{"id":2117,"date":"2012-07-31T08:48:18","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T07:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=2117"},"modified":"2012-07-31T08:48:18","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T07:48:18","slug":"steady-as-she-goes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/07\/31\/steady-as-she-goes\/","title":{"rendered":"Steady as she goes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I confess that I struggle with issues around economic growth, in particular wondering how more people can enjoy a decent life \u2013 Sen's idea(l) of <em>living a life one has reason to value <\/em>\u2013 without it. \u00a0I subscribe to the <a href=\"http:\/\/steadystate.org\/meet\/mission\/\">Daly News<\/a> as I seek enlightenment. \u00a0A recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/steadystate.org\/positive-vision-international-affairs\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DalyNews+%28The+Daly+News%29\">posting<\/a> by Brian Czech was a helpful one.<\/p>\n<p>His first paragraph describes me in all my glorious gullibility, ignorance and confusion:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Before we think about the steady state economy, let\u2019s think for a moment about economic growth. \u00a0Economic growth still has such positive connotations in domestic politics, especially American politics, that the vast majority of citizens simply assume that whoever can do more for economic growth is the better statesman (man or woman), better Federal Reserve chair, better economic advisor, etc. \u00a0That\u2019s why the definition of economic growth bears repeating over and over again, to pull the magic cloak from a purely material process. \u00a0Economic growth simply means increasing production and consumption of goods and services in the aggregate.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this almost describes me as well:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Yet many activists, scholars, and \u2018think-tankers\u2019 are afraid to talk openly in public about the steady state economy, much less to go on record as supporting it. They think the phrase \u201csteady state economy\u201d has negative connotations. They think this makes the steady state economy too difficult to promote.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>... but it's not the promotion that bothers me, it's its achieving.<\/p>\n<p>For example, I am still wondering at what scale all this operates \u2013 the world, I guess (though it's hard to see how that can be operationalised) \u2013 the country, most certainly, as sometimes it seems a big GDP machine \u2013 and \u00a0the family perhaps? \u00a0I read the CASSE position <a href=\"http:\/\/steadystate.org\/act\/sign-the-position\/read-the-position-statement\/\">statement<\/a> to find out more, and was surprised at how much seemed common sense. \u00a0I liked its language and logic. \u00a0Well-written, which is a nice change.<\/p>\n<p>Something to come back to ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I confess that I struggle with issues around economic growth, in particular wondering how more people can enjoy a decent life \u2013 Sen's idea(l) of living a life one has reason to value \u2013 without it. \u00a0I subscribe to the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}