These are the CASSE blog articles on jobs and employment.


Happiness and the COVID-Caused Recession

by Beth Allgood

Modified from the original published in Our Daily Planet (ourdailyplanet.com) on March 21, 2020.

In 2013, the United Nations designated March 20th as the International Day of Happiness to recognize the importance of happiness and wellbeing in the lives of people around the world. Last year I attended the launch of the annual UN World Happiness Report in New York. This year the UN is closed to the public,


“Be Very Alarmed!” Introducing the Global GDP Meter

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

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.


A Country of Immigrants

By Herman Daly

Historically, the U.S. is undeniably a country of immigrants. But why is this uncontested fact so repeatedly emphasized? Might the unremitting celebration of immigration as a policy (as opposed to the celebration of particular immigrants as people) obscure a dark side of our immigration history?


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

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,


Population and the Steady State Economy

By Max Kummerow

Sir David Attenborough remarked in a 2011 presidential lecture to the Royal Society that “every environmental and social problem is made more difficult and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more people.” Wherever women’s status has improved and societies modernized, he said, birth rates have fallen. He begged his audience to “talk about population.”


What Kind of Future Does Your Degree Prepare You For?

by James Magnus-Johnston

As the fall chill sets into the air and farmers begin to harvest, universities invite another wave of impressionable young minds to think about the future—of society, and of their place in it. But preparation for the future requires us to consider exactly what kind of future we think we’re in for, and far too many schools are preparing students for a fictional business-as-usual future.

Do your universities and instructors acknowledge that the global temperature will likely rise by at least two degrees this century?


Progress Toward a True-Cost Economy Comes from Renewable Energy

by Brent Blackwelder

A renewable energy revolution is sweeping the planet. This revolution has profound implications because it signals that the global economy is moving to stop the growth of our human carbon footprint.

The global economy has run for a century primarily on fossil fuels but is now undergoing a rapid transition to a global economy based significantly on rooftop solar, wind, and efficiency. This is a tangible movement toward a steady state economy because with wind and solar,


The Negative Natural Interest Rate and Uneconomic Growth

The next nonsensical strategy for maintaining the dream of endless GDP expansion? Negative interest rates!