Our society tends to see growth as an unalloyed good, but an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again.
My family and I spent 25 years in Washington DC. They were good years, and every morning I began with coffee and The Washington Post. The newspaper was a wonderful companion—and reliably progressive. But there is something going on there now on the editorial board that I find, well, weird.
The Post has now published several editorials that reflect antipathy towards what environmentalists and climate advocates are trying to accomplish. The most recent, and one that got me concerned again, is “Ending Growth Won’t Save the Planet.”
I have read it several times, trying to understand. The editorial board is eager to make the case that Growth Is Good and that America should keep striving for it. It’s amazing that the Post feels the need to defend economic growth. News Flash! The Washington Post thinks growth is in trouble!
The editorial is clear: Its worry is that climate concern will drive an attack on growth. And what better whipping boy, on whose back to make their case, than the tiny “degrowth” movement? Called decroissance in France, degrowth has some thoughtful advocates in Europe. But here, its proponents are so far from political relevance that their voice cannot be heard. Still, the Post can’t resist: “’Degrowth’—the brand name for neo-Malthusianism—ignores how ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints.” Mostly, of course, we have bulldozed ecological constraints away, but that is a story for a little later.
The editorial casts a disdainful eye on growth critics like Naomi Klein, Greta Thunberg, and even Pope Francis. It makes light of esteemed figures like Herman Daly and Paul Ehrlich. I believe this confirms that the Post’s concern is not really the miniscule degrowth movement but those who are scoring points on the prevailing pro-growth orthodoxy.
Were I prominent enough, the Post could certainly have included me on its list. That would have made me very happy. In several books and numerous articles, I have joined the critics of economic growth as it is currently defined and practiced. So, naturally, I feel called to respond now.
Five reasons to reject the growth fetish
Hardly anyone would favor the version of degrowth in the Post’s caricature. I do advocate what I and many others have called a post-growth society. To me that is the view that economic growth—by which I mean GDP growth—should no longer be an important national policy objective.
That is plain heresy, of course. Not much in our society is more faithfully followed than the gospel of economic growth. To know what growth critics are up against, consider this remarkable passage from J. R. McNeill’s environmental history of the 20th century, Something New Under the Sun. He writes that the “growth fetish” solidified its hold on imaginations and institutions in the twentieth century:
Social, moral, and ecological ills were sustained in the interest of economic growth; indeed, adherents to the faith proposed that only more growth could resolve such ills. Economic growth became the indispensable ideology of the state nearly everywhere. … The overarching priority of economic growth was easily the most important idea of the twentieth century.
Despite the heresy, I want to offer five reasons why I think the Post should reconsider and join us in questioning GDP growth as a national priority. Five is a lot, but the points are short—and important.
First, our measure of growth, gross domestic product, is terribly flawed and should be pushed off its exalted pedestal. GDP should stand for Grossly Distorted Picture. Never mind that GDP is simply a cumulative measure of all activity in the formal economy—good things and bad things, costs and benefits, mere market activity, money changing hands, busyness in the economy—for the bigger it gets, the greater the private profit and public revenue. Never mind also that even the creator of its formalisms, Simon Kuznets, warned in the 1930s that “distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth. … Goals for ‘more’ growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”
Though it is still very much on its pedestal, GDP’s continued reign must be challenged, and many economists agree. Favoring growth when that growth is measured by GDP is a tragic blunder.
What we need is a dashboard of alternative indicators. It should include (1) measures of true economic progress that correct and adjust GDP so that we can gauge sustainable economic and environmental welfare, (2) indicators of objective social wellbeing such as the status of health, education, and economic security, (3) indexes of environmental conditions and trends, (4) indicators of democratic performance, and (5) measures of subjective wellbeing such as life satisfaction, happiness, and trust.
The growth imperative wars against a long list of public policies that would undoubtedly slow GDP growth, but quality of life would improve, and that’s what matters.
Here is good news: Indicators of all these types have already been developed!
The first of the above indicators responds to society’s need for a monetized measure that corrects the shortcomings of GDP. Such a measure could then be compared to uncorrected GDP on a regular, quarterly basis. The results of country studies using such a measure show changes in public welfare eventually flatlining while GDP continues to grow, not producing additional wellbeing.
