Year: 2010
Type: preprint
Abstract: The premise of economic growth has come under question, in many parts of the world today, from a variety of directions.We are aware, of course, that moral thinking in practically every known culture enjoins us not to place undue emphasis on our material concerns.But today there is more to it than that.With heightened sensitivity to the strains that industrialization often brings, including the possibility of permanent climate change, many people in the higherincome countries now question whether further economic expansion is worth the costs.In the developing world, where the advantages of rising incomes are more evident, some people question whether economic growth, and the policies that promote it, are just vehicles for exploitation by foreigners.And now that the 2007-?financial crisis has sharply depressed production and incomes in many countries, both industrialized and not, an unusually large number of citizens sense that their economies aren't growing anyway.A turn away from economic growth is not what anyone should want, however -and not just on narrowly economic grounds.The experience of many countries suggests that when a society experiences rising standards of living, broadly distributed across the population at large,
Author: Benjamin M. Friedman
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2129801316