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Growth
A revelatory account of the past, present, and future of economic growth - and how we should rethink it
Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer.
As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous deepening inequalities, destabilizing technologies, environmental destruction and climate change.
Resolving this growth dilemma, best-selling economist Daniel Susskind argues, is the urgent task of our age. For many, in our era of sluggish productivity, the worry is slowing growth—in the UK, Europe, China and elsewhere—and reversing this stagnation is the goal of every politician. Others understandably claim, given its social and environmental costs, that the only way forward is through 'degrowth', deliberating shrinking our economies.
At this time of uncertainty about growth and its value, Susskind has written an essential reckoning. In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, he explores what really drives growth, offering original ideas for combatting our economic slowdown. He argues that we cannot abandon growth but shows instead how we can redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.
Lucid, thought-provoking and brilliantly researched, A Reckoning is a vital guide to one of our greatest challenges.
Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer.
As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous deepening inequalities, destabilizing technologies, environmental destruction and climate change.
Resolving this growth dilemma, best-selling economist Daniel Susskind argues, is the urgent task of our age. For many, in our era of sluggish productivity, the worry is slowing growth—in the UK, Europe, China and elsewhere—and reversing this stagnation is the goal of every politician. Others understandably claim, given its social and environmental costs, that the only way forward is through 'degrowth', deliberating shrinking our economies.
At this time of uncertainty about growth and its value, Susskind has written an essential reckoning. In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, he explores what really drives growth, offering original ideas for combatting our economic slowdown. He argues that we cannot abandon growth but shows instead how we can redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.
Lucid, thought-provoking and brilliantly researched, A Reckoning is a vital guide to one of our greatest challenges.
368 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 2024
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May 15, 2024
The question this book seeks to answer is a simple one, namely, is infinite economic growth possible in a world of finite resources. The author’s answer is yes.
To back up this puzzling answer, the author informs us that the mistake those who think growth cannot continue indefinitely make is to picture the economy as wholly composed of tangible materials. He concedes that the world of tangible things (people and raw materials) is finite. But the breakthrough insight which supports his view is that ideas are non-rival. Meaning that unlike rival goods which diminish when shared, non-rival goods like ideas are not affected by sharing. If I give you part of my money, I’ll have less than I had before. But if I give you a recipe, mine won’t be reduced. So far so good. Based on this, he informs us that economic growth did not happen (and will not happen) by using more and more of tangible resources, but by developing better and better ways of utilizing these finite resources in many more combinations. What this means, he points out, is that better ideas combined with finite resources can lead to infinite growth.
All the things wrong with this book can be traced back to this single mistake by the author. Why?
It is true that ideas are non-rival. It is also true that intangible ideas create varieties of combinations of finite resources. But this will only work as an argument against the belief in stagnating efficiency or stagnating creativity. It cannot work as an argument for infinite growth. To illustrate, take one of the examples he gives in this book
There are indeed nearly infinite POSSIBLE ways to combine the ingredients in a well-stocked larder of three hundred ingredients. But you can’t get an ACTUAL infinite combination because every combination USES UP the non-renewable ingredients. The argument against infinite growth is based on the argument that economic ACTIVITIES use up non-renewable finite resources and that growth ensures that even renewable resources are used up faster than they can be renewed.
Elsewhere he says that ideas are weightless. True. But the ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS of those ideas are not materially weightless. For example, It is true that we are doing more with oil today than we were doing in the 19th century, but it is not true that we are using less oil or less of other materials such as iron, aluminum, copper, silicon, etc. The design of more efficient combustion engines is weightless, but the combustion engines themselves have material implications. The design of a photovoltaic cell is weightless and is a non-rival good. But the solar panels have to be materially mined and materially manufactured. Modern technology is a product of wonderful ideas, but with increasing material implications.
This review is not intended to say that the world is coming to an end or that we are going to encounter resource scarcity anytime soon. Unlike the author, I can make a better argument that ideas give us the ability to continue growing by switching to more abundant resources before whichever one we are dependent on is depleted. But even this conception cannot be stretched indefinitely unless human beings can locate a resource source that is external to the earth. The better our ideas, the more productive we are, but also the more precarious our existence. But this is an argument for another place. All I merely aim to say in this review is that even if it is possible to make an argument for infinite growth, that argument CANNOT be found in this book.
To back up this puzzling answer, the author informs us that the mistake those who think growth cannot continue indefinitely make is to picture the economy as wholly composed of tangible materials. He concedes that the world of tangible things (people and raw materials) is finite. But the breakthrough insight which supports his view is that ideas are non-rival. Meaning that unlike rival goods which diminish when shared, non-rival goods like ideas are not affected by sharing. If I give you part of my money, I’ll have less than I had before. But if I give you a recipe, mine won’t be reduced. So far so good. Based on this, he informs us that economic growth did not happen (and will not happen) by using more and more of tangible resources, but by developing better and better ways of utilizing these finite resources in many more combinations. What this means, he points out, is that better ideas combined with finite resources can lead to infinite growth.