That leads to the second point: GDP growth doesn’t deliver the claimed social and economic benefits. Since 1980, real GDP in the United States has tripled, and per capita GDP has doubled. Phenomenal growth! You would think America would be a paradise. But during this period real hourly wages of U.S. workers hardly budged, stagnating while the pay at the top skyrocketed as did a vast inequality. Simultaneously, life satisfaction flatlined, social capital eroded, families lived paycheck to paycheck, and the environment declined. Over this period, the U.S. dropped from the No. 1 country on the UN’s Human Development Index to No. 21. As I describe in what follows, desperately seeking more GDP growth is unlikely to yield better results.
My third concern is a major one: the overriding imperative to grow gives overriding power to those, mainly the corporations, that have the capital and technology to deliver that growth. And, much the same thing, the growth imperative wars against a long list of public policies that would improve national wellbeing but are said to “slow growth” and to “hurt the economy.”
Such policies include shorter workweeks and longer vacations; greater labor protections, including a living minimum wage, protection of labor’s right to organize, and generous parental leaves; guarantees to part-time workers; new incentives for a twenty-first-century corporation, one that embraces rechartering, new ownership patterns, and stakeholder primacy rather than shareholder primacy; restrictions on advertising; incentives for local and locally owned production and consumption; strong social and environmental provisions in trade agreements; rigorous environmental, health, and consumer protection; greater economic equality with genuinely progressive taxation of the rich and greater income support for the poor; increased spending on neglected public services; and powerful initiatives to sharply curb greenhouse gas emissions nationally and globally.
Taken together, these policies would undoubtedly slow GDP growth, but quality of life would improve, and that’s what matters.
Fourth, the growth imperative reinforces our dreadful consumerism. Recall that GDP is 70 percent consumer spending. American consumerism is definitely pathological but essential to keep the current system going. The New York Times ran a story a while back that summed up the matter nicely: “Why Americans Must Keep Spending—Households perceive an endless stream of needs, and besides, the economy depends on it.”
In my book America the Possible I discuss a series of policy changes that could curb our consumerist addiction, but here I want to stress something else. Our search for meaning and belonging through having more material things deflects us from pursuing the real sources of happiness and satisfaction: close ties in families and with friends, development of skills and talents, informal education, helping others and volunteering, exposure to the natural world, sports and play, and even politics. Many people do sense that today there is a great misdirection of life’s energy and that, as Martin Seligman said,
Materialism is toxic to happiness.
My fifth and final point, of course, is that economic activity and its growth are the principal drivers of massive, continuing environmental decline. The economy consumes natural resources (both renewable and nonrenewable resources), occupies the land, and releases pollutants. As the economy has grown, so has biological impoverishment and pollutants of great variety, including a handful of greenhouse gases. Economist Paul Ekins observed that “The sacrifice of the environment to economic growth. . . has unquestionably been a feature of economic development at least since the birth of industrialism.”
Time for something better
Of late, there has been serious work done to see if societies can have it both ways: can growth go up while environmental destruction goes down? This challenging possibility has been called “green growth.” That may be what the Post is advocating, but the editorial board seems unaware of this work. It is a fair question, and there are qualified analysts on both sides. One of the best is Canadian economist Peter Victor. I admire Victor’s books and articles and have been influenced by them. So perhaps it is predictable that I agree with him on green growth’s prospects.
Victor’s latest book is last year’s Escape from Overshoot. In analyzing the pros and cons of the green growth proposal, Victor concludes that “the prospects for long-term green growth are discouraging and they become more so the faster the economy grows.” Victor sees potential benefit from green growth policies in the short term, but concludes:
More and more goods and services cannot be produced out of less and less forever. Green growth, which depends on the endless dematerialization of GDP, does not offer a plausible, even possible, long-term solution.
Who does GDP growth benefit? A growing economy can be good for the bottom line of businesses, large and small. Government revenues go up when the economy grows: the taxman does not care if the activity is healthy or harmful. There are countries in the developing world where strong GDP growth could make a big positive difference. And we cannot forget the national security complex. For security hawks the global projection of a strong America is aided by robust GDP growth. We shouldn’t just try to wish all these complex matters away, but we can find ways to address them, including by looking around the world for ideas.
Our society tends to see growth as an unalloyed good, but an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy has produced a ruthless international search for energy and other resources, brought us to the cusp of environmental ruin, led us away from badly needed policies and social growth, and rests on a manufactured consumerism that does not meet the deepest human needs. It’s time for something better. To me, that something better is post-growth, where society focuses major policy interventions on growing the activities that benefit people, place, and planet and on shrinking those things that do the opposite and, all the while, not pausing to worry about GDP.
Gus Speth is a Distinguished Next System Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative. He has worked as a key environmental movement leader and has authored several books. He was also editor of The New Systems Reader.