I guess my problem is I assume people are intelligent enough to know certain facts without having to provide a link. I am sure if I stated George W. Bush is president someone would ask for a link to prove it. Wages and benefits far exceed profit in our nations economy. In seems absurd to even debate it.

I will ignore your insults, it is quite sad. It does not matter if there is a straw ceiling, the worker is still better off employed than his alternative, otherwise he would be pursuing that alternative. The fact some individuals growth opportunities are limited does not make them non-existant. The fact an individual has a job is a benefit, regardless of the conditions of that job.

The mere question is "All growth good?" is a bit ridiculous. Whenever you see a question with the word "never" or "all" in it you must be very careful. Obviously, if my wife paid a hit man $10,000 to kill me, and that was reflected in GDP, I would say that small part of GDP growth was a negative. And I am sure you would miss me.

But let us understand the thinking behind this post, that is to adjust GDP growth numbers by subtracting costs imposed by growth. It is totally unneccesary and nothing but a political football. We already have measurements for crime, my theoretical death is counted there. We already have pollution measurements. We already know what them CEOs make. Let us not try to discourage growth.You can call it an appeal to emotion all you wish, but the fact is limiting growth does kill children in the third world.

Of course the United nations Forestry Association reported that acres of forests in North America grew by 10,000,000 acres from 1991-2001. Growth is often a positive for the environment. Even growth with short-term environmental costs can improve the environment in the long-run.

Maybe the Powers that be recognize that to argue the end result of no or low-growth is dead children is not merely an appeal to emotion.And certainly, no more so than the poor guy with the "straw ceiling" who has seen his life improve, but may never acquire CEO status.

What seems "obvious" to you might well seem false to someone else. I could probably come up with ten statements that seemed obvious to me, but with which you'd disagree. Don't assume people come from exactly the same place you do, and make exactly the same assumptions. We're here to debate. If you're not willing to explain things you think are obvious when someone disagrees, as others do for you all the time, perhaps you should be more careful about the claims you make.



To be constructive, a statement must be both true and relevant. The sky's blue, therefore laissez-faire economics sucks. Doesn't work, does it? When someone asks for proof, please try to provide proof, not familiar but irrelevant truisms.



Is he? Twenty years down the road? Is his family? Is his society? Or is it possible that such "growth" is merely trading away long-term real growth for short-term gain? You've mentioned some countries that have (arguably) gone from third-world to first-world status. Did they do that by simply providing labor and raw materials for foreign-owned and foreign-controlled companies? Did the US itself go from being a poor country to being a rich one by submitting to exploitation, or by building internal strength? Selling out to foreigners is like junk food - momentarily satisfying but ultimately bad for you. It's growth in the same sense that people who eat junk food experience growth, but it's not good growth.



Excluded middle. Move on, nothing to see here.



Ever hear of opportunity cost? Ever wonder why indentured servitude is illegal? Slaves have jobs, and that's not considered a benefit. Your "obvious" statement is clearly false.



Nonetheless, that is the debate question. Get over it. Answer it.



"Political football" is a wonderful phrase, but is it constructive? Let's see. Are the people who say not to adjust those numbers not also playing football? Hm. You claim to know something about economics. Surely you would know, if that were true, that most economic numbers are subject to politics regarding definitions, measurement methods, etc. GDP as we know it already represents myriad decisions about what to count and how. What you're suggesting is not really an end to political football, but merely that the game stop when the ball is where you want it.



See previous comments re: relevance.



By what definition of often? Usually? Always? Or only by the definition where in a large enough sample even the less common outcomes occur many times? You post insightful comments often. Saying something occurs often without quantifying, without specifying a frame of reference or comparing to the converse means nothing.

These are the premises that Dingo has asked us to debate.

Don't make me do my "all posts need to be constructive and on-topic" dance, please.

Perhaps we should revive the Sources Please thread in the Comments and Suggestions forum so we don't derail this debate by debating about debating

Now let's get back to the actual debate here.

Jaime, let me restate the question, retaining the substance but making it a little more ordered and succinct. I don't want people to be inhibited by a possible feeling of confusion.

1. Is economic growth necessarily good?
2. Is GDP an adequate standard for measuring economic activity?

Let's take one example to give this some focus. We have two countries with similar numbers of people and a similar standard of living economically. One has a large prison system, the other has a small one. The first one has enjoyed major growth in its prison system in recent years while the other has remained stable.

If we were to focus strictly on prison systems which:

A. Has the greater GDP?

B. Has the greater economic growth?

C. Probably has the more desirable society if the prison system is the only specific quantitative criteria to go on?

Now imagine all the various areas one can extrapolate this approach to, both in goods and services.

I guess I would say that being in prison is undesirable and, all else being the same, I would prefer the country with fewer jailcells to be filled.

On a microeconomic level, increased well being does not always mean greater exchange of money. If it is true on a micro level, this will also be true at a macro level (the collection of all those microeconomics). I know I could always 'make more money' but prefer having more hours in my life to do things which do not necessarily generate income. I would give up income to have more personal freedom, etc. if I perceive I would be better off.

Economic growth is a fairly good indicator of well being. It should not be used as a rationale to do something. It is not an end all. GDP is recognized as a good way of measuring economic growth. If some of the world's learned economists identify a different method to monitor economic growth, it will become a standard. GDP is not currently used as 'the' factor to define our country's well being by any group that I am aware of (it should not be used thus).

