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Because if growth per caoita happens at a higher rate than inflation per capita the average amount of stuff per capita increases over time, which increases the

Because if growth per caoita happens at a higher rate than inflation per capita the average amount of stuff per capita increases over time, which increases the likelihood of everyone being better off (i.e economic growth is why a poor person in the west today has a surprising amount of consumer goods and a full belly today rather than the real poverty of that same person 200 years ago)

Euphorbium 2y ago
That is just stealing from future.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  This is a foolish statement because the richer people get the more they can afford mitigation. That you live such a privileged life in such a privileged time standing on the shoulders of innovators allows you to spout foolish things in a fairly clean environment when you would be otherwise too engaged in something horrifying to develop such foolish opinions at pretty much any other economic output level in history. I am personally super happy the English polluted so badly a couple hundred years ago that they caused moths to change from light to near black (to match the soot covered trees and avoid predators). Their increase in output allowed further investment in technology and infrastructure to allow my generation to have stuff like scrubbers on fossil fuel plants, switch from coal to natural gas, invest substantially in technology improvement for renewables to make them near competitive, etc. There was no stealing from the future, there was massive improvements gifted to the future to further innovate on.
beej71 2y ago
So being better off economically is a goal. But is there anything more specific? About the environment, about overall happiness, etc? The argument is that in addition to money, there might be other reasons to look at and pursue.
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  I haven't liked any of the alternative measure papers I've read (although it has been a while). They all are basically of the form "we don't like the result we get when we maximize some variable based on economic output so we are going to generate some new variable, that is harder to measure and is usually based on claimed preferences rather than revealed preferences (cuz you know, people never lie and those two things are always equal....) that lets us claim what we like is the right course, even though it's objectively worse when measured in money." Say what you will about money, it's a lot less biased a measuring stick than most people give it credit for and since people are already bartering with it, our data is based on revealed preferences already, which is much less prone to lieing. Also, why do you think the environment isn't accounted for in the system? It is not in economic growth but economic growth is measured after we have already applied quite a lot of environmental restrictions to the economy. We pursue environmental regulations we want politically and then growth happens within that constraint (and higher growth given a set of environmental regulations is still better than lower growth given said environmental regulations).
elzbardico 2y ago
For how long? When enough is enough?
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiuBZ5tVE6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiuBZ5tVE6Q

Euphorbium 2y ago

That is just stealing from future.

snapplebobapple 2y ago
This is a foolish statement because the richer people get the more they can afford mitigation. That you live such a privileged life in such a privileged time standing on the shoulders of innovators allows you to spout foolish things in a fairly clean environment when you would be otherwise too engaged in something horrifying to develop such foolish opinions at pretty much any other economic output level in history. I am personally super happy the English polluted so badly a couple hundred years ago that they caused moths to change from light to near black (to match the soot covered trees and avoid predators). Their increase in output allowed further investment in technology and infrastructure to allow my generation to have stuff like scrubbers on fossil fuel plants, switch from coal to natural gas, invest substantially in technology improvement for renewables to make them near competitive, etc. There was no stealing from the future, there was massive improvements gifted to the future to further innovate on.

beej71 2y ago

So being better off economically is a goal. But is there anything more specific? About the environment, about overall happiness, etc? The argument is that in addition to money, there might be other reasons to look at and pursue.

snapplebobapple 2y ago
I haven't liked any of the alternative measure papers I've read (although it has been a while). They all are basically of the form "we don't like the result we get when we maximize some variable based on economic output so we are going to generate some new variable, that is harder to measure and is usually based on claimed preferences rather than revealed preferences (cuz you know, people never lie and those two things are always equal....) that lets us claim what we like is the right course, even though it's objectively worse when measured in money." Say what you will about money, it's a lot less biased a measuring stick than most people give it credit for and since people are already bartering with it, our data is based on revealed preferences already, which is much less prone to lieing. Also, why do you think the environment isn't accounted for in the system? It is not in economic growth but economic growth is measured after we have already applied quite a lot of environmental restrictions to the economy. We pursue environmental regulations we want politically and then growth happens within that constraint (and higher growth given a set of environmental regulations is still better than lower growth given said environmental regulations).

elzbardico 2y ago

For how long? When enough is enough?

snapplebobapple 2y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiuBZ5tVE6Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiuBZ5tVE6Q