The recent Pro Publica report on the low incomes taxes paid by American billionaires at the same time that their net wealth has been increasing by very large amounts has sparked a lot of discussion about reforming the tax code. Some people would like to redefine what counts as income, and others would like to …
Category Archives: writing
Do good jobs imply economic growth and more consumerism or can good work have some other significance?
The proposed Green New Deal is often touted as a generator of good jobs. Good jobs are generally understood to mean good pay and good benefits although other intangible factors such inherent interest of the work and sense of doing something beneficial for society play a role as well. At present a lot of the manufacturing associated …
Human creativity and consumption growth need to be decoupled if we are going to create an ecologically sane society.
In the past when I have attempted to discuss limits to economic growth and the destructive nature of consumerism as a primary driver of human social activity I have been told that there is no point in talking in this manner since if I am believed I will induce despair and depression rather than effective …
How is the American Green Party claim that the Green New Deal will pay for itself to be understood in terms of a growth based consumer society?
The American Green Party on its web page promoting legislation to combat climate claims that the Green New Deal will pay for itself via cuts in the military budget which will be enabled when we no longer need to protect foreign sources of oil and natural gas, and by a reduction in health care cost as fossil fuel related …
Proponents of Economic Degrowth discuss the strategy of transformation but do not put forward concrete proposals for the organizational structure of a post growth society
In an article entitled From Taming to Dismantling: Degrowth and Anti-capitalist Strategy Ekaterina Chertkovskaya (a researcher based at Lund University, working on degrowth and critical organization studies) uses sociologist Eric Olin Wright’s classification of anti-capitalist strategies to discuss possible paths of transformation to a post-growth society. Wright identifies three logics of transformation: ruptural, interstitial and symbiotic. Ruptural …
Does the developed world need to continue wasteful consumption in order to pull the developing world out of poverty?
John Cassidy of the New Yorker magazine in an article entitled Degrowth seen from the New Yorker wrote: “If major industrialized economies were to cut back their consumption and reorganize along more communal lines, who would buy all the components and gadgets and clothes that developing countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam produce?“ If developing countries produce less consumer toys for …