Back to A.b.c. of the prison example...

A. Greater GDP? Identical according to your premise.
B. Greater economic growth? Hard to say but probably the same.
C. Which is more desirable? Fewer prisons.

It is a good example where GDP has little to do with where you would be better off.

Yes, the fact is dead people do not have a quality of life. The fact is growth since the industrial revolution has increased life expectancy, and eliminated or dramatically reduced many diseases. It has the relieved hundreds of millions from living on the brink of starvation. It allows 6 billion people to live on this Earth.

There are still hundreds of millions of people who do not have the benefits we take for granted.(Do I neeed a link documenting that?) There is need for much more growth in this world. Let us speak of the quality of life. Who really wants to live in a hut, cook over a wood stove and go down to the river to fetch drinking water. I get tired of camping after three days. Who really wants to have a sick child that they cannot get medicine for.Billions of people live in poverty (Do I need a link to document that?). The history of the post WWII era is poor countries that have made great strides economically have primarily done so through initially exporting goods. Do I need to provide a link as evidence that Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong all initially depended on exporting goods to build their economies. I am going to assume, that people in this debate have come from the same place I am, and recognize how the three countries just mentioned were, and still are to a lesser degree, highly dependent on exports. Why do you think we put economic sanctions on countries such as Cuba and Saddam's Iraq? To hurt their economy, that is why. For the US to decide to limit growth not only would it doom many American's to lives of less satisfaction, it would literally kill third-world citizens.

The contention of the radical environmentalists is that we are sacrificing our environment or our quality of life for material gain. Let me just say there are a lot of people in dire need of material gain. Let me give an example of a low growth area. Since some of you may not be familiar with this information, I think I will provide a source Jan Wong's Red China Blues, published by Doubleday Books, 1997 pg 324.

"At Luo family Village, it was obvious why a eugenics law was needed. 78 villagers, or one out of every three were retarded. Mant suffered from cretinism, a form of mental retardation caused by iodine deficiency in the fetus. Others were dwarf-like and retarded from Kashin-Beck disease, contracted from eating fungus infected grain. Still others had become retarded after drinking water contaminated by heavy metals"

Sounds like a great quality of life. The joys of simple living. Let me continue, if this doesn't strike your heart (appeal to your emotion?) I do not know what will. Same book,next page, same wonderful little village.

"In mid-November I shivered in my down coat. The children in the muddy hamlet wore only rags. Some lacked socks. An elderly woman, hunched over a cane, had an untreated goiter the size of a cantelope. ([I]sounds like my mother-in-law A teen-age girl lay half-naked on the icy ground cramming dirt in her mouth while her retarded mother chuckled. Pigs and sheep and horses defecated into the creek, the only water supply. There was no school,store or clinic."

That did not touch your pre-conversion Grinch heart? Let me continue, same book, same wonderful little village.

"At 45 Zhang De was the only able-bodied person in his family.
" I was so poor I could not afford a dowry" he said,(For some reason it seems to me, I cannot provide a link, that their is arelationship between per capita GDP and women's rights ) explaining he had married a retarded mute (well at least the mute part is good) no one else wanted for a wife. He pointed to his wife, sitting silently in the corner. She was a placid faced woman, with a soiled blue scarf around her head. They had three daughters. Two were retarded mutes like their mother. The third had left home at age 16 to marry..."

I would type more but I can no longer see the keyboard due to the tears welling up in my eyes.

Call it an appeal to emotion, call it an appeal to compassion, but I would argue it is common sense we need a lot more growth in this world and we better take a real hard look at anything that limits it.

Well, i see this thread has a new direction. First I have a question. Is the prison system of one growing, while the other is shrinking due to increased crime in the former? Or tougher sentencing? Or because they are taking criminals in from other states?

Of course what you must also understand is that high crime will negatively effect GDP in many areas. High crime may discourage businesses from entering the area, it may cause property values to stagnate or drop, it may discourage other economic transactions from occurring. Let us imagine a community with no crime. Individuals could leave their goods sitting in the open, leaving the cash register open for individuals to pay cash and collect their own change. Occassionally I still run across a fruit stand that uses this system. You don't see it very often. Crime, as do all attacks on property rights, has a negative effect on GDP growth.

No, no, no.

A. The first country has the greater GDP.
B. The first country has the greater economic growth.

I stacked it that way to make my point. Here's the quote again:



----------------------------



On the contrary, that is part of the problem. GDP is practically a universal standard for determining a countries well being, particular by economists.

--------------------

I guess again to rather grossly make the point in a raw material fashion but include a slightly different twist. Child [A] is a military recruit for a third world paramilitary outfit and has a hand grenade purchased for him. Child [B] is given a baseball for his birthday in a 1st world country.

1. Which child participates in a higher GDP transaction?
2. Which country most likely profits from that higher GDP transaction and is most likely to have it contribute to its economic growth?

first of all, i consider myself an environmentalist, if you would go that far, my sight of it is rather simple. If this ball or rick becomes so destroyed by man as not to be able to support life, what is all of this struggle for or the point anyways, we will all be dead


blame it on agriculture or what not for the giant boom in human population, or the need for structure in a society that lead to economics and the GDP, but with that aside, its hard to say that we live to make a better world, by destroying it. This is not a personal attack, to me it is logic. If you back the gdp, so that the standards of living in this world are raised, at the cost of the "not very important" environment, we all lose. Not just those tree huggers, which i myself dont consider to belong to.

