Sandwichman wrote: > ... John Kenneth Galbraith remarked fifty-odd years ago: > > "If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is > plausible to seek to increase the supply, to decrease the waste, to > make better use of the stocks that are available, and to develop > substitutes. But what of the appetite itself? Surely this is the > ultimate source of the problem. If it continues its geometric course, > will it not one day have to be restrained? Yet in the literature of > the resource problem this is the forbidden question. Over it hangs a > nearly total silence. It is as though, in the discussion of the chance > for avoiding automobile accidents, we agree not to make any mention of > speed!"
"Growth is good, all the time; all the time, Growth is good." That's a modified version of a Christian prayer. It's a perfect mantra for the orthodoxy within the economics profession. Naturally enough, they typically do not ask exactly what "growth" is. It's assumed that real GDP per person is an adequate measure of it; it's assumed that if real GDP per person rises, that's good for people. I've forgotten who it was, but one pen-pal said that he uses the word "growth" as synonymous with real GDP growth (per capita, I presume). This fits with the orthodoxy's perspective, even though that contributor does not like "growth." Empirically, because we live within a capitalist system, the kind of "growth" we see is _capitalist_ growth. GDP growth measures the growth of exchange-value, not use-value. (Adjusting for the role of inflation does not change that.) This growth in turn reflects the accumulation of capital. In a capitalist economy, the popular focus on real GDP makes sense (given the balance of political power). After all, if capitalists do not accumulate fast enough (so that real GDP does not grow fast enough), the availability of jobs falls relative to the number of people seeking them. Since the vast majority of people aren't independently wealthy, rising unemployment (as in the current recession) is a total pain. As has been noted, rising unemployment is associated with rising suicide rates, rising drunkenness, and the like. (Rising drunkenness may be associated with greater college attendance, as people give up on job-seeking and decide to go back to school, where people drink a lot.) As anti-growth folks note correctly rising real GDP per capita has been associated with rising destruction of the environment, rising hours of work per household, rising inequality, and other ills. This is especially true in recent decades. Real GDP is missing a lot as a measure of how well we're doing. In response, some have developed alternative measures of aggregate output such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). In this measure, the cost of environmental destruction is subtracted from GDP, as are other non-market costs. Also, non-market benefits such as leisure time are added into GDP. The total is also adjusted for the role of increasing inequality. The GPI (in real, per person terms) has largely been flat in recent years, even as real per-person GDP has generally risen. If the GPI is an adequate measure of use-value,[*] the contrast between its path and that of GDP (which measures exchange-value) is a symptom of the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value that Marx pointed to. Note the phrase "given the balance of political power" above. It's possible that a mass movement could impose [*] It's not, since use-values are non-quantitative and thus can't be added up. But something like the GPI may be as good as it gets. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
