Perhaps its time we admit that growth isn't a requirement to an ever-incrasing quality of life? And investigate the transition to steady state economies?
Who am I kidding, that'll never happen.
Who am I kidding, that'll never happen.
Take that away and it's only a matter of time before things boil over.
Greece will be in a much better position as soon as it exits the Euro.
Growth helps a lot with that problem.
http://countryeconomy.com/gdp/greece
Of course the debt-to-GDP ratio went up accordingly.
That said, I don't want a steady-state economy - not in the long term anyway (i.e. thousands of years). We should not exhaust our resources on Earth, of course, and could do a much better job there, but eventually our species should come to harness the power of galaxies, and that will require economic expansion.
The problem is, to bring everyone up to the 2015 standard of the West's middle class requires a helluva alot of growth.
India’s Economic Growth Hits Four-Year High
http://www.wsj.com/articles/indias-economic-growth-hits-four...
"India’s output growth accelerated to 7.5% last quarter, putting it ahead of China as the world’s fastest-growing large economy."
To be fair, some of the data presented is faked, but it's in the ballpark. It'd be good if India and the developing world were all growing faster, but they're still coming along at a nice clip.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-24804...
You need $30-$40k [depending on where you live in the US] per Adult to be middle class.