Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Lol, no need to jump on the anti-socialist bandwagon so quick!
This has been a longstanding debate in economics. Here's the basic tenants:
1. The economy lives within the environment, which provides the raw materials for the economy. If the economy is too focused short changes the environment and destructs it, then in the long run the economy falls apart because there's no more inputs available. That's 'ecological economics'. This definitely happened in the past in Mesoamerican civilizations and is something we have to be aware of with the modern economy.
2. GDP is a measure rate of output production, not utilization. To use an analogy, it's the RPMs of the cars engine, not the speed it's running at. People use outputs to generate wellbeing, but generating outputs does not guarantee wellbeing. Classic example is hurricanes, they generate additional GDP be requiring goods and services to be built to replace what used to be there, but this in no way makes any one better off.
I don't necessarily agree with the solutions in the article, but it's pretty well agreed upon within economics that GDP is very overused as a measure of success - that wealth, durability, distribution, and usefulness need to be better captured in whatever future metrics we use.
Watch the film Rapa Nui. Its a fictional account of what happened on Easter Island.
"Create prosperity by abandoning prosperity as an objective"
What our "degrowth" friends evidently mean, is
"Create a higher form of spiritual, social and cultural prosperity, and the expense of less material comfort, sumptuousness, convenience, technological sophistication or harnessing of resources". So, more pop-Buddhist prosperity, and less Adam Smith-style prosperity.
So, I know this is a thing in other countries, and I believe it should be for us in the USA, but I just cannot see it happening. Not with Big Business controlling the Government and people blindingly committed to tradition and technology. Still, I would love to have someone here give me some hopeful information.
Create a higher form of spiritual, social and cultural prosperity.
This has been done by policy in other developed countries more than the US. Less work, greater public benefits (and taxes), more financial security... just less to worry about. Less need to get lawyers and accountants involved to navigate the mess of insurance and tax laws. That is a type of freedom that many people value greatly. They tend to have stricter environmental laws also, and discourage wasteful practices. We could easily do similar things in the US, but the political support is lacking.
In the US we have the freedom to make our lives simpler than the norm, but I suppose it's inherently more difficult. I quit the rat race when I was 30 (32 years ago) and never went back. I lived way below the poverty line for a good chunk of it, but I was quite content as I didn't need to work. When I did start working again it was lower paying seasonal and part time work, and I was happy to live below my means. So it can be done in the US, but it's difficult unless you are willing to live at the bottom of the socio-economic scale.
That "serial nonsense" usually comes in response to the often bizarre and robotic comments about human performance, achievement, and appearance that leaks out onto this forum. People are people, not many are set on being performance machines to be operated at optimal performance. Most babies aren't chomping down on steaks and pork chops, so I don't see the relevancy to their diets. Most babies eat relatively vegetarian diets early on in life. Not exactly sure who goes into a hospital on the birth date of their young child and starts asking the medical professionals about the diets they can feed their babies for optimal height attainment. If those are the main concerns, then those are probably some very strange people indeed. Furthermore, the best shape I've ever been in in my life was when I ate a mostly vegetarian diet with some moderate amounts of chicken and turkey mixed in for protein. There are also a lot more options available for sustainable protein today than just five years ago. My wife is particular to tofu, but when she was doing Keto leading up to our wedding, she was also fond of nut butters and legumes.
It's those weird obsessions with human KPIs, achievement, and appearance that are bizarre. I don't think most healthy-minded people are overly concerned with that as opposed to just making the best out of life with what they got.
Furthermore, you went off on your own political tirade earlier upthread when one of the top stickies directs us to keep this sub void of political discussions.
1. From a US angle macroeconomics is significantly about the intersection between government spending, Federal Reserve action, FX and related, and international geo-political wrangling. Ergo worthwhile economic discussion is impossible without overlap into politics. That's just reality. The OP posts hard left tropes all the time.
2. Per ample food and height potential it's less about parents asking or even being aware........it's about stunted growth and all the associated negative health problems - low IQ/poor learning prospects, decreased immunity, increased risk of infection, early death etc. vs. the opposite.
3. Per your performance machines line. Some are more capable than others.
4. Per your diet points I tend to agree. For adults lower fat, less processed foods are always better. For very small kids not so much. Human breast milk is ~4.1 - 4.2% fat, high in lactose etc. Babies and little kids are calorie burning/wasting machines relative to adults.
"Improve public services. It is necessary to ensure universal access to high-quality health care, education, housing, transportation, Internet, renewable energy and nutritious food. Universal public services can deliver strong social outcomes without high levels of resource use."
Whatever is being proposed here is preferably not going drop food production to malnutrition levels, but only to eliminate food waste as much as possible. And we do waste a lot of food.
Quote from article:
"Food is the single largest category of material placed in municipal landfills and represents wasted nourishment that could have helped feed families in need. Additionally, water, energy, and labor used to produce wasted food could have been employed for other purposes."
But even the amount we do eat (which does not end up in landfills) is likely too much. It only makes us fat, and raising rates of heart disease. We have big problems with obesity, and diseases caused by eating too much.
We arent all going to play a few games in the NFL or NBA so we dont need to be huge monstrosities. Anyone who thinks we need to make available to every person anytime the option to gorge themselves like Homer Simpson because otherwise they cant "grow" and have health problems is a fool.
The fiat-based monetary system pretty much requires continuing economic growth. Otherwise, the whole thing would collapse due to the inability the payoff the colossal amount of debt.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