Taken together, these economic insights explain why the idea of a finite planet is a misdirection. The planet of tangible resources might be finite, and if these resources were all that counted for growth, then we would indeed be heading toward deep economic trouble. But they are not all that matters. In fact, what really matters for growth are the intangible ideas for combining these resources in new and valuable ways. Economic growth is not driven by using more and more finite resources, as many tend to assume, but “by discovering better and better ways to use the finite resources available to us.” And the universe of those intangible ideas is unimaginably vast—for all practical purposes, as good as infinite..
All the things wrong with this book can be traced back to this single mistake by the author. Why?
It is true that ideas are non-rival. It is also true that intangible ideas create varieties of combinations of finite resources. But this will only work as an argument against the belief in stagnating efficiency or stagnating creativity. It cannot work as an argument for infinite growth. To illustrate, take one of the examples he gives in this book
At times, Romer has used a culinary metaphor to make this point. The ingredients in a kitchen might be finite, he notes, but the number of possible recipes for combining them is nearly limitless: a well-stocked larder of three hundred ingredients, for instance, allows for more possible recipes than there are atoms in the universe.
There are indeed nearly infinite POSSIBLE ways to combine the ingredients in a well-stocked larder of three hundred ingredients. But you can’t get an ACTUAL infinite combination because every combination USES UP the non-renewable ingredients. The argument against infinite growth is based on the argument that economic ACTIVITIES use up non-renewable finite resources and that growth ensures that even renewable resources are used up faster than they can be renewed.
Elsewhere he says that ideas are weightless. True. But the ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS of those ideas are not materially weightless. For example, It is true that we are doing more with oil today than we were doing in the 19th century, but it is not true that we are using less oil or less of other materials such as iron, aluminum, copper, silicon, etc. The design of more efficient combustion engines is weightless, but the combustion engines themselves have material implications. The design of a photovoltaic cell is weightless and is a non-rival good. But the solar panels have to be materially mined and materially manufactured. Modern technology is a product of wonderful ideas, but with increasing material implications.
This review is not intended to say that the world is coming to an end or that we are going to encounter resource scarcity anytime soon. Unlike the author, I can make a better argument that ideas give us the ability to continue growing by switching to more abundant resources before whichever one we are dependent on is depleted. But even this conception cannot be stretched indefinitely unless human beings can locate a resource source that is external to the earth. The better our ideas, the more productive we are, but also the more precarious our existence. But this is an argument for another place. All I merely aim to say in this review is that even if it is possible to make an argument for infinite growth, that argument CANNOT be found in this book.
June 21, 2024
The first part of the book discusses the birth of GDP as a measure of economic growth and explains the “long stagnation” that humans experienced prior to the Industrial Revolution. The author then explores the Malthusian trap and how humanity escaped it through technological progress and the discovery of new ideas. He also walks readers through the history of debates on what drives growth, lamenting that modern economists have gradually abandoned the moral pursuits of classical economists, shifting away from welfare economics and no longer viewing the profession as a moral science.
What I found refreshing is the author's consistent emphasis on the benefits of growth in improving living standards. From this perspective, he rebukes some common beliefs held by the left, such as the degrowth movement and the conflation of anti-growth with anti-capitalism. However, the author does not ignore the drawbacks associated with growth, such as widening inequality and environmental crises. He argues that the technocratic solution of attempting to improve the GDP measurements is not the answer; instead, society should develop a moral consciousness to reflect on which values should be prioritized over economic growth.
The author is optimistic about the future, believing that the genius of the human mind is limitless, and it is this uncertainty about the future that gives him confidence.
When the author critiques the green growth movement and advocates of longtermism for focusing too much on the tangible world while neglecting the intangible world (i.e., human minds and the virtual economy), he suggests that the intangible may be key factor in accelerating improvements in living standards and achieving fairer income and wealth distribution. However, I am concerned that the author does not address the energy crisis, especially given the significant headlines about the cost of energy for AI.
Additionally, the author’s advice to encourage citizen involvement in politics through “mini-publics” is somewhat vague. For instance, what criteria would be used to select citizens as representatives in major moral debates? While I understand the author’s intention to extend his argument to political philosophy, I feel that this aspect is not well-developed and leaving me with the impression of reading a junior school student’s essay (without the passionate core).
Lastly, the author has a clear admiration for Michael Sandel, making me interested in reading some of Sandel’s work. The frequent references to Jamie Susskind also piqued my curiosity, leading me to wonder if they are biological brothers after Googling Jamie. Additionally, the writer mentions some economists, such as Jagdish Bhagwati and Dani Rodrik, whom I would like to explore further.
