It matters not, which of the main parties you vote for, what media outlet you subscribe to, or even where you work, you are being sold a lie, as have we all for the past 70 years. We have been told that economic growth is the path to happiness, the panacea for all our woes, and thus every policy should ultimately pertain to this goal above all other considerations. Even this week our news was dominated by it, arguments over economic growth fill the headlines, with both parties seeing it as essential to the electoral future. But is growth really worth all this trouble. Is it really the solution, the magic bullet? Not if you want sustainability.
As economist Tim Jackson argues in his book, Prosperity without growth: economics for a finite planet, attempts to create a continually growing economy create two sets of problems. Firstly, they often involve a lot of risk and instability, meaning any growth that does occur is soon followed by a much worse crash. And then, in trying to restart growth, the government adds to the problems with austerity measures, which is ironic given that recent growth figures actually show that Belgium's economy grew 0.7% against the UK's 0.2% and America's 0.3%, because it has no government to implement austerity programmes. The last recession was more or less the result of government endorsed risk taking by 'deregulated' financial centres so as to create more growth. In other words, blind pursuit of growth above all else actually, in the end, damages the economy more than if no growth were pursued at all.
Secondly, this stop start growth causes significant and irresponsible damage to the environment. The top 3 polluters in 2009 were the USA, China and India, or alternatively, the current economic superpower, and the two heirs to the throne, soon to take over. Rainforests are cut down, the atmosphere is ravaged by pollution, the planet heats up and so on, all to fulfil the decadent creed of growth. Yet it is again, completely short sighted as the environmental catastrophes caused will put a full stop to all growth, among other things, that is unless we begin to look at other ways of running our economies.
This is why the Green Party and its kin do not endorse this blind, foolish obsession with economic growth and deregulation. Of course we support capitalism, but a form of capitalism that is engineered to be responsible, sustainable and fair. We see economic prosperity as just one of many goals our society should aim towards, along with social justice and environmental sustainability, rather than just putting all our eggs in the unsustainable basket. Indeed many of the reforms sold as creating a 'free market' have in fact done the opposite, fixing the game for the rich elites and making it hard for smaller economic actors to survive.
Instead we would support a 'steady-state economy', an economy of stable size and stable consumption, and with measures in place to encourage a sustainable level of population. State-led regulation would help ensure that social exploitation was reduced and that individual elements of the economy were kept in check so as to avoid a huge boom in growth, and the inevitable bust afterwards. In this way competition and fairness would also be present in our economy and true meritocracy would emerge. Meanwhile environmental damage could be put under control and then ameliorated through gradual and rational policy-making. Greater emphasis would be placed on the other sources of happiness in our lives, such as our relationship with our fellow humans and the environment. Just because we would have no growth, does not mean no joy.
It is time to end our addiction to economic growth. It can only lead to short term thinking, which will ultimately undermine our society and our environments. David Cameron is right in a way, we should not just measure the good life via economic growth measures like GDP, happiness, the greatest human good, is determined by a variety of factors, not merely wealth and riches. For that is the truly depressing thing about the current growth hegemony; it makes a mockery of humanity, reducing the lives of billions of real people into economic units, dots on a graph, targets for marketing. There is no joy, no virtue, in our current direction. And perhaps, more importantly, no future.
No comments:
Post a Comment