Dr. John BarrySchool of Politics, International Studies and PhilosophyQueens University Belfast j.barry@qub.ac.uk

“questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries” (Jackson, 2009: 14).

Criticising economic growth is tantamount to a fundamental act of betrayal in modern societies, a public act of disloyalty to the modern political economic order.

Is it unpatriotic?

1. Sustainability reasons – climate change, energy, resources and pollution;

2. Equality reasons – economic growth under capitalism manages and reproduces inequality it does not eradicate it;

3. Human flourishing reasons – beyond a threshold, economic growth does not add to and can reduce human flourishing.

Low carbon/sustainability – does an economic policy lower carbon and move us away from actually existing unsustainability?

Equality – does an economic policy increase or decrease extreme inequalities?

Human flourishing – does an economic policy increase or decrease human flourishing?

So…if economic growth can be low carbon, lower inequality and increase human flourishing it is to be welcomed

1. Pro-poor economic growth 2. Pro-egalitarian economic growth3. Low carbon economic growth –

‘ecological modernisation’, ‘green growth’; ‘green capitalism’

4. Economic and ‘uneconomic’ growth – growth that does not add to reducing inequalities, reducing resource/energy intensity or increase opportunities for human flourishing

GDP does not differentiate between defensive and non-defensive consumption and production , positive and negative economic activity in terms of human flourishing, sustainability, or equality

Within an overall sustainable economy, which sectors and activities do we want to grow and which to shrink?

A post-growth economy – consistent with growth in some sectors, so long as it does not transgress the thresholds set by the three criteria above

Grow life-sustaining/enhancing sectors and contract those that undermine/threaten life

Less weapons, warships and bombs and more schools, playgrounds, hospitals, kidney dialysis machines?

The fact that an economy is growing tells you nothing about the ‘quality’ of economic activity that is happening within it.

“in times of recession, life expectancy can rise, even as livelihoods are apparently harmed. This happens in rich countries probably due to force of circumstances, as people become healthier by consuming less and exercising more, using cheaper, more active forms of transport such as walking and cycling”.

new economics foundation. 2010, Growth isn't possible, p. 6

It is possible, in other words, to have both ‘economic’ and ‘uneconomic’ growth and we should not assume that growth per se is a good thing, to be held onto at all costs.

Or as a permanent as opposed to a historically contingent feature and objective of the human economy

“This is the logic of free-market capitalism: the economy must grow continuously or face an unpalatable collapse. With the environmental situation reaching crisis point, however, it is time to stop pretending that mindlessly chasing economic growth is compatible with sustainability. Figuring out an alternative to this doomed model is now a priority.” ‘Why politicians dare not limit economic growth’ by Tim Jackson, pp. 42-3.

New Scientist, 16 October 2008

“Growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable” (Wallach, 1972).

“We are addicted to growth because we are addicted to large inequalities in income and wealth. What about the poor? Let them eat growth! Better yet, let them feed on the hope of eating growth in the future!”

(Herman Daly, 1991)

UK Cabinet Office’s Strategy Unit report, “above a certain threshold of consumption, there is no clear

relationship between economic growth and quality of life.” (Foley, 2005)

The Swedish EPA has called for strategies to target both the supply (production) and demand (consumption) sides through the propagation of eco-efficiency in production and by embedding a notion of ‘sufficiency’ in consumption.

“The ultimate question facing today’s society in developed countries is whether consumerism actually contributes to human welfare and happiness…” (EPA, Sweden, 2005)

“People in countries that provide citizens with a high level of economic security have a higher level of happiness on average, as measured by surveys of national levels of life-satisfaction and happiness…The most important determinant of national happiness is not income level – there is a positive association, but rising income seems to have little effect as wealthy countries grow more wealthier. Rather the key factor is the extent of income security, measured in terms of income protection and a low degree of income inequality.” (Emphasis added)

International Labor Organisation, (2004), Security for a Better World

Replacing economic growth with ‘economic security’

Imagine an economy not only designed by a scientist (or with cognisance of the basic biophysical laws of nature) but also one aimed to enhance human relationships and health not income, wealth and the accumulation of more and more possessions?

Or where societal ‘success’ is measured by how we look after the most vulnerable not the size of our economy or army?

“The necessity to reduce our material impact on the ecosystem is normally seen as a threat to our ‘standard of living’. However…it is existing patterns of consumption that compromise our prospects for ‘the good life’. Re-visioning the way we satisfy our needs is not the bitter pill of eco-fascism; it is the most obvious avenue for renewing genuine human development”.

(Jackson and Marks, 1998: 38; emphasis added)

“The Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ... the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl ... Yet [it] does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play ... the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages ... it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.

