electricity (probably more), and oil for movement. This is the limit to growth.
If the reverse is happening, the economy is contracting, this results in people spending less, which results in the economy contracting more, which results in people loosing jobs, those people have less money to spend etc.
Zero economic growth is unstable the slightest bit of noise will cause it to shift into a contraction. So having economic growth and using the limits to the rate of growth to control how much growth happens is much more stable.
I am sure plenty of people across America and western Europe would tell you their quality of life has gone down in the last 30-40 years (as wages have stagnated) and national inequality has increased in these countries.
I personally believe immigration and globalisation more widely are contributing factors to a wealth redistribution of the middle and working classes of wealthy countries to developing ones.
It's perfectly possible for global inequality to come down while globally local inequality increases. That would be a perfect example of Simpsons paradox - if wealth stratifies in every country you might see this.
That we can't have a nuanced discussion about that without it being shamed as nationalism or racism is dangerous. After all, governments are democratically elected to serve their own people. If they aren't looking after their own citizen's interests are they doing their job? More cynically if you structurally ignore the "proles" then you leave yourself exposed to populism rearing its head.
I don't really have any answers, nor much expertise on these matters but I notice a resoluteness on topics such as GDP which resembles faith more than reason.
I think that one of the issues with this GDP going down, which might not be the same in the US as in the EU, is the redistributive nature of the economy in Europe. Many (most?) social programs are paid for by people currently working and they're paid right away. In other words, you pay for your grandparents' pension, you pay for your neighbour's hospital bill, etc.
A falling GDP due to low fertility often comes with an ageing of the population. Older people usually don't work, usually need more healthcare, etc. Hence there's a growing need of money to redistribute, but less money coming in since there are less young people working.
That's accurate. The main "issue" here is that people live longer, ergo their retirement period is longer. When retirement systems were set up, with the retirement age set to ~65, people lived to be 70. Now they live to be 80, and the retirement age is still at 65.
On the other side: "back in the day", a lot of jobs where quite physical, which made it hard to do them in your 60ies. That's very different today. And of course: productivity gains more than make up for low fertility, we no longer need 30% of the population to work in food production, thanks to automation and modern technology, 1-3% can do the same just fine.