Degrowing Our Way to Genuine Progress
Erik Assadourian – Since the very creation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) indicator, people have criticized it as a poor measure of societal progress. Even the father of the GDP, Simon Kuznets, explains that “distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”
Failure to grow is understood implicitly and explicitly as evidence of a dysfunctional society—needing immediate intervention through stimulus or some sort of government action, even if the economic doctrine of the time is otherwise laissez-faire.
Reading Development 