Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has been saying pretty much the same thing for a while now. Indeed, the notion that we can austerity our way back to a dynamic, growing economy has been acknowledged by people in the know as pure idiocy since 1932 -- that's 80 years.
There's one small problem with the usual, Keynesian approaches this time though. Do we really want to return to a dynamic, growing economy? Or should we suck it up, embrace poverty, and start truly living differently than we have been? It's only what we're going to have to do in the long run anyway, if we're planning to live on this planet.
3 comments:
Paul was bugging me pretty badly when he talked about this. There are a few serious hindrances to our future prosperity, including both lack of science education and greed. But when I heard Paul explain his idea, I was thinking this is a finite planet and we have used it up a lot more than it was in the 1930s. I'm just not sure how much room for growth there is anymore.
I think there's plenty of room for growth, but of a different kind. We need to turn the jobs, credit, and petroleum society of the XXth century into compost. We'll need it to fertilize a world made by hand.
Maybe there will be a lot more labor put into restoration and reuse. Without as much energy, there will be a lot less economic activity, and what's there will be a lot more by hand.
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