But onto this topic as not to get the local admin on my back, economics is great, its a tool to work with money on a grand scale, it allows machines like the gdp to come about in this reality, but another point is that economic growth is alot of things all rolled into one, i doubt the gdp tells you about new youth based hip-hop trends becomeing a multi million dollar industry for its artists, or stuff of that nature, so economic growth needs to be viewed from a wide array of facets, not just one rather abstract lump sum, though i think the gdp was made for a purpose, i just cant remember it.
baseing your economic plans around boosting the gdp by any means possible i think is a hazard at best, for like a gun, when you pull a trigger the bullet does not come back, no rewind button per say.

Economic growth fed by often cold industrial innovation over the last 500 years is the colonial engine that anihilated entire cultures throughout the 3rd world or turned them into slaves. I would rather see 1 billion people in this world, a life expectancy of 40 and a technological level of an Inca if the various cultures and languages that have been cruely destroyed had been allowed to continue to share their richness with the world.



Many people would far prefer to live that way than live in an urban jungle. I used to go camping for many weeks and was sorry when it would have to end. Not everybody thinks like you Hugo.



There is not a country on this planet that could not be completely self-supporting and at a high level of satisfaction. What is the barrier? Too many people, too much corruption, lack of education, bad environmental policies, the tyranny of outsiders and oversized technologies that make a bad fit.



And if they keep having 9 kids that will probably never change.



Doesn't sound much like simple living to me. Sounds like oversized farms and big industry(heavy metals).




Get some inexpensive low tech iodine and an affective birth control program along with a few rationally thought out public support services and your opportunities for crying will go down exponentially.



It was these people over growing their population to the area they lived in that was the key to the tragedy. Raping the planet to feed that last 9th child means ultimately there won't be any planet to nourish anybodies tears.

You would? Under what conditions? I have argued that growth is no panacea, that for all of its frequent benefits it can also be harmful, I asked many questions in my last post, trying to see if such a counterargument might be forthcoming, but those questions have remained unanswered. The debate question - which has never been "is some growth good?" - has remained unanswered. At this point I must conclude that all of those questions will remain unanswered.

I think we had better take a hard look at anything we do that affects so many people's lives, whether it promotes or limits something we call growth just because there's an increasing dollar figure associated with it, or even if it has no effect on that growth. Responsible people would consider factors other than the merely financial (e.g. GDP); considering these other factors in monetary terms is useful for the sake of being able to compare outcomes, but only a fool would think money and value are fundamentally the same thing. Those poor people in China could as easily be the victims of such thinking as its beneficiaries. Why are they so poor, in a nation that has nukes and the technology to build the world's biggest dam and so on, or in a world where still others consider themselves deprived if they don't have premium cable TV? Quite likely, it's because their government tries to engage in a cold-hearted calculus that fails to account for the non-monetary dimensions of their suffering. All that economic growth in China sure doesn't seem to have helped them, does it? Maybe you were closer to the topic than I thought...unintentionally making my point for me. The fault for the suffering you describe lies with the "economic growth is always good" camp. Don't people who subscribe to that view care about the suffering they cause?

There is absolutely no way you could make that call unless you've actually experienced living in a hut. I don't wish to be condescending, but this is exactly where I start to throw up my hands in exasperation. If you haven’t lived it, you can’t even imagine it, trust me. The fact that you think CAMPING (in America, with American gear and the choice to leave at will, packing it up in a pickup truck and going to the temperature controlled home environment) gives you a taste of it speaks volumes in a way you will probably never know. That's like saying you know what it's like to be a parent, because you've done some babysitting. I had a small taste of that sort of life in Korea for a year. I still had running water, and a store to buy food in. I can't imagine what it would be like elsewhere, where the living standards are much lower (strangely corresponding to lower GDP!).

If you go to www.nationmaster.com, you can create charts and compare the relationship between GDP and such things as availability of running water, health care, deaths at infancy, and percent of population living below the poverty line. Family sizes in areas with high GDP are SMALLER. People are having nine children in indigent areas with low GDP.

Which is the cause and which the effect, or is there a common cause, or is there no causal relationship at all?

GDP is such a flawed figure it's amazing. Are barter, service in lieu, bribes, proceeds from crime, accounted for properly? Certainly not. Rotating money between subsidiaries increases GDP; working for one's own benefit (e.g. most of how farmers' or fishermens' families spend their days) does not. Why has GDP overtaken GNP as the preferred figure of economic merit? Are taxes and regulatory costs counted consistently between nations? Again, certainly not. A certain small contingent of markedly materialist laissez-faire types has won that game of political football, and GDP starts to lose its meaning as one moves away from their "magic hand" assumptions.

Between the two factors addressed by the previous two paragraphs, we're still a long way from being able to say that focusing on GDP growth is a reasonable way to help those poor suffering people. The Chicago-school folks with the fake Nobel prizes had their chance to prove their theories in Chile. They screwed it up. Badly. It's impossible for a rational person to look at those results and consider them a strong argument that laissez-faire types know (or care) what's best for poor countries.

P.S. Yes, I know some of those links are a little conspiracy-theory-ish. They're still thought-provoking, though, and no more deserving of immediate dismissal than some of the "free-market magic" ravings so many accept on faith. Why should one "side" try to be objective when the other is being just as partisan and unscientific as they can?

