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Global economy must move past GDP to avoid planetary disaster, warns UN chief
(www.theguardian.com)
For decades, politicians and policymakers have prioritised growth – as measured by GDP – as the overarching economic goal.
That's because for most people there simply is no such thing as "enough." No matter how much money they make, no matter how much wealth they accumulate, they always want more. Now, for a poor person to want more is understandable and acceptable, but for a rich person to want more is considerably less acceptable, and it becomes less acceptable the richer they get.
That being said, I don't think it's so much about the numbers, as in the number of zeros on a person's paycheck, in their bank account or on their personal financial statement. I think it's more about having access to the products and services that give people the living standard they want. I think most people could at least feel content if they had access to a "decent" standard of living, regardless of how much money they had relative to the richest members of society. But in a society where a person's access to a "decent" standard of living is directly correlated to how much money they make, and that standard of living is only getting more expensive, it makes sense why so many people are looking for more money.
And that's made more contentious when those same people see a relatively small number of extremely wealthy individuals at the top of the wealth and income ladder, seemingly hoarding a lot of what they want.
The thing about growth is, many people still need to see their living standards improve. There still needs to be increased access to that "decent" standard of living for many billions of people around the world. So, growth in many areas is still necessary. But it's the continued demand for growth among people who are already well, well past the "decent" standard of living most people are striving for who need to accept no growth, or even degrowth.
There's this idea that we need to just keep trying to make everyone richer and richer, forever. To keep "growing" the pie, forever. But some people already have more than enough pie, and we just need to cut them off, or even take some of the pie they already have. There has to be a limit. There has to come a point where we all say, "sorry, but you just can't have any more pie."