[Wildwell]

Now, this is a lateral thinking question, if anyone answers ‘Everyone’ it’s invalid. Instead the question is about quality of life, the cost of living, opportunity, real wealth, distribution of income and so on. It is often said that Britain’s best quality of life was in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet at the time there were economics problems, especially in the 1970s. Yet since this time GDP has shot up, yet most people do not feel that much wealthier or many would argue their quality of life is now not as good, whether from a material point of view of the pace of life, more crime or more expensive basic items. Well, who benefits?

[Ludi]

The wealthy, mainly.

[MicroHydro]

In the long run, everyone is a loser. As a high school student I had adventures in wild nature - for free - that are unavailable to even wealthy people now.

I crossed the Pacific ocean on sailboats twice in the mid 90s. Every day, plastic garbage was visible over a thousand miles from any land. That is the reality of growth.

[MaterialExcess]

There has been very little, if any, improvement in living standards in the US since the 70s. We now need to be two income families to enjoy the same living standards we had back then with just one source of income. The jobs now, even good paying ones, are dismal. It's profit at any sacrifice. You're constantly working under the threat of being out sourced by someone in Asia. I suppose the wealthy stock holders have gotten some benefit. The average working person has been a big loser.

[Ebyss]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') crossed the Pacific ocean on sailboats twice in the mid 90s. Every day, plastic garbage was visible over a thousand miles from any land

[frankthetank]

Maybe disease spreading insects...

[Tyler_JC]

Entropy

[Dezakin]

Those naive pessimists who think the world is going to hell in a handbasket benifit from growth. Without growth they wouldn't have the little cyber communities so readily avaliable to commiserate their collective delusions of doom in.

On average, everyone benifits from growth.

[AdzP]

my two euros worth...the top 0.5% of earners benefit from the modern economic system...with the next 5 to 10% on a movable sliding scale...

what is normally defined as growth is in fact often govt spending (see the USA and the UK at the moment) which is of course public money and the rest of `growth` is funnelled to the top 0.5 - 1% which is why they invented Hedonic Indexing to measure poverty...its why business demands such huge subsidies (see new US Energy Bill or export credit licences in UK).

current `growth` is merely transference of wealth up the chain, wealth is never created its only moved around. as the system does not actually function as the ideology has it the only way to get more profits (what `growth` is really about) is to make people work longer hours, on less pay, with no union representation, remove poeple from unemployment registers by accounting tricks and freelance/self-employment, stifle democratic change and so on...

[JonathanR]

Be careful not to confuse inflation with growth. Inflation is caused by an increasing supply of money (both printed and credit).

Growth is the increasing production of goods and, to a limited extent, services that people want or need. Growth can result from increasing demand of an increasing population, or an increasing demand for affluence of a static population. Or a combination of both.

Increasing affluence is mostly generated by creating more goods with less manual human inputs. The reduction of manual human inputs correlates well with the substitution for higher and higher energy-specific density fuel sources, viz:

- carbohydrate agriculture feeding human labour
- coal mining feeding the steam powered industrial revolution
- petroleum production extending the industrial revolution
- computers feeding the delusion of the information/services revolution

Thus, we are able to make more goods with less human inputs. Actually, the information age does not produce much, if any, real product. It only helps us deplete our resources more efficiently.

Nowdays, of course, the West just commutes in cars to sit at workstations (where work stops), while the East bust their guts to create the goods for the West to enjoy. This, in a nutshell, is trade imbalance. The East is producing all the goods, while the West swans around pretending to do something useful. You have some work collegues like this, yes?

There is a limit, of course. Soon the East will put down their tools and shout 'enough!', and demand more opportunity to slack-off too. Thus the balance will be redressed. At that time, the West will have to get off the welfare, get up from our workstations and do some real work, of the elbow grease type.

Additionally. the environment will also revolt (Peak Oil) and the petroelum contribution to growth will begin to wane.

Thus growth will revert to being limited by the ability of the planet to sustain increases in human population.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hus, we are able to make more goods with less human inputs. Actually, the information age does not produce much, if any, real product. It only helps us deplete our resources more efficiently.

[JonathanR]

Dezakin, you work in IT, yes? Apologies for offending you with my value judgements.

Please could you elaborate on what you mean by 'efficiencies introduced in production'? What variables comprise the numerator and denominator?

Yes, video games are a product, and so are televisions, home stereo equipment, etc, etc. However, they are only a product valued by those who have the spare time to make use of them. This is what affluence is. Try selling a home theater to a rural Chinese farm labourer. Not only could he/she not afford one, but wouldn't have the time to use one.

Here's my take on productivity enhancements. It's an anecdotal example, so bear in mind that anecdotes are not always representative of a trend.

I work as a Mechanical Engineer in a design office of a multi-national engineering company. Computers are used there extensively to design new or upgrades to existing petro-chemical process plants. Everyone has their own, sitting on their desk ("workstation").

The reality is that the number of man-hours going into a typical project hasn't changed that much in the last three decades. We just do it "better", and bang them out faster than we did twenty years ago. The computer/information revolution has just allowed more people to work on a given project, has allowed the client to gander at pretty rendered images of his new baby, and procurement and construction can get the information from the design sooner than in the past. So the net result is the whoa-to-go time frame has dropped from about three years to 18 months.

Much of the fabrication and construction is done 'off-shore' by the Asian economies. The more the better, in many project managers opinions.

These new plants are, of course, all electronically instrumented and computer controlled, so the number of operators required has been reduced. Further to this, we track and analyse more information about how the plant is operating. Do we really use this information? Mostly not. We just collect it because we can.

A computer can also be used to analyse a design problem till the cows come home. For the most part, does it change the result obtained the experienced engineers' rule-of-thumb answer? Probably not by much. The answer is still the answer, and the manufacturing still has to be done.

Thus, the computer has simply allowed us to spend more of our time looking at pretty rendered images of things that don't yet exist, while assisting consumption of our natural resources at an ever faster rate. Or more 'efficiently', depending on your point of view.

None-the-less, most of the real work is still done by those who don't sit in front of a computer, or by machines that consume fossil fuels.

[Kingcoal]

The whole idea of economic growth is to get more and more minds working on solving problems. What comes out of it all is more technology. We need technology more than ever. For instance, modern computers would not be possible with vacuum tube technology. Today, microprocessors are in many products including cars, making them more efficient.

Who benefits? Had my mother contracted cancer today rather than in 1972, she would have survived. It's not a perfect system, though. For the past 20 or so years, cheap oil has focused brain power on often trivial pursuits. We need all the brain power available focused on energy technologies. Expensive oil will have that effect. Bush seems to understand this, by keeping the SOR closed.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'T')hose naive pessimists who think the world is going to hell in a handbasket benifit from growth. Without growth they wouldn't have the little cyber communities so readily avaliable to commiserate their collective delusions of doom in.

On average, everyone benifits from growth.

[Dezakin]

JonathanR:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o the net result is the whoa-to-go time frame has dropped from about three years to 18 months.

[linlithgowoil]

i dont think it can be denied that my generation has it 'easier' than my mum and dad's generation with regard to having more 'stuff'.

however, things are worse in other ways for your average person in scotland now. its simply because of the way our culture has changed. everyone is obsessed with money now, more and more. i notice it all the time. when i was young, people weren't as embarrassed if they were poor. now - being poor is seen as the ultimate shame and is interpreted to mean you are lazy and stupid.

depression rates are up, 'stress' levels are up, violent crime up, drug use up, alcoholics up, every indicator of people being miserable - generally up.