Albeit eloquent, some of your liberal rantings are offensive and inflammatory. What you are preaching is fallacy. What America needs is a shift to the right, a country bettered by not less government spending on social welfare programs, but NO spending on welfare programs. With the tremendous amount of saved money that would bring, taxes would decrease, our military could strengthen, and we could have a stronger society. Imagine a nation consisting of all productive members of society, having the unproductive members done away with. America would be truely great.

If you feel this is true, report the post. DO NOT detract from the debate by trying to cry the inflammatory wolf.

I apologize, for I am new, and I am still learning the ways of the boards. I am not exactly sure if what platypuse posted was inflammatory, persay, but with his admitted conspiracy theories and liberal rantings, it offended me. I will not report the post, because although I dissent, he is still entitled to his opinion. But thank you for letting me know that reporting a post is a possible alternative.

*Hands fanatical a chill pill*

Being a conservative this offends me. You have to have some form of welfare out there to help those who cannot help themselves. Will the be those who exploit the system? Sure, but you cannot merely let people perish just because they are incapable of work. The job of our government is not only to protect our borders, but to protect the people with-in them. What's the difference between protecting our citizens from a terrorist threat or that of famine?

"Being a conservative this offends me. You have to have some form of welfare out there to help those who cannot help themselves. Will the be those who exploit the system? Sure, but you cannot merely let people perish just because they are incapable of work. The job of our government is not only to protect our borders, but to protect the people with-in them. What's the difference between protecting our citizens from a terrorist threat or that of famine?"

Yes, but like you said, there will be those who exploit the system. This is wrong. And hypothetically if even noone exploited the system, my tax dollars would still be going towards those unproductive members of society. Even if they truely need the money, what compels me to pay for it? And as long as there is going to be welfare, why can't i have it also? To me, if there is going to be welfare we might as well have a communistic society. I may be naive in this regard, as i am only 16, but i am still capable of defending my argument. That is true that the job of our government is to protect our people, but to what extent. I do belive our people should be protected from outside threats such as terrorism, and even famine as you say, but not because the welfare recipients are unwilling to work. That is not famine. That is welfare, and i dissent.

Your views sound like mine when I was very young. I suspect that as you age, get more education, get exposed to differing views, etc. then your views will change. Mine certainly did. Especially when I got away from the narrow views of my parents and a few other relatives. Looking back to the early 60's when I was maturing, I now can say that my relatives were so poorly educated that they were easily manipulated by the politicians of that day.
It is too easy to say cut off all the welfare and let them find a way to survive but the reality is that many of them have had the deck stacked against them from day one. And it still amazes me that although my relatives claimed to be Christians, they could not bring themselves to care about the less advantaged. And there is probably more exploitation (in dollars stolen from the public) going on among the rich and powerful than there will ever be by welfare crooks.
Nothing is as simple as you seem to want it to be.

This is what we are debate. This thread is really drifting all over the place and needs to get back on topic.

*Tries to grab the steering wheel to keep this topic on track*


I would not like to see this topic closed because it has gotten so far off course.

Can you bring some substance about economic growth?

Edited to remove section from a post that was removed.

Certainly GDP isn't perfect. But, isn't GNP simply GDP minus the productivity of foreigners within the country? Is that really a better measure, or similar with identical pros and cons? I am not an economist, so I can't speak intelligently about better alternative measures for the economy. It seems to me that the value of goods and services is a reasonable indication of economic health, though flawed. I thought Dingo's article was thought provoking, but the formula it provided seemed even less in tune with reality than GDP (for reasons I offered in my initial post).

I believe that prosperity is always the hostage to power. Therefore, the megapolitical innerworkings of a country will have a tremendous impact, not simply on growth itself, but how the result of that growth affects the population at large. Obviously, if the people in a society are not able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, or are obliged to work at the point of a gun, their quality of life isn't very good. I would be very surprised if such a society would see a rise in GDP, but I suppose anything is possible.

There’s a difference between arguing that the quality of life for workers in a sweat shop might not be as good as a rural farmer’s in a country with the same GDP, and arguing that life would be much better today if we all lived to be only 40, gave birth to dead children, and cooked over a cow dung fueled fire… but enjoyed all of the wonders the Inca civilization might have to share.

I will read your links with an open mind. I haven't read them yet.

To answer the previous post:


The short answer is, China of today is leaps and bounds above the China of the seventies, even if some areas are still indigent. I visited in 1997, and our tour guide explained that most villagers in the late sixties were so poor, they had to take turns leaving their homes because they usually had only one pair of pants to wear per family. With increased growth, most of the population’s quality of life has improved.

China in the 70s

Thanks for the references, Mrs.P, and for a refreshingly (for this thread, not for you) thoughtful response. I found this part particularly interesting:



That's very different from attributing progress since then to importation of specifically capitalist ideas, which seems to many people's preferred panacea. It actually seems to point toward common cause rather than cause and effect; the same things that slow growth can create or prolong poverty. If that's the case, then growth is neither cause nor effect and is in that sense neither good nor bad.

Wonder why the Hong Kong Chinese did not have this ideological flaw?

What do you mean by that?

The Hong Kong Chinese have as been as quick as anybody to import new innovations and have built a dynamic economy with strong growth. The Red Chinese were crippled by socialist ideology, which prevented growth. Only the adoption of capitalist ideas, and the resulting growth, have improved the condition of the Chinese on the mainland. Before many livved in the poorest of conditions, as I described in an earlier post.

There's a lot more to Chinese ideology than mere socialism. The article Mrs.P referenced made it sound like it was the authoritarian/anti-intellectual/anti-urban aspects of that ideology, rather than the socialist aspects, that were most to blame for the poverty it describes. The Cultural Revolution wasn't just about socialism, and Hong Kong never endured anything like it. If capitalism vs. socialism were the whole story, why are there more starving Somalians than starving Swedes? Why are there more starving Americans, and why hasn't anyone mentioned them yet?

[quote=Jaime,Jul 9 2003, 10:28 AM]
1. Is economic growth necessarily good?
2. Is GDP an adequate standard for measuring economic activity?

Let's take one example to give this some focus. We have two countries with similar numbers of people and a similar standard of living economically. One has a large prison system, the other has a small one. The first one has enjoyed major growth in its prison system in recent years while the other has remained stable.

If we were to focus strictly on prison systems which:

A. Has the greater GDP?

B. Has the greater economic growth?

C. Probably has the more desirable society if the prison system is the only specific quantitative criteria to go on?

Now imagine all the various areas one can extrapolate this approach to, both in goods and services. [/QUOTE]
This is what we are debate. This thread is really drifting all over the place and needs to get back on topic. [/quote]
Yes,PP, and I am sure N Korea and S Korea, W Germany and E Germany all somehow also had similar situations that just happened to favor the more capitalist nation.

Back on topic.

In order for the prison system analogy to mean anything it has to apply to the real world. What evidence is there that growth increases crime? I believe crime actually usually increases in a recession, if so lack of growth may cause the need to expand prisons. I have seen no evidence that growth in GDP increases crime. If anyone else has I would sure like to see the evidence.

i always see some local government official running for something with talk of makeing more jobs and so on. I just wonder if this is self defeating in some aspects, you look to increase your gdp, and work with the stuff that is relitive to it, but certin things like population growth and overall social sciences are never really taken into account. As i am really trying to say, as the populatuion grows so must capitalism in order to support that way of life, or more specific that level of comfort some are use to these days. so in essece capitalism itself must be feed or oiled with the blood of the working man in order to sustain itself. The gdp may be an economic tool, i just dont think it is used correctly in todays world. i dont think makeing your gdp more bloated is going to end racism, or wars for that matter, and to be even more critical of it, with the worlds population growing as it is, and nations looking for thier own interests, i could even go as far as to say it leads to alot of the worlds ills today. That is other nations and ourselves looking for that economic growth.

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Statistics and the BEA's GDP statistics, any correlation looks pretty weak either way. But then, I don't claim to be an expert statistician. Now that I've done the legwork, perhaps the person who's making a claim about a correlation could use their superior statistical technique to back up that claim.

You're welcome.

MPP, I lived on a small sailing boat for two years that myself and some friends built. Definitely one of the happier periods in my life. I once went camping for 72 days wandering through the Sierras from north to south catching trout along the way. At the end of that period I did NOT want to go back to civilization but winter was setting in and I had responsibilities. I have lived for extensive periods of time in a small cabin with my own constructed outhouse. I made it simple. I created a 3 pit system. 2 were composting while I used the other. Amazing how quick you can adapt and enjoy a more primitive life style if you're not wrapped up in what the neighbor's think. I was an ecologists dream and still use very little resources. I just took a year and a half of nonrecyclables to the dump in 6 30 gal garbage cans.

I appreciate that as a person who was brought up with all the amenities, that you can't imagine people who would actually be happier living a much simpler life style. I met plenty of them in the islands. They had a far lower GDP than either you or I.

Did you ever read Walden Pond by Thoreau? He is probably the most quoted writer-philosopher in American literature and was one of Ghandis inspirations. His prescription for the good life - "Simplify, simplify, simplify." If you read the book you'll see high economic growth and fat GDPs was not what he was talking about.



You will also see people who are suffering the legacy of the colonial system where their traditional way of life was shattered and they are often still in the grip of that legacy.

It is silly to impute the idea that poor people have more children simply because they are poor. In traditional societies that we would consider poor they were very careful practioners of birth control. The poor often are rural so having many kids makes sense if you need farm hands. The important difference for those who don't have a good reason to have lots of children is the lack of education and birth control devices. Look at the great success in Uganda with Aids. There, a good program with strong outside support shows people can take control of their sexual practices poor or rich.

By the way you might want to go back to your nationmaster site(thank you) and check out the 20 countries with the highest negative growth. How many of them would you classify as rich? Also in case people think I was blowing smoke on a previous post check the comparative growth of the US(rich) and the sad exhibit of what may happen to a lot of 1st world industrial states if they stay on the mindless growth track - Russia(poor). 2002 census.
US pop. growth +0.89%
Russia pop. growth -(0.33%)


Implicit in so many of these posts is the idea that the economically rich are the standard to which the poor should strive. Considering the resource implications, that is suicide. What we need is to simplify our lives, get the population down, concentrate on bringing just, ecologically sound practices to our planetary system and of course to the topic, decrease our GDP and increase the richness of our lives.

You're right. There's no way in hell I could live on a boat for two years....and I lead a fairly simple, low maintenance lifestyle by most western standards. Kudos to you if you can do it.


You're welcome for the site. I think it's great. Most of their information is obtained through the CIA Worldfactbook, but they place the figures in a concise chart format, and compare the nations, which is invaluable.

Regarding population growth. I would look at birth rates for the full story. 'Poor' nations have a much larger percentage of births than the 'rich' ones. The subsequent growth would depend on how many of those numerous births actually reach adulthood, as well as a much lower expected longevity.

I am not making the claim, my point was that unless there is a positive correlation between growth and crime the questions concerning a state with this theoretical prison expansion does not apply to the real world.

I will accept your research and your claim you cannot find a strong correlation either way. Thanks!

And of course I used that artificial model to show that you can't get away with saying "economic growth is good, higher GDP is good" without throwing in the proper qualifiers in the broadest sense.

Jeremy Bentham, the famous 18th century English legal scholar, summed up how good as applied to the public sphere in the broadest sense should be described. "The greatest good, for the greatest number, for the longest period of time."

To take a tack from you, my major point was that unless there is a positive correlation between growth and a viable future for the human race, the questions concerning short term advantages of economic growth and continued inflation of GDP do not apply to the real world in the longer term.

Another way of focusing on the subject is to measure the qualitative loss in culturally rich diversity and an ecologically healthy planet against the quantitative gain of more things(Economic growth) and greater human longevity(In the short term).

There was a reason J.S. Mill rejected his Benthamite upbringing.

On topic, the difference we have his is that you believe sources are limited. You take the old Malthusian view of the world. There is no reason that we cannot protect the environment and have growth. The United Nations expects population to peak, in this century at somewhere around 9 billion people. There is no reason why the Earth cannot support 9 billion people in a lifestyle far greater than the average human has today.

I believe I have made it clear what the costs of poverty are. What the costs of low growth is. It is growth, and it's partner technology, that provides the possibility of both a cleaner and wealthier world. A world free of poverty, free of contaminated drinking water, free of forests being razed for agricultural uses.

If you are arguing that government needs to recover or regulate third-party costs, and that these actions slow growth,I agree with you. If you are arguing that the whole world cannot eventually live beyond where the western world lives today, than I disagree. Because of the huge costs of slow, or non-existant growth we need to look very carefully at any actions that limit growth.

Let me introduce another concept in economics, the concept of diminishing marginal returns. As an individual acquires more of a good, the value of each additional unit becomes less to him. Let us apply this concept to money. Money is very important to a man who is living at a subsistance level. If he does not have money, he and his family may go without the basic human needs. As a man rises above that subsistance level he may reach a point where he may choose to forsake an opportunity to make a dollar and choose an hour of leisure instead. As a society raises above the subsistance level they may choose to spend money to insure clean air, to protect wildlife, to build schools and libraries and parks. No longer is each additional unit of currency needed to fill the belly, or provide clothing and shelter. As societies get wealthier they can afford to take steps that inherently limit growth, i.e. put regulations on pollutants.

Perhaps there was but is it relevant to the discussion and if it is why not show what its relevance is? It sounds like you're trying to get one up without putting your cards on the table.



I'm glad in your new world, exponential growth never catches up with arithmetic growth. And I guess all the neoDarwinians are just old 19th century fuddy duddies when they continue to insist that the selection process in evolution is still driven by Malthusian math. And yes we do live in a finite system but I am open to any counter examples you might wish to share. We're talking the system as a whole, not say nylon as a substitute for cotton and hemp. Nylon has its own side affects.



You said much the same thing before and I applied the expression "faith statement." I haven't changed my view. Perhaps you would like to build a rational foundation to that view.



Nobody argues that poverty can breed suffering but of course that sort of begs the question doesn't it? How did that person, family, village, nation become impovershed?

As I did on a previous post I will use parts of your paragraph to offer an alternative view:

I believe I have made it clear what I think some of the costs of destructive economic growth are. What the value of low economic growth or negative economic growth(We're talking GDP) tied to population decrease can be when handled right. More people can live in a rational and civilized way with their neighbors in a progressively less degraded environment. It is mindless predatory growth, and its remote, dangerous and over sophisticated technologies, that promotes the inevitability of both a meaner and dirtier world. A world free of poverty, free of contaminated drinking water, free of forests being razed for agricultural uses requires a lower population, thoughtful community planning, appropriate technologies, appreciation of diversity and the space and time to grow and interact as whole human being, not crowded, frightened, driven rats in a cage.



If by third-party costs you mean down stream costs like pollutants, I would go further. I think, for instance, as much as possible the price at the pump for gas should reflect the real cost to the consumer and not be subsidized by income taxes. I think through their purchases consumers would be making real economic and public policy choices and by implication they would be casting a dollar vote on what kind of growth policies they wanted. I read one study that asserted our real cost at the pump was 5 to 15 dollars per gallon.



The fly in the ointment is these demonstrations of civic worthiness are often needed largely because of the mess made by growth societies that provided these worthies with the ruthlessly extracted surplus wealth.

Someday somebody may explain to me what is wrong with a lower population, humane communities where people actually get to know each other, and a modest but comfortable and secure life with lots of greenery around and space enough not to feel hemmed in.

There is nothing at all to support your conclusion that population growth and economic growth go hand in hand. Again I will point out that evidence points to exactly the opposite conclusion. Here is an interesting article on projected population growth: population growth
We also had a good discussion on that a while back overpopulation

Our planet is abundant with areas where there are low populations (you really think everyone, everywhere is living on top of each other?), people know each other (that's the unfortunate product of television and culture, not growth), anyone could lead a modest, comfortable (it sounds like your definition of comfort is very minimal) and secure (at least by 'simple' standards...even the ancients had rudimentary weapons to combat intruders, so the simple life might be less secure than you think) with lots of greenery around and space enough not to feel hemmed in.

