Out with the old

One of the best ways to get more economic growth is by narrowing inequality, says UK economist and author Daniel Susskind

- PAUL LITTLE

We need more economic growth. It's one of the few things politicians agree on, according to economist and author Daniel Susskind. It provides jobs, meets material needs and "is associated with almost every measure of human flourishing".

But, as he explains in his new book, Growth: A Reckoning, politicians aren't the only people with an opinion or a stake in how the world is run. With an eye to environmental challenges, a degrowth movement, represented by the likes of David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg, is gaining - though definitely not using up - ground.

Who's right? Neither entirely, but the politicians are probably righter.

Susskind is a research professor in economics at King's College London, a senior research associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, and an associate member of the economics department at Oxford. And he is unequivocal that we still need growth, but a different kind of growth from the one we are used to. He is quick to point out the many problems - familiar and often overlooked - with having it as a goal.

"Growth is associated with many of the greatest challenges that we face. Most obviously, it's associated with climate change: that we are, in some sense, growing our way towards an ecological catastrophe.

"But globalisation [also] disrupts local places and communities. The growth dilemma is that it has extraordinary promise, but it's also got this great price as well." In particular, he thinks gross domestic product as a measure of growth is misleading, and not in a vague "yes, but it doesn't put an economic value on hugs and kittens" kind of way.

Although it's a standard benchmark for measuring growth, GDP is, in fact, a relatively recent and problematic concept.

Hugs and kittens aside, it also doesn't measure growth factors such as environmental degradation, social inequality, community cohesion, quality of life, technological progress and unpaid work.