Robert Kennedy, 1968

”Towards what ultimate point is society tending by its industrial progress? When the progress ceases, in what condition are we to expect that it will leave mankind?

I cannot, therefore, regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, ...

But the best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.”

Resilience – climate change adaptation literature and permaculture

Centrality of ‘in-built redundancy’ and ‘slack’ to withstand shocks ensure long-term functioning

“Sufficiency thus aims at excess. It is not sacrifice in the negative sense of the term, not second best. It is first best when users want to do well now and into the indefinite future. It lies at the heart of an ecological order‘ (Princen, 2010: 74; emphasis added).

“Thrift is not the opposite of generosity, the closed fist that holds one to what you have, but the enabler of generosity. A frugal life that does not waste and cares for what you have is what enables you to give away, to share, to open your hands and pour forth what you have preserved” (Astyk, 2008: 208).

‘Biological time’: patterns of work/rest related to human health and well-being –psychological and bodily rest/recovery and the ‘unnaturalness’ or objective illness (as opposed to ‘well-being’) caused by ‘365/24/7’ work and life patterns demanded by the rhythms and productive and consumptive demands of the modern capitalist economy and its associated cultures of work and consumption

‘Ecological embeddedness’ and ‘biological embodiedness’ of human beings – need for linear time patterns to integrate with cyclical time rhythms

Humans not ‘brains on legs’ – need to attend to our phenomenal/corporeal/physical characters

Human beings are not simply ‘just like animals’, we are an animal species

Old, failed economic model based on:

Property speculation

Financialisation of the economy and life

Debt-based consumerism

All for economic growth

Beyond ‘business as usual’ Collectivisation of consumption (and democratising production)

If we’re socialising risk (bank bailouts etc) why not socialise other aspects of the economy?

Transition to a sustainable, green economy based on more shared forms of consumption

“a redefinition of work to include the full diversity of what is necessary for life. It requires we find new ways of valuing parenting, caring and community building as much as paid work” (Boyle and Simms, 2009: 89).

What would public policy and economic policy look like if they were orientated towards supporting ‘work’ and not just ‘employment’?

Where does the largely gendered labour within the ‘reproductive sphere’ get recognised as part of the ‘economy’?

Productivity gains translated into reduced formal working hours, not increased output or income

Letters page, Wisconsin State Journal, February 4th 2014

Criticising Republican sponsored Assembly Bill 611 for a 7 day workweek

Pleasure can be attained not just by working for or getting into debt and then purchasing commodities.

But also by finding time for those ‘simple things’ in life that are free or at least inexpensive –time with family and friends, time to swim in the ocean or read, time to be creative, to make love, to sit and think..or just to sit.

In other words, alternative hedonism does not see material simplicity of life as impoverishing, but rather the opposite as enriching life.

But key to this is economic security for all

One way of creating economic security

Reducing inequality and economic growth – reduce irrational status competition and consumerism

A direct investment in social capital. BI would encourage activities in the social economy.

Finance through a carbon tax, or tax on luxury goods?

Shift from 40 hour (+) normal working week20 hours – new economics foundation

Popular with workers where pay and conditions are good

“To meet the challenge, we must change the way we value paid and unpaid work. For example, if the average time devoted to unpaid housework and childcare in Britain in 2005 were valued in terms of the minimum wage, it would be worth the equivalent of 21 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product.”

Shorter working week – productivity gains realised not as output increases (or income increases) but more free time

Need greater work-time flexibility, gradual reduction of working hours over time, reward businesses for taking on more workers etc. Wage stability necessary, childcare and less unequal gender distribution of childcare

In 2008, in context of the banking collapse, Utah introduced a 4 day working week for public sector workers – saved money, increased staff well-being, public adapted...and the sky didn’t fall

Ended in autumn 2011

Developing new norm of part-time working – France, Holland good examples of this

Affordable Care Act “the law would reduce hours worked

and full-time employment, but not because of a crippling impact on private-sector job creation. With the expansion of insurance coverage, the budget office predicted, more people will choose not to work, and others will choose to work fewer hours than they might have otherwise to obtain employer-provided insurance.”, New York Times, 4th Feb. ‘Health care law projected to cut the labor force’

‘Will Obamacare kill 2.3 mllion jobs?’, MSM online

Why wasn’t the headline ‘Law projected to increase quality of life for Americans?’

“Reducing work hours over the rest of the century by an annual average of 0.5 percent. ... such a change in work hours would eliminate about one-quarter to one-half of the global warming that is not already locked in (i.e. warming that would be caused by 1990 levels of greenhouse gas concentrations already in the atmosphere).