Why didn't you continue to live in a hut? If life were as you would prefer, everyone would live that way and fend for themselves almost entirely. Why not stay in the primative conditions yourself? Buy a pig and cow. Use their dung for fires in winter. Kill a bear for the fur to keep you warm. You can do it...what's stopping you?

That statement is mind boggling! On the order of 2+2 = 3 and the earth is flat. Sometimes things we say just pop out of our mouth before we red flag them. This probably is one of those times, either that or you were seized by some progrowth mantra that short circuited some primary reasoning part of your brain.

More people = more consumption = economic growth. Need I say more?



For the most part only where there are few resources to support many more. Most farming is monocrop industrial agribusiness. Our modern super industrialized megastates don't leave a lot of room for economically sustainable truck gardening. That's part of the problem I have with this mindless population and economic growth cycle, it makes paradoxically choice options greater within narrower and narrower parameters. You can have a whole host of automobiles to choose from but you can't choose not to be in an automobile culture. The culture you live in displaced the vast richness of other cultural possibilities so now all you can do is ride it upward to Armaggedon. But I agree. You do get a lot of goodies along the way.



Maybe I still do and maybe I don't. What's that got to do with this thread? To remind you the question is:

1. Is economic growth necessarily good?
2. Is GDP an adequate standard for measuring economic activity?

It wouldn't make any difference if I were Bill Gates and asking this question and suggesting there was a major negative component to growth. It's about the issue, not about me.

To be fair both of us need to tie in our comments a little better to the thread questions.

actually, for the most part i do believe thier is laws that prevent humans from living hunter gather type lives. Of course you can move to a some other less developed nation and try to do this, but that requires that you know how to survive like that + leaveing friends/family behind unless they want to come with you.

The point being is clean water is in bottles these days, that slipped under the radar to more important things like tax cuts so you can purchase a larger couch, i just think the same thing will happen with air also.

The deal is no one deals with this issue, will it be one that is dealt with when the situation becomes dire, and what will be the cause of it in the first place. I hope not to deal with that in my lifetime to say the least. But back to the topic or what it has morphed into, gdp and economic growth are not always good, not unless the growth is understood, there is alot of stuff that can boost gdp, this has already been covered in the thread. Plus planning of that growths impact on now, and the effect the drive for such growth has on its surroundings, such as national politics. If america is the way it is, a massive super power, then other nations i am sure feel this effect, like a cause and effect. But that starts to drift into uncharted realms, economics should have a warining label on them like tabacco products

My Italian Grandmother was one of 13 children, and my Grandfather one of 11. Every one of them reached adulthood. Today, there are exactly two children below the age of 15 from that blood line (my two kids). The move away from subsistence farming provides an incentive for smaller families. I apologize for being off topic in my previous post. I get a little snippy when I read that a longevity of 40 and infant death are good things, it sort of hits me personally.

There is more to growth than accumulating ‘stuff’. I am not a cripple today, as I would be without that technology. I am able to have as many or as few children as I want, did’t have to start making them when I was 12, and there’s a very good chance they will reach adulthood.

I don’t like living in a smog filled people jungle either. In fact, I don’t live in one. My community is humane and I am comfortable. I can go down to the Vegas strip, which is ugly and makes me sick with the excess. I can, then, leave and go back to a better environment. There is always a price. If one lives in Manhattan, he/she pays through the nose to live there, but is close to all the ‘action’. If one lives in Rockfish, North Carolina, the mayor is also the firechief...who is also the town judge. There are a lot of open spaces, and very little growth.

Your responses in posts on this thread beg me to ask the question...When were times better and why? Perhaps that would be another interesting topic for debate.

It depends what you're looking for. Before the 20th century there was only one scenario for human anihilation - collision with a large meteor. Now we have multiple scenarios of just such an eventuality. Oops gotta make a tie-in with the thread. I would say Armaggedon plays havoc with any kind of economic growth and the GDP would be zilch.

True. So does Attila the Hun coming to drive nails into the heads of dissidents to his occupation. Very little economic growth there.

I really like the points in this thread on how GDP and economic growth are fairly good indicators as to the well being of a population. I really like the points in the thread which question whether all growth is good as economic growth may not and, ideally, should not define the well being of a population. I am left with the common denominator between these two trains of thought to be population density.

The opportunities which Dingo has had to be solo with the world without other human interaction sound heavenly. I loved my time working on a ranch in Nevada due much to the isolation from much of the clutter of humanity. I hope we can have a world where people have a choice as to participating in the consumerism driven world and one where you are more self sufficient and free of overwhelming humanity.

As the population increases, GDP and economic status of people have the potential to increase but it will not always happen. Most likely, as population density plateaus it will be due to a mixed bag of situations. Some areas such as the Untied States, Italy, Sweden, etc. will plateau due to the effect of high standard of living causing decreased birth rates. On the other extreme, some will plateau due to high death rates such as we have seen in Somalia.

Increasing productivity rates, economic growth, while decreasing birth rates seems to be the path to change a situation in Somalia to one more like the united States. Simple solution but it will take generations for their people to find this path even with outside intervention.

Population growth can result in increased economic growth. It is possible for population growth to infringe on the well being of people. You can put so many people on this earth, all with good standard of livings, that those whose well being is defined by non economic reasons, such as being alone in the world for short or long periods of time, will not be able to have those opportunities.

It is valid to dispute economic growth due to population increases as a good measure of a well being. GDP will continue to be a good relative indicator of well being but it should not be a goal nor end all to pursue, at least not to those of us with a bit of dingo in them.

GS, I appreciate your effort to bridge differences but I think you are in fact dealing with irreconciliable views of the world. Not only is population an issue but technology, ecology, community and "things" are part of the package.

Technology does not in any final sense "solve" problems as some here would have us believe, it simply replaces them with new ones and gives a false illusion of control over our life circumstances. I know I'm alive because a surgeon was able to perform an emergency appendectomy on my burst appendix when I was 12 but my life or death has no particularly interesting planetary implication. And yet more than anything it is what drives economic growth and the possibility of more people and so it is worshipped as a whore God. Do you notice Hugo repeatedly evokes it as a panacea solution to all our problems, present and future. And yet it is this technology that puts our lives at peril in ways that it never did earlier. Economic growth's engine(Modern technology) and its association with a humanly devaluing GDP may in fact be our road to ruin rather than a bright future.

I'm under a time bind right now so I will continue my train of thought later, hopefully.

Let us look at results, not chicken little theories. Do I need to point out the a link to proove increased life expectancy in the last 100 years? Yes, growth is not important, if human life is not important.

WMDs have changed the rules. Your life expectancy may be 5 minutes from now. A question; looking at the planet as a whole, not simply one part of it, where is the condition of our primary life support systems improving? Consider air, water, topsoil including greenery. And how has modern technology and economic growth mindlessly worshiped factored into that?

Now continuing the discussion from my previous post:

I have offered the example of nature, our source and final example for all things sustainable, as being essentially a steady state system rather than an endless growth system. To me that is what ecology is all about, achieving a balance with other living things and recognizing that ultimately we are a part of them and not above them. Modern economics has about it two fallacies: 1. Resource growth exploitation as a permanent process. 2. That value in human life is principally measurable by the restricted standard of GDB. We have no economic discipline that I know of that doesn't take those positions. GS, this by the way is not about free enterprise vs government regulation which you seem to be saying. In fact mindless growth in population and resource exploitation spawns big government and greater regulation. That should be obvious. Smaller independent(as opposed to being political and/or economic colonies) populations living in traditional communities using appropriately adapted technologies intuitively commit to sustainable resource use and have little need for imposed economic restrictions(Think of the Amish). They are free of the heavy hand of regulation by distant bureaucrats.

Yet again, hugo, the debate topic is not whether there's any correlation at all between economic growth and well-being. It's whether economic growth is always good, to the degree that one may be measured and used as a surrogate for the other. Life expectancy has increased over the last 100 years. Has it increased as much as it could have if growth had been managed more intelligently? Would life expectancy not be even longer if purely technological and economic growth had been balanced with concern for health, environment, crime, etc.?

If we had a static population world wide below that of the current population, faster progress could be made in regards to your ideas. For one thing, there would be more space for groups of people interested in a steady state society. Also, all advances in technology and science would be utilized to improve everyone's well being instead of used to support more people.

I share your ideal of humanity not touching so many aspects of Earth's ecology. But, I also have hopes that mankind continues to gain knowledge, skills, and abilities. A static society would be a disappointment to me. I do not see my dreams and yours being an either/or. You need worry about the mass of humanity taking away your choices. It is now and this process will gradually increase its barrier to individual freedom. Hugo's viewpoint is one of how to describe how it happens but do not confuse it with a belief that we should all "shop until we drop". I do not see Hugo as part of mankind which will hinder you. Good things can be happening with increasing GDP and bad things can be happening with increasing GDP. I hope the segment of humanity which shares my values and is contributing to increased GDP is not drown out by the "shop until we drop" segment which is increasing the GDP. I join with you in opposition to some increased economic growth but will not go so far as to say all economic growth is bad.

Opposing economic growth in general will have a negative effect overall. It is better to oppose those specific segments which are deleterious.

You are sounding very, very sensible here. You show a good instinct for what is obviously common sense. That is unfortunately rare in this ideological and short term interest driven world.



We have no disagreement here. The question is are the knowledge, skills, and abilities enhancing to community life and do they help us insure the future. That is not a given and should not be presumed. Emerson once said disapprovingly "things are driving mankind." In a modern context he might have said "growth in people and gdp are driving mankind."



I would half agree with you here. Unfortunately you're leaving out(And probably disagree with me about) the insidiousness of the mantra that underlies economic thinking and social planning that says economic growth is inherently a positive measurement of where a society is going and gdp is the absolute yardstick we should use in making that measurement.

Remember the original question, "Is GDP growth good?". Well, guess what? In areas with low per capita GDP you find high birth rates. In nations with high per capita GDP you have low birth rates. Economic advancement leads to low population growth. In many western nations immigration is neccesary to maintain current populations. The human population will soon reach a peak thanks to economic advancement. Overpopulation is a temporary condition caused by medical advances outpacing other technological and economical advances in certain areas. China's return to capitalism, and increased GDP, is allieviating the problems addressed in the village I previously mentioned.

In the real world per capita increase in GDP is always good. People can always dream up nightmare scenarios where all the GDP growth is due to people spending more to protect themselves from crime or to fight off diseases. In the real world these problems have a negative impact on GDP.