5 ms·

No growth functionally means your material life won't improve. Individual lots might improve, but only at the expense of others.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
> Individual lots might improve, but only at the expense of others. This is already true, we’re seeing the worst wealth inequality since the gilded age. The benefits of growth are increasingly being captured by the wealthy.
- logicchains 3y ago
  Wealth equality is completely orthogonal to increasing standards of living. If you get 2x wealthier and everyone else gets 10x wealthier, wealth inequality has increased but your standard of living is still better than before, unless the sole thing you value in life is envy.
  - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
    This is not true. To follow your example, if everyone around me is 10x wealthier, then the market adjusts and everything around me rises in price accordingly. This is the essence of gentrification. To your point, if the minimum wage in a lot of areas is $15, then why aren’t there any decent houses selling for $30k anymore like they were back in the 50’s? $15/hr is quite wealthy by those standards but it is becoming pretty poor nowadays. The problem with wealth is that we tend to measure it by the concrete dollar amount in our bank account and not the purchasing power it represents.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    Wrong. The person who got 2x wealthier will effectively be priced out of any market with limited supply. Maybe the odd person values TVs more highly than land and property, but for the rest of us, it would definitely feel poorer.
  - harimau777 3y ago
    That's only true in situations where relative wealth doesn't determine standard of living. For example, if someone is able to outbid me and buy up more than their fair share of the finite housing supply leaving me without a home, if a wealthy people can afford better schooling and therefore can outcompete me for desirable jobs, or if a wealthy person gets a greater say in government due to being able to donate to politicians.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      In that case we need plentiful supplies of all those things - build _lots_ of houses everywhere, easily accessible education, and a political system that dilutes the power of donations.
  - medvezhenok 3y ago
    It has been shown that people's happiness is much more tied to relative standards of living than absolute ones.
tsimionescu 3y ago
Given that most of the world's wealth is in the hands of less than a thousand people or thereabouts, and that these are the same people who keep benefitting most from economic growth, there is plenty of room to improve everyone's lot in life while not even materially hurting the richest of the rich (most of whom could still live a life of unimaginable luxury with only a thousandth or a few hundredths of their current wealth).
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  Absolutely, but a world without growth is also a world where there are zero possible challengers to those thousand people or so. I don't see this leading to economic egalitarianism.
ta1243 3y ago
not really. If you had a society where people worked 80 hour weeks to produce X amount of economic activity, and you moved that to a society working 20 hour weeks with the same productivity, that's an improvement in everyones individual lot.
- logicchains 3y ago
  > If you had a society where people worked 80 hour weeks to produce X amount of economic activity, and you moved that to a society working 20 hour weeks with the same productivity, that's an improvement in everyones individual lot. And that would show up as an improvement in GDP growth, because unless you banned private businesses, there's always going to be some people (business owners, independent contractors) working more than 20 hours, so they'd produce more than before, which would show up in GDP.
schemescape 3y ago
Only if you ignore technology/productivity improvements.
- logicchains 3y ago
  No GDP growth means no technology/productivity improvements, because such things are counted in GDP growth.
  - schemescape 3y ago
    I think I was mistaken, but I thought they were talking about population growth.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  A world without growth is necessarily one without technological improvements.
  - schemescape 3y ago
    I thought you meant population growth.

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago

> Individual lots might improve, but only at the expense of others. This is already true, we’re seeing the worst wealth inequality since the gilded age. The benefits of growth are increasingly being captured by the wealthy.

logicchains 3y ago
Wealth equality is completely orthogonal to increasing standards of living. If you get 2x wealthier and everyone else gets 10x wealthier, wealth inequality has increased but your standard of living is still better than before, unless the sole thing you value in life is envy.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  This is not true. To follow your example, if everyone around me is 10x wealthier, then the market adjusts and everything around me rises in price accordingly. This is the essence of gentrification. To your point, if the minimum wage in a lot of areas is $15, then why aren’t there any decent houses selling for $30k anymore like they were back in the 50’s? $15/hr is quite wealthy by those standards but it is becoming pretty poor nowadays. The problem with wealth is that we tend to measure it by the concrete dollar amount in our bank account and not the purchasing power it represents.
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  Wrong. The person who got 2x wealthier will effectively be priced out of any market with limited supply. Maybe the odd person values TVs more highly than land and property, but for the rest of us, it would definitely feel poorer.
- harimau777 3y ago
  That's only true in situations where relative wealth doesn't determine standard of living. For example, if someone is able to outbid me and buy up more than their fair share of the finite housing supply leaving me without a home, if a wealthy people can afford better schooling and therefore can outcompete me for desirable jobs, or if a wealthy person gets a greater say in government due to being able to donate to politicians.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    In that case we need plentiful supplies of all those things - build _lots_ of houses everywhere, easily accessible education, and a political system that dilutes the power of donations.
- medvezhenok 3y ago
  It has been shown that people's happiness is much more tied to relative standards of living than absolute ones.

tsimionescu 3y ago

Given that most of the world's wealth is in the hands of less than a thousand people or thereabouts, and that these are the same people who keep benefitting most from economic growth, there is plenty of room to improve everyone's lot in life while not even materially hurting the richest of the rich (most of whom could still live a life of unimaginable luxury with only a thousandth or a few hundredths of their current wealth).

dukeyukey 3y ago
Absolutely, but a world without growth is also a world where there are zero possible challengers to those thousand people or so. I don't see this leading to economic egalitarianism.

ta1243 3y ago

not really. If you had a society where people worked 80 hour weeks to produce X amount of economic activity, and you moved that to a society working 20 hour weeks with the same productivity, that's an improvement in everyones individual lot.

logicchains 3y ago
> If you had a society where people worked 80 hour weeks to produce X amount of economic activity, and you moved that to a society working 20 hour weeks with the same productivity, that's an improvement in everyones individual lot. And that would show up as an improvement in GDP growth, because unless you banned private businesses, there's always going to be some people (business owners, independent contractors) working more than 20 hours, so they'd produce more than before, which would show up in GDP.

schemescape 3y ago

Only if you ignore technology/productivity improvements.

logicchains 3y ago
No GDP growth means no technology/productivity improvements, because such things are counted in GDP growth.
- schemescape 3y ago
  I think I was mistaken, but I thought they were talking about population growth.
dukeyukey 3y ago
A world without growth is necessarily one without technological improvements.
- schemescape 3y ago
  I thought you meant population growth.