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If the rich world aimed for minimal growth, would it be a disaster or a blessing?

Tim Jackson in debate with Adam Posen | The Economist, 01 August 2015

 

"ANYONE who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist," remarked (the economist) Kenneth Boulding. John Stuart Mill devoted an entire chapter of his "Principles of Political Economy" to the concept of the "stationary state"—a state that he believed would be "on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition".

 

Yet the pursuit of economic growth has been the single most prevalent policy goal across the world for the past 70 years... Read full article on The Economist's website.

 

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Related links

 

• Tim Jackson is director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity
• Jackson, T and P Victor 2015 >>​ Does slow growth lead to rising inequality? Some theoretical reflections and numerical simulations. Ecological Economics, (in print).
• Jackson, T and P Victor 2015 >> Credit creation and the ‘growth imperative’ - a quasi- stationary economy with debt-based money. PASSAGE Working Paper 15/01.