These are the CASSE blog articles on poverty.


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.


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.”


The Pope Francis Encyclical And Its Economics

by Brent Blackwelder

The Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis is attracting extraordinary attention for its message on global warming, deforestation, loss of biological diversity, and other pressing environmental issues. What is less well known is the extensive critique of the global economy found in his 184-page Encyclical. This blog highlights some of the significant points that Pope Francis makes about the need for systemic economic change.

Although the Pope does not use the phrase “steady state economy”


Thoughts on Pope Francis’ Laudato Si

by Herman Daly

As a Protestant Christian, my devotion to the Catholic Church has been rather minimal, based largely on respect for early church history and for the love of an aunt who was a nun. In recent times, the Catholic Church’s opposition to birth control, plus the pedophile and cover-up scandals, further alienated me. Like many others, I first viewed Pope Francis as perhaps a breath of fresh air, but little more. After reading his encyclical on environment and justice,


Biocultural Heritage: The Foundation of a Sustainable Economy

Want healthy ecosystems and healthy economies? You’d better think about conserving biocultural heritage.


How Studying in Asia Made Me See the Need for a Steady State Economy

Asian nations are running a dangerous experiment on the long-term consequences of short-term economic growth.


Top 10 Policies for a Steady State Economy

While we’re hunkered down enduring the inevitable collapse of the growth economy, we should consider sound policies for a sustainable economy.


The Daly-Correa Tax: Background and Explanation

Herman Daly has an unorthodox suggestion for curtailing carbon dioxide emissions: grant more power to OPEC.


Toward a New Bretton Woods and a Sustainable Civilization

Eric Zencey reports encouraging news from the United Nations, but he knows a sustainable economic system won’t arise without concerted effort.