I didn't start out with a POV, that's why I asked
And I just stick things in: factoids, thoughts, BS, just to keep the conversation going - betcha didn't know the Rules say we are each responsible for keeping our own threads on topic.
But I've started to think we
are caught in the grasp of the
perpetual no-growth economy and not just the doldrums.
The
Lost Decade in post asset bubble japan saw bank bail-outs, credit crisis, asset deflation - no economic growth.
This guy, along with Krugman and others sees the US going the same way:
With both the United States and Japan, the market manias were ignited by laughably loose credit policies, smoldered under a lack of oversight from government regulators, market analysts or such private-sector sentinels as credit-rating agencies, and were finally fanned into a frenzied financial conflagration by the promise of easy profits.
So a decade or so of a bubbly hangover with no economic growth, asset deflation, "life support" for zombie companies, etc; and then after we take our medicine, BAU resumes and we're off to the races just like before.
That would be the
Lost Decade - a scary thing for pols, economists, J6p and not fun. But never fear, The Good Life Returns - eventually.
OR
Take the current recession, add in the "Lost Decade" stuff above,
plus what has been mentioned in this thread about the US moving to a "service economy", stagnating real income, and wealth inequity
before the recession...
Then add in oil production constraints rumored to be coming our way this decade and it's possible - probable, that expensive energy will put a lid on any recovery just as it warms up. Then an "L" shaped recession and next recovery the same, down, down, down until some kind of equilibrium is reached.
So, not by design but by default, what do you get?
Zero Economic Growth, the definition of a steady state economy.___
Does that mean we all flip burgers? No, but in the theoretical steady state economy there is less economic activity because there is no population growth. Manufacturing, construction, etc are in business to replace, repair, maintain existing inventory, not "grow" to fill new demand. Obviously there would be "New", Improved" models of everything, and business would compete for market share, undercut the competition, improve quality, reduce quality, etc but the basic idea of the ever expanding marketplace would be gone.
In this world (50 years from today) there are still rich and poor, haves and have nots. But what there probably isn't is the broad middle class that was born out of the industrial revolution. Not only did we not float every boat, many boats sank. Remember the average energy consumption is 10% of today's and that doesn't make the good life cheaper to buy or the job to buy it easy to get. Jobs building all those luxury items are long gone and much of what is left is true service work, street sweeper, shoe repair, ditch digger, use your imagination.
See the connection?
Cheap energy + growing population: demand for "Stuff" = "good" jobs making Stuff = more money for stuff = repeat.
Expensive energy + stable population: demand for necessities = jobs making necessities = enough money for necessities = repeat.
___
My Mom and Dad were both janitors, I've had 100 times the Stuff they ever had, I've never been 100 times as happy. Possibly, I've never been AS happy
because of the Stuff.
Maybe our grandkids will be wiser.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)