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Tag Archives: consumption
Trade Wars Just Beginning…The War Is a Fight Over an Indefinitely Shrinking Pie
Trade Wars Just Beginning…The War Is a Fight Over an Indefinitely Shrinking Pie From a growth perspective, it doesn’t matter if the world is 7.5 million or 7.5 billion persons…it only matters how many more there are from one year to the next. Economic growth (or the ability to consume more…not produce more) is about the […]
Our only hope for long term survival
Our only hope for long term survival Language warning: Many may find the following article offensive, such as: Technocornucopians – eg geoengineering and carbon drawdown fantasists, blinkered university academics and engineers, TZM, Elon Musk etc People who think reducing population and/or consumption are sacred cows which should never be mentioned People who are shocked […]
Credit Card Debt Hits All Time High As Consumers Unleash Historic Shopping Spree
Credit Card Debt Hits All Time High As Consumers Unleash Historic Shopping Spree It’s official: the reason behind the recent rebound in the economy can be explained with two words: “charge it.” Readers may recall that one month ago, we reported that with Republicans in Washington on the verge of passing their first major piece […]
De-Growth is Feasible: People Want a New Economy
DE-GROWTH IS FEASIBLE: PEOPLE WANT A NEW ECONOMY Branko Milanovic has written a response to my argument. As I read it, I was struck by two things – both quite significant. First, Branko now seems to accept the science on how “green growth” is not a thing, and has backed off his assumption that endless […]
Having Your Bit of Cake and Eating it Too?
HAVING YOUR BIT OF CAKE AND EATING IT TOO? Downsizing, the film by Alexander Payne, which follows Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) as he decides to shrink himself to 5 inches tall and moves to the downsized colony of Leisureland, had great promise as a conversation starter about sustainability, and in some ways it succeeded, but […]
Productivity and Debt
Productivity and Debt William Blake Europe Supported by Africa and America 1796 Earlier this week I was struck by the similarities and differences between two graphs I saw float by. And the thought occurred that they are as scary as they are interesting. The graphs show eerily similar trends. And complement each other. The first […]
De-[Constructing] Growth: Decoupling Profits from Unsustainable Production*
De-[Constructing] Growth: Decoupling Profits from Unsustainable Production* Degrowth has been described as a “movement” rather than an ideology1, and as such it presents several variations. For some of its proponents, degrowth is a proxy for sustainable consumption, and to a lesser extent production2. A second group of degrowth advocates are those for whom an emerging […]
Debt: The Key Factor Connecting Energy and the Economy
Debt: The Key Factor Connecting Energy and the Economy There are many who believe that the use of energy is critical to the growth of the economy. In fact, I am among these people. The thing that is not as apparent is that growth in energy consumption is dependent on the growth of debt. Both energy and […]
Simultaneous Elderly Overpopulation, Youth Depopulation & The Impact on Economic Growth
Simultaneous Elderly Overpopulation, Youth Depopulation & The Impact on Economic Growth Strangely, the world is suffering from two seemingly opposite trends…overpopulation and depopulation in concert. The overpopulation is due to the increased longevity of elderly lifespans vs. depopulation of young populations due to collapsing birthrates. The depopulation is among most under 25yr old populations (except Africa) […]
Lost Faith In Central Banks And The Economic End Game
Lost Faith In Central Banks And The Economic End Game We live in strange economic times, stranger perhaps than at any other point in history. Since 2007-2008, the globally intertwined and dependent fiscal system has suffered considerable declines in every conceivable area. Manufacturing around the world is in a slump, from Japan to China to […]
Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability
Why We Consume: Neural Design and Sustainability Exponential economic growth is rapidly destabilizing the biosphere. Among the many factors that stimulate such growth is the human tendency to consume goods and services far beyond what is required to meet basic needs. We have to grasp what drives this tendency in order to manage it. The […]
Nicole Foss presents: Challenge and Choices
Nicole Foss presents: Challenge and Choices Nicole Foss: After more than 30 years of exponential growth, gargantuan resource demand and increasingly frenetic consumption, we have now reached, or are reaching, an array of limits to growth. During our long, debt-fuelled boom, we reached out spatially through globalisation to monetise as much global production as possible, in […]
The Declining Interest Rate Cap
The Declining Interest Rate Cap Believe it or not, one of the topics in economics that confuses macroeconomists is the actual role of interest rates. For the most part they just assume that an interest rate is the cost of money, the price of money, or even the transfer of the fruits of production from […]
Bank Of Ireland Bans “Small” Cash Withdrawals At Branches
Bank Of Ireland Bans “Small” Cash Withdrawals At Branches As central planners the world over grapple with the effective “lower bound” that’s imposed by the existence of physical banknotes, there’s been no shortage of calls for a ban on cash. Put simply, if you eliminate physical currency, you also eliminate the idea of a floor […]
