Publications
Prosperity without Growth? - The transition to a sustainable economy
| Date: | 30/03/2009 |
|---|---|
| Classification: | Economics |
| Document type: | SDC Reports & Papers |
| Rating: |  (23 reviews) |
| Download: |  prosperity_without_growth_report.pdf - 3045 KB |
| Summary: | Prosperity Without Growth? says that the current global recession should be the occasion to forge a new economic system equipped to avoid the shocks and negative impacts associated with our reliance on growth. Ahead of the G20 Summit in London, the report calls on leaders to adopt a 12-step plan to make the transition to a fair, sustainable, low-carbon economy. » Have your say in our forum! |
Your comments
 | I enjoyed reading this report, however, believe its mesage is, sadly, an illusion. On a positive note, I was interested to learn that economic growth is necessary to deal with debt. This is commonsense on reflection. Having a mortgage in nominal terms works for me because I have an expectation of salary growth over time, and of rising property values (and thanks to incremental price inflation). But the main issue I have is that the concept of prosperity without growth smacks rather of social engineering. What's missing in the world is a benevolent omnipotent dictator is wyhat this report seems to be saying. No wonder it has had so little pick up from governments. At one time the tourism boom in the Himalayas led to local Nepalis increasingly being able to buying TVs from the sale of eggs. Their nutrition suffered as a result. Are the report writers going to go to Nepal and tell them that materialism is bad, when we all have TV sets ourselves? Of course not.(Actually I don't own a TV but that's just because there is so little worth seeing on free-to-air TV in New Zealand.) Foreign aid to Ethiopia in the 1990s fuelled civil war rather than prosperity. Are we going to help other countries and tell them not to be greedy or materialistic? Again, of course we aren't. Sadly, this report which is about how the world should be, as opposed to how the world really is, reads as lofty and sentimental nonsense - that said, still enjoyed it. |
| Why is it that this think-tank report is not being trumpeted in all the newspapers and taken up by every serious political party as a workable way forward? (particularly in the updated form of the book of the same name)? seems common sense to me, whatever the naysayers say. |
| I decided to read the report after seeing Tim Jackson on TV debating. The man has brilliant arguments, and it's puzzling why under the recent crisis and situation that more do not take his report under serious consideration. |
 | An excellent report, to which I'd give five stars but for a few omissions, among them: (i) In Chapter 6, the discussion of the "circular flow of the economy," and in particular the role of investment, neglects the impact of the financial economy on the real one (@61-62). In particular, the description of how share prices impact a firm's investment in labor productivity reads like an economics textbook fairy tale. Any given firm sells new shares relatively infrequently, while speculators trade shares back and forth daily. At least in the US, the practice of awarding stock options to top management aligns their interests with the speculator class. Many management decisions are taken because of their expected impact on share price; the reason for this is more often individuals’ self-interest than because the firm is in imminent need of raising capital. And unfortunately, a preferred way to increase productivity is to make employees redundant, since this usually causes an upward spike in share price (again, at least on US markets). (ii) In the arguments against "decoupling," the argument about happiness, etc., GDP is reified, when it actually is a highly negotiated and manipulable quantity. Governments continually re-define how they calculate GDP, and firms (and their chartered accountants) continually re-define the micro-data that go into those calculations. This makes the true content of GDP figures, as well as inter-country comparisons, highly opaque. It also makes reliance on quantities like CO2 intensity, and others measured per unit of GDP, highly suspect. Some attention to the insights of the French "economy of conventions" school would have helped in this regard. (iii) Most importantly, the proposed solutions don't sufficiently emphasize the political dimension. "Governance" is not politics, it is a way of killing politics by assuming that all sets of opposing interests can be reconciled through compromise, suitable procedures and deference to experts. See, e.g., the writings of Pierre Rosanvallon and Philippe Moreau Defarges about the need to re-politicize politics in many Western countries. The priority given in the report to developing a new form of macroeconomics is another illustration of this orientation towards expertise. |
| Congratulations on a realistic and balanced report. I am delighted to have read this, as in about 100 pages it covers everything that needs to be said on the subject. It recognises that endless growth is a ridiculous notion, but at the same time recognises the very real and valid driving forces behind consumerism. Consequently the endless rants about us all consuming too much can now be laid to rest. I no longer need to read or write anything further on the subject. It now seems clear that the economists should take up the challenge of coming up with a steady state economic model that works. The one question I have: as a fully paid-up government think tank, when are you expecting this thinking to actually have any effect on government? It is clear that so far no one in power is taking this seriously. Now that you have the report, who is reading it and what are they doing about it? Shouldn't the report be published in paperback and sold through the normal book channels? Where is the media campaign? I can't help thinking that this is going to remain tucked away in a corner of the web and only discovered by the motivated and impotent few. |
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