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Page added on April 1, 2016
Age of Stagnation
The common political conversation about our shared economic future focuses on achieving an escape velocity where the post-war growth boom can return as usual. While years of lackluster economic performance mount, a rapidly growing global economy is still discussed like it is readily just over the horizon. Can the factors creating a slower growth world find open discussion in time to avoid severe social strife? Is the drive for passive income in an age of stagnation placing the global economy in permanent peril and creating a context for social strife?
In Extraenvironmentalist #91 we first speak with Satyajit Das about his new book The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth is Unattainable and the Global Economy is in Peril which questions the assumption that never ending economic growth is possible, or desirable. Das questions the ability of political leaders to enact the tough structural changes needed to avoid social chaos in a low growth world. Then, in the second half of our show we speak with Michael Hudson about his book Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy. Hudson describes how debt deflation is imposing austerity on the U.S. and European economies, siphoning wealth and income upward to the financial sector while impoverishing the middle class.
18 Comments on "Age of Stagnation"
onlooker on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 3:21 pm
This article seems to be stuck in time. Still pondering the question of whether we can have economic growth and whether that is good. That question probably would have been more pertinent at the start of the Industrial age. What we have now is a contracting world economy. Unfortunately, it did not happen soon enough and so now we have 7 plus billion people all living for today and consuming likewise on a planet reeling from abuse. Yet economists and their ilk are still in some other dimension speaking hypothetically about how to proceed. Well Nature is already beginning to proceed whether we like it or not.
HARM on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 6:41 pm
And yet… growth continues unabated.
In fact the U.N. world population projections from only 10 years ago turned out to be too CONSERVATIVE. Instead of adding 70 million annually, we’re now adding 80 million. We should hit 9 billion well before 2040, then rocket up to 13 billion or more by 2100. Most of that population growth will, of course, be in already overpopulated third world h-holes with a tenuous connection (at best) to literacy, civil liberties, rule of law, sanitation and reason.
BAU: 1
Consequences: 0
Kenz300 on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 7:05 pm
Too many people……….create too much pollution and demand too many resources….endless population growth is not sustainable…….
China made great progress in moving its people out of poverty…….one reason was slowing population growth…..
CLIMATE CHANGE, declining fish stocks, droughts, floods, air, water and land pollution, poverty, water and food shortages all stem from the worlds worst environmental problem……. OVER POPULATION.
Yet the world adds 80 million more mouths to feed, clothe, house and provide energy and water for every year… this is unsustainable… and is a big part of the Climate Change problem
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Boat on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 9:06 pm
onlooker,
” What we have now is a contracting world economy”
Why do you continue to post misinformation. The worlds economy is not contracting.
makati1 on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 9:08 pm
Onlooker, well said. Most assume that current population growth will continue at the same rate as before. They, like many others, use the past as proof of the future. Not so. We live in a world unlike any in the past. We have a future unlike any in the past. It is a very brutish future full of pain and suffering so most avoid it like the plague it is. Too bad. Those who see it and prepare will be in a better position to endure and survive it. Those who deny it will be the losers.
Mother Nature is going to cull the herd long before 9 billion of us inhabit this planet. Or maybe we will do it to ourselves thru a nuclear exchange? We shall see. Better to be prepared years early than five minutes too late.
HARM on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 9:28 pm
Yacht has a point – the world’s population and aggregate GDP is rising, not contracting.
Practicalmaina on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 9:45 pm
The world’s capability to give someone a decent quality of life is decreasing. All this technology and we can’t keep people cancer free…but I can watch porn on a virtual reality head set…progress
JuanP on Fri, 1st Apr 2016 9:48 pm
Technically, the global economy is still growing, but if we subtract inflation and malinvestment into the formula and include population growth and increasing economic inequality as considerations, the economy is contracting for most people in the world in their household income, where it hurts the most at the personal level. More than 90% of humanity are worse off every day. Old rich white dudes are mostly OK. They got money and won’t live long enough to pay for their mistakes. The poor and the young are screwed.
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 1:03 am
while GWP may not be the best indicator for whether or not we are in a growth or contraction the data suggest we are growing. 2009 appeared to indicate no growth. If you retards have some metric you’re going by that you’d like to share please do. I’m sure most of you just make up most of your BS and have no data sets whatsoever to back up your claims. Just cuz you’re a loser in a country full of idiots and your life sucks it doesn’t mean that the global economy is contracting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
makati1 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:31 am
Practical, if you noticed the only ‘medical’ progress we have had is those that make more and more profits for the health mafia. Few cures, but lots of treatments. Cancer could be cured if they wanted to but, that would cut off a lot of profit.
“During 2010, the United States spent an estimated $125 billion on cancer care” ( A lot more now, I bet.)
http://www.ajmc.com/journals/evidence-based-oncology/2012/2012-2-vol18-n1/the-economics-of-cancer-care-in-the-united-states-how-much-do-we-spend-and-how-can-we-spend-it-better
If we spent the cost of one aircraft carrier fleet on cancer research, we could easily cure something we understand so well.
“…about 1,596 people a day—died of cancer in the United States in 2012 …”
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/data/types.htm
That’s over 1/2 million per year, year after year. But each one of those spent thousands, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars on treatments before they died. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Ain’t capitalism great? But they can watch unlimited porn as they die.
makati1 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 6:37 am
Truth, JuanP is correct. You will not find the numbers you need to prove we are in a contraction mode because they are censored out of anything you will see.
True inflation in the Us is running in the double digits, while salary increases are declining. The actual taxes collected by the government is proof. They are declining and that only happens in a contracting economy. Ditto for the rest of the world. Figures lie and liars figure. No government is publishing the real numbers as it would crash the system. It’s extend and pretend until the end. And the end is near.
oracle on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 8:05 am
HARM, Humans seem insatiably driven to have sex (and consequently have babies). They don’t first consult economic conditions or resource availability before getting busy. Population growth will continue long after it is starkly imprudent.
Davy on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 9:30 am
Good read on Canadian economic brilliance:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-02/canada-goes-full-krugman-jacks-borrowing-and-spending-confirms-gold-sale
Boat on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 10:05 am
mak,
Bla bla they must be lying cause the truth would crash the system.
Silly season is in full bloom.
GregT on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 12:01 pm
“Good read on Canadian economic brilliance:”
Just another Tax farm, same as all the rest. The sheep will continue to mindlessly wave their owner’s flags, while they continue to be fleeced, and prepared for slaughter.
GregT on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 12:12 pm
“they must be lying cause the truth would crash the system.”
Correct Boat. When a currency is created out of thin air, and backed by nothing but debt, it is based solely on confidence. If the truth were known, the sheep would panic. The truth must be hidden, or the system will implode. Fortunately, sheep are not that difficult to pacify.
onlooker on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 12:25 pm
Very true Mak, about distorted statistics from official sources in the US. Better to look at this http://www.shadowstats.com/
makati1 on Sat, 2nd Apr 2016 7:26 pm
Onlooker, that site is where I get my facts on the US economy. Numbers not massaged and manipulated to make BAU look good. If those numbers were published on the front page of every newspaper in the Us, the system would crash. It appears that some on here don’t want to know how 3rd world the Us really is. Too bad. I prefer the truth to fiction/lies any day.