However...back to inequality“reduced work hours as a policy alternative would be much more

difficult in an economy where inequality is high and/or growing. In the United States, for example, just under two-thirds of all income gains from 1973–2007 went to the top 1 percent of households. In this type of economy, the majority of workers would have to take an absolute reduction in their living standards in order to work less.” (Rosnick, 2013: 3)

So, for work hours reduction from productivity growth to be more broadly shared by majority of people requires reducing inequality.

A new development model, new way of thinking about the economy and economics

Sharing and public services , infrastructural investment rather than personal disposal income and consumption

Meaningful free time (not unchosen unemployment) within context of economic security and sufficiency

Shift from exclusive focus on the formal/cash economy (conventional public and private) to social/informal/convivial/solidarity economy

Replace economic growth with ‘economic security’ (or equivalent

Challenge and opportunity for the 21st century – how to improve the ecological efficiency of human flourishing NOT the ecological efficiency of orthodox economic growth

Post-growth economy – enjoyable, pleasurable, life-enhancing...just with less stuff, less inequality, more free time and with basic economic security for all.....

What’s not to like?!

The end of the world as we know it....is not the end of the world

Hard sell! Can be viewed as anti-aspirational, backward, regressive, defeatist, unattractive etc.

How to promote a new paradigm in thinking about the economy and society

Very difficult (but not impossible) in context of austerity, and general desire to return to growth

What is the narrative/storyline of post-growth?

Need for civic conversations as well as academic, policy-related scholarship

“Economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work. Not only have measures of well-being and happiness ceased to rise with economic growth but, as affluent societies have grown richer, there have been long-term rises in rates of anxiety, depression, and numerous other social problems. The populations of rich countries have got to the end of a long historical journey”.

(Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009 pp.5–6).

And while there are material ‘limits to growth’, there are many other dimensions of human flourishing that not subject to limits

“True growth is the ability of a society to transfer increasing amounts of energy and attention from the material side of life to the non-material side and thereby to advance its culture, capacity for compassion, sense of community, and strength of democracy.”

Arnold Toynbee

“The key mechanism, reflected in a rapid growth in the size of the financial sector, is the recycling of part of the additional income gained by high income households back to the rest of the population by way of loans, thereby allowing the latter to sustain consumption levels, at least for a while” (p.30)

Thus, lowering socio-economic inequality is a prudent ‘risk management’ policy

“redistribution policies that give workers the means to repay their obligations over time, and that therefore reduce crisis-risk ex-ante, can be more desirable from a macroeconomic stabilization point of view than ex-post policies such as bailouts or debt restructurings” (ibid.: 1)

The fact that questioning economic growth is largely viewed as unthinkable, crazy etc. does seem to point in the direction either…

That it’s some ‘force of nature’ like the laws of gravity; therefore to question it is to be not just ‘wrong’ but profoundly (and dangerously) in error as to the nature of the world

Or… it’s a profoundly ideological construct, such that merely questioning it evokes such powerful and defensive reactions

“Relations of domination are sustained by a mobilisation of meaning which legitimates, dissimulates or reifies an existing state of affairs and meaning can be mobilised because it is an essentially open, shifting, indeterminate phenomenon” (Thompson, 1985: 132).

The reification, legitimation and dissimilation of economic growth as ideology , from public debate, education and formal training in neoclassical economics (which dominates economics as a discipline)

All with the purpose of obscuring and reproducing relations of domination and control

How do we explain the continuing popular and political support for orthodox economic growth in face of growing evidence that

a)its ecologically impossible; b)manages but does not tackle inequality; c)after a threshold does not add to average well-being? Amongst the general population and not just economic or political elites? Economic growth (and orthodox economics) as ideological (as well as a structural imperative of capitalism)“the idea of ‘economic growth’ as a permanent feature of an economy serves the interests of a minority not a majority” (Barry, 2012: 151)

“assertions about economics are used as a kind of veto to rule out new ideas and proposals without further discussion… veto economics rejects ideas and proposals with just one word, offering no further explanation. Favourite veto words include ‘inefficient’, ‘irrational’ and ‘anti-competitive…as a last resort there is always the plain but vacuous condemnation ‘uneconomic’”

(Aldred, 2008: 3-4).

The energy cost of the Western lifestyle. .

Cato M S Camb. J. Econ. 2012;cje.bes022

© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.

The natural world – a source of beauty, wonder and inspiration which ever renews itself and ever refreshes the heart and mind

Collective struggles – groups in the past and present who have fought to achieve the equality and justice that is rightfully theirs

Visionaries – those who offer visions of an earth transformed and who work to help bring this about in different ways

Relationships – being loved by partners, friends and family, which nourishes and sustains us in our lives

Humour - seeing the funny side of things, being able to laugh in adversity, having fun, celebrating together

Roots – links with the past, history, previous generations, ancestors, the need to honour continuity

Hicks, D. (2006) ‘Stories of hope’, in: Lessons for the Future, Trafford