i think it was pretty clear and insightful

And thats why degrowth suddenly makes sense. If we want to maintain such a huge economy while all these materials are finite, we need to conjure up more of the finite materials and/or increase circularity of the materials. As the first is impossible and the second only feasible to some degree, the logical conclusion is that the extent of the current economy is unsustainable, ergo needs to shrink.

Who said the statistics are shaky? It's well-established that greater inequality causes more social dysfunctions, and this relationship is inevitable because it pushes more people into poverty that the number of wealthy people it makes richer, and the individual and social losses at the bottom end of the income curve are much worse than the gains achieved by moving someone from $150K a year to $160K a year.

@@karlwheatley1244 My statistics professor said so. We read the book in our multivariate course as an example of what not to do when interpreting statistics. It went way too far in using data to justify their moral goals, without robust proof of a relationship between the two.

@@visicircle Thanks for your reply. The book was really for a general audience, so I don't expect it to provide the detail that would make your statistics professor happy. I'm a senior university professor too, and I would agree they could have explained the underlying causal mechanisms better, but there's actually a solid list of mechanisms (more poverty, more unequal [and less adequate] services, expenditure cascades, social status pressures, various psychological mechanisms, power differentials and political corruption) that guarantee that societies with higher income and wealth inequality will be more dysfunctional. Some of these are proven through experimental research--you can create social dysfunction with depressing speed in groups just by increasing wealth and power inequalities. Others are simply built into the relationships between the income distribution and human well-being--greater inequality pushes more people into poverty, and the decline in well-being for $5K less income for a person making $20,000 a year is far greater than the gain in wellbeing for someone making $100K a year getting $5K more a year. Specifically, the income-wellbeing slopes steeply upward for people under and around the poverty line, but above $75K a year, incremental gains in income yield very little (and diminishing) gains in well being. Moreover, in very unequal societies, the super-rich are better able to use their wealth and political power to their advantage (but in ways that leave most others worse off--cuts in food benefits, low-income housing, education). Their newer book, The Inner Level, is supposed to have strengthened their arguments, but whether it does or not, there's lots of research to back their main conclusion. I'm actually writing a book in which a pivotal conclusion of the book is that it's impossible to have healthy and just (or sustainable) societies with high levels of income/wealth inequality. Take care.

Yup. Socialism all dressed up in a new fancy ecological ribbon.

(1) There is a lot of research on this topic showing that 90% of environmental damage is caused by our use of resources, extraction, etc. and that it is impossible to decouple resource use from GDP. (2) Countries like GDP are happier and people have longer life spans despite having 6x less GDP per capita than the US. Why is that, if GDP is the all-important factor? The point is that it isn't. Economic growth does not magically make people happy or give them access to the things they need. (3) You should look up the paper "Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries" by Richardson et al.

@@_yonas I am always amused by those who insist that separating everyone from their wealth is the road to happiness. The market gives us options. Some self appointed happiness guru does not. Resources are the products of markets and markets work when there is capital available and that is a consequence of growth. Degrowth bullshit artists bring nothing but platitudes.

@@richardford9321 You haven't addressed any of my points, so don't accuse others of "bringing nothing but platitudes". Firstly, feel free to ask people what they care about and what brings them happiness, and I bet they'll say things like: access to nutritious food, drinking water, housing, education, culture and entertainment, to spent time with their family and friends, but they won't say: GDP. Secondly, you can still have markets in a degrowth economy.