{"id":41617,"date":"2018-12-13T10:21:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T15:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41617"},"modified":"2018-12-13T10:21:03","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T15:21:03","slug":"the-sequel-life-after-economic-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=41617","title":{"rendered":"The Sequel: life after economic growth"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sequel: life after economic growth<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n
\"Freeways<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of David Martin Jr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As Simon Mont wrote in Tikkun<\/em>\u2019s recent issue on the New Economy, \u201ccapitalism is collapsing under the weight of itself, and it\u2019s not pretty.\u201d[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

Our globalised world finds itself caught on the horns of a seemingly impossible dilemma \u2013 either cease growing, and so collapse the economy on which we all depend, or continue to grow until we overwhelm and destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend.<\/p>\n

As my late mentor, the historian and economist David Fleming, put it,<\/p>\n

It is certain that there are no simple <\/em>answers to this\u2014none that could be proposed without proposing at the same time a transformation in the whole of the way we think, work and order our lives.[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

And yet, faced with this fundamental systemic conundrum, our leaders hold tight to their simple answer \u2013 growth.\u00a0 Having worked supporting people with drug addiction for several years, it is hard to escape the parallels to the more tragic cases.\u00a0 The dire consequences of our choices are piling ever higher around us, threatening the very continuation of our lives and those around us.\u00a0 And the response is to double down on the current path and turn a blind eye \u2013 to sink deeper into denial.\u00a0 It is just too difficult, too brave, to undergo that dark night of the soul \u2013 to admit the problem, to seek a new paradigm.<\/p>\n

So we hear it over and over \u2013 we must keep growth high, keep unemployment low.\u00a0 Donald Trump\u2019s recent Twitter boast that U.S. GDP growth (4.2%) was higher than unemployment (3.9%) for the first time in over a century was both inaccurate and bizarre, but it betrays his allegiance to these numbers.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sequel: life after economic growth Image courtesy of David Martin Jr As Simon Mont wrote in Tikkun\u2019s recent issue on the New Economy, \u201ccapitalism is collapsing under the weight of itself, and it\u2019s not pretty.\u201d[i] Our globalised world finds itself caught on the horns of a seemingly impossible dilemma \u2013 either cease growing, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[111,240,391,23483,23482],"class_list":["post-41617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-survival-2","tag-capitalism","tag-economic-growth","tag-growth","tag-shaun-chamberlin","tag-tikkun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41618,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41617\/revisions\/41618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}