Economic Growth Archives – Page 13 of 36 – Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Degrowth Toward a Steady State Economy: Unifying Non-Growth Movements for Political Impact

February 5, 2020/15 Comments/in Brian Czech, Degrowth, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech and Riccardo Mastini

No later than the 1960s, scholars wrote in rigorous terms of the limits to economic growth. Europeans such as E.F. Schumacher, Americans including Herman Daly, and European-born Americans (most notably Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Kenneth Boulding) set the stage for later studies in ecological economics and sustainability science. Their scholarship, supplemented by the population focus of Paul Ehrlich and the modeling approach of Donella Meadows and coauthors (for the Club of Rome),

My CASSE Internship: A Unique Experience in Unsustainable Times

December 10, 2019/1 Comment/in Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

By Ben Valdez

I don’t think it’s ever easy to consider being an unpaid intern right out of college. It’s something you don’t usually think about while you’re in school, at least from my experience, and it’s certainly not something you’re trained to aim for as a prospective graduate.

Before I came to the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy in September of 2019, I had spent the summer at home in the Los Angeles sun,

Distinguishing Capitalism from Growth

November 21, 2019/4 Comments/in Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Steady State Herald /by Brian Czech

by James Magnus-Johnston

Capitalism and growth might have similar connotations, but they have important distinctions, too. “Capitalism” has become a clumsy catch-all for any number of value-laden projections—greed, big business, innovation, accumulation, complexity, workaholism. “Growth,” meanwhile, is a landmine of technical and cultural connotations, and I’ll explore just a couple of them here.

Technically speaking, their differences seem straightforward. Growth is a material increase in economic production and consumption. Capitalism is a highly complex term,

KYIV COMMUNIQUÉ

November 6, 2019/7 Comments/in Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Environment, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

On the Environmental Impact and Economic Sustainability of Nord Stream 2 and Other Sub-Marine Natural Gas Pipelines

Kyiv, November 6, 2019

Summary

Representatives of the Ukraine National Academy of Sciences, National Technical University of Ukraine, Ukrainian National Forestry University, Naftogaz Board for Science and Technologies, Institute of Market Problems and Ecological Economics Research, Ukrainian Institute for the Future, and scholars from France,

[Book Review] Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

September 19, 2019/4 Comments/in Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Max Kummerow

In Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2019) Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson argue that population decline will bring many social and economic changes—some good, some bad. They assert that “In three decades, give or take…global population starts to decline.”

Note that their title is a bit misleading. World population will probably rise to over 10 billion before the slow decline would begin.

The Connection Between Population, Income, and Health

July 3, 2019/5 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Environment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Technology /by Brian Czech

by Max Kummerow

For hundreds of years, economists have debated whether population growth is good or bad. Malthus said exponential population growth increases labor supply, so wages fall until starvation, war, or plague stops growth in numbers. Marx said capitalism causes poverty and hunger, so population growth is good, because “every stomach is born with a pair of hands”, bringing revolution and justice closer.

Nearly 200 years later, Garrett Hardin and Julian Simon were still debating the same question.

“Be Very Alarmed!” Introducing the Global GDP Meter

June 27, 2019/5 Comments/in Brian Czech, Consumption, Corporate Reform, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Endangered Species, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Governance, Inflation, Jobs and Employment, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech

Backed by an ominous sound clip and a rapidly churning GDP meter that comes out of nowhere, “Be alarmed… Be very alarmed!” are the opening phrases at CASSE’s new landing page. You’ll see what we mean shortly; please allow us an introduction to describe this new approach.

The landing page is actually a 30-second animation prefacing our “regular” website. It is designed to be three things:

Alarming
Crystal clear
Distinctive and memorable

Why Sound the Alarm?

A Journey of No Return, Not a Circular Economy

April 23, 2019/9 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Jobs and Employment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian Czech

By Herman Daly

The economic process is not a mechanical analog that can be run forward and backward, nor a circular process that can return to any previous state. Rather it is an irreversible and irrevocable process moving in the direction of time’s arrow of increasing entropy [1]. Finitude and entropy guarantee that the economic life of our species will be a journey of no return. Therefore even a stationary economy, in the classical sense of constant population and constant capital stock, is ultimately a journey of no return, because the metabolic throughput of matter and energy required to maintain constant stocks of people and physical capital, in the face of depreciation and death, is an entropic flow from ever less concentrated sources to ever filling sinks – and both sources and sinks are finite.

The Green New Deal: What’s Really Green and What’s Really New

February 14, 2019/11 Comments/in Climate Change, Consumption, Corporate Reform, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech

Ask Americans what the Green New Deal is all about, and you’ll get two basic answers. Most often you’ll hear, “It’s about moving to renewable energy in order to fight climate change.” You’ll also hear, from a camp further right, “It’s all about socialism!”

Either way, the really green, really new feature is overlooked. What the Green New Deal is really about is the transition to a steady state economy.

“Driving” the Growth of Local Economies: Farming or Financing?

January 10, 2019/0 Comments/in Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Jobs and Employment, Money and Investments, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald /by Brian Czech

by Brian Czech

Among today’s headlines is the pedestrian-sounding “Colin Hanna: Economic growth, new jobs, strengthened pensions.” Author Hanna, surely a well-meaning soul, is pitching the merits of the private equity “industry.” The problem is, Hanna goes so far as to reference “the industry’s clear record of driving economic growth.”

Hanna’s article reminds me of the many, many (oh, so many) times I’ve read about tourism, bowling,