What I found refreshing is the author's consistent emphasis on the benefits of growth in improving living standards. From this perspective, he rebukes some common beliefs held by the left, such as the degrowth movement and the conflation of anti-growth with anti-capitalism. However, the author does not ignore the drawbacks associated with growth, such as widening inequality and environmental crises. He argues that the technocratic solution of attempting to improve the GDP measurements is not the answer; instead, society should develop a moral consciousness to reflect on which values should be prioritized over economic growth.
The author is optimistic about the future, believing that the genius of the human mind is limitless, and it is this uncertainty about the future that gives him confidence.
When the author critiques the green growth movement and advocates of longtermism for focusing too much on the tangible world while neglecting the intangible world (i.e., human minds and the virtual economy), he suggests that the intangible may be key factor in accelerating improvements in living standards and achieving fairer income and wealth distribution. However, I am concerned that the author does not address the energy crisis, especially given the significant headlines about the cost of energy for AI.
Additionally, the author’s advice to encourage citizen involvement in politics through “mini-publics” is somewhat vague. For instance, what criteria would be used to select citizens as representatives in major moral debates? While I understand the author’s intention to extend his argument to political philosophy, I feel that this aspect is not well-developed and leaving me with the impression of reading a junior school student’s essay (without the passionate core).
Lastly, the author has a clear admiration for Michael Sandel, making me interested in reading some of Sandel’s work. The frequent references to Jamie Susskind also piqued my curiosity, leading me to wonder if they are biological brothers after Googling Jamie. Additionally, the writer mentions some economists, such as Jagdish Bhagwati and Dani Rodrik, whom I would like to explore further.
January 25, 2025
This book has five parts – historical origins, development of our economic understanding of growth through models, an argument for growth, policies for growth and finally a philosophical debate on the nature of growth we need (and especially the choices we need to make). The first half is much better than the second, but even the policies are an interesting perspective.
Having spent way too much of my 20s studying development economics, I was happy to see that Susskind incorporates a good range of perspectives on the historical development of growth literature – from institutionalists (who he calls fundamentalists) to Joel Mokyr (but he omits his paper on the impact of ‘tweakers’ in the early Industrial Revolution in the UK, people who had operational experience with novel technologies and could then make small changes that compounded to greater differences vis-à-vis France), and even the anthropological studies of !Kung tribes in the Kalahari desert. In that sense it is a pretty comprehensive overview and a solid case for what he argues later.
The overview of the models, especially the limits of Harrod-Domar and later our difficulties in pinpointing the Total Factor Productivity component of the Solow-Swan model is a quite readable. Because ultimately, all further growth comes down to productivity and improvements in the various types of technology. How to get there is a large part of the book.
I like Susskind’s critiques of both new ways of measuring growth (‘HDI measures how much Scandinavian is a country’) and his critique and a limited praise for degrowth (only in a sense that it recognises a need for a different way of approaching growth). Instead, Susskind calls for GDP minimalism - an honest measurement of GDP using market prices, but without making it the sole driver of all policy decisions. There he unfortunately omits the power relations that embed growth as seen only through the GDP measure - the interests of capital that have aligned with seeing growth only through GDP.
There are interesting chapters and sections on the history of the measurement of GDP, especially on the early debates about what to include in it - noting that all early attempts were met with hostile reactions, including Kuznets’ eventually successful attempt during the Second World War (even through he wanted to omit military spending).
Susskind spends a lot of space debating that the growth in the future does not necessarily need to mean using more resources, more ‘stuff’, but rather creating more value. I think this is a very interesting and important idea for debates, especially with degrowthers; about the necessity for further growth - that can look very different than it has looked in the past 200 years.
Susskind’s policy recommendations are twofold; maximising the probability of productivity growth through ‘far more ideas’ - expanding the pool of human capital. In that sense he is right that the potential of AI could go beyond what we understand how as the human type of intelligence and can dramatically increase the probabilities that new ideas can foster (he has some good ideas on the reform of current outdated IP regime). But he complements omits the necessary diffusion mechanisms that are required for any technological growth to occur - because Susskind is really an economist at his core.
Second area of his recommendations concerns decisions that we need to make within societies in what type of growth we want and what we want to prioritise. There he calls for something like citizen assemblies to create an ongoing forum of debate. I am somewhat sceptical about the potential of this, but could be interesting to try.
Lastly, there are some good critiques of long-termism and effective altruism, mostly on the basis that we can’t predict what kind of developments can dramatically reshape how the future people see our choices now. This goes back to his attempt to redefine what growth is from earlier in the book.
Overall a very interesting and comprehensive book - not a paradigm-defining, but still a useful contribution to the debate about economic policy today. It’s is however still an economist’s book and his limited understanding of power relations and explanations how would a lot of these new technologies be deployed and diffused within the economy ultimately limits how impactful his recommendations can be.
Having spent way too much of my 20s studying development economics, I was happy to see that Susskind incorporates a good range of perspectives on the historical development of growth literature – from institutionalists (who he calls fundamentalists) to Joel Mokyr (but he omits his paper on the impact of ‘tweakers’ in the early Industrial Revolution in the UK, people who had operational experience with novel technologies and could then make small changes that compounded to greater differences vis-à-vis France), and even the anthropological studies of !Kung tribes in the Kalahari desert. In that sense it is a pretty comprehensive overview and a solid case for what he argues later.
The overview of the models, especially the limits of Harrod-Domar and later our difficulties in pinpointing the Total Factor Productivity component of the Solow-Swan model is a quite readable. Because ultimately, all further growth comes down to productivity and improvements in the various types of technology. How to get there is a large part of the book.
I like Susskind’s critiques of both new ways of measuring growth (‘HDI measures how much Scandinavian is a country’) and his critique and a limited praise for degrowth (only in a sense that it recognises a need for a different way of approaching growth). Instead, Susskind calls for GDP minimalism - an honest measurement of GDP using market prices, but without making it the sole driver of all policy decisions. There he unfortunately omits the power relations that embed growth as seen only through the GDP measure - the interests of capital that have aligned with seeing growth only through GDP.
There are interesting chapters and sections on the history of the measurement of GDP, especially on the early debates about what to include in it - noting that all early attempts were met with hostile reactions, including Kuznets’ eventually successful attempt during the Second World War (even through he wanted to omit military spending).
Susskind spends a lot of space debating that the growth in the future does not necessarily need to mean using more resources, more ‘stuff’, but rather creating more value. I think this is a very interesting and important idea for debates, especially with degrowthers; about the necessity for further growth - that can look very different than it has looked in the past 200 years.
Susskind’s policy recommendations are twofold; maximising the probability of productivity growth through ‘far more ideas’ - expanding the pool of human capital. In that sense he is right that the potential of AI could go beyond what we understand how as the human type of intelligence and can dramatically increase the probabilities that new ideas can foster (he has some good ideas on the reform of current outdated IP regime). But he complements omits the necessary diffusion mechanisms that are required for any technological growth to occur - because Susskind is really an economist at his core.
Second area of his recommendations concerns decisions that we need to make within societies in what type of growth we want and what we want to prioritise. There he calls for something like citizen assemblies to create an ongoing forum of debate. I am somewhat sceptical about the potential of this, but could be interesting to try.
Lastly, there are some good critiques of long-termism and effective altruism, mostly on the basis that we can’t predict what kind of developments can dramatically reshape how the future people see our choices now. This goes back to his attempt to redefine what growth is from earlier in the book.
Overall a very interesting and comprehensive book - not a paradigm-defining, but still a useful contribution to the debate about economic policy today. It’s is however still an economist’s book and his limited understanding of power relations and explanations how would a lot of these new technologies be deployed and diffused within the economy ultimately limits how impactful his recommendations can be.
December 27, 2025
This economic viewpoint did not convince me at all.
That the most important thing for humanity is consistent economic growth does not make much sense to me. Things that are in line with economic growth - programmed obsolescence, encouraging people to buy things they don't need, producing these things with poorer and poorer quality so that we must continue to buy them. As long as the slope of the curve increases, everything is better. This growth is built on inhumane working conditions around the world - from the mines that provide the components for smart phones, the cheap labour that produces the new trainers, the wars that fund arm manufacturers, that is growth.
The author claims that people that disagree with him lack imagination. They assume goods are finite, but don't they realise ideas are infinite? Unfortunately, to put ideas into practice, finite resources are required.
His discussion of public vs private R&D investment, the role of education, his idea of acceptable living standards, the positive effect of the plague, so many points that I disagreed with. Call me unimaginative. Unfortunately, economists that agree with him are those that dictate how the international monetary fund distributes its money 💸
That the most important thing for humanity is consistent economic growth does not make much sense to me. Things that are in line with economic growth - programmed obsolescence, encouraging people to buy things they don't need, producing these things with poorer and poorer quality so that we must continue to buy them. As long as the slope of the curve increases, everything is better. This growth is built on inhumane working conditions around the world - from the mines that provide the components for smart phones, the cheap labour that produces the new trainers, the wars that fund arm manufacturers, that is growth.
The author claims that people that disagree with him lack imagination. They assume goods are finite, but don't they realise ideas are infinite? Unfortunately, to put ideas into practice, finite resources are required.
His discussion of public vs private R&D investment, the role of education, his idea of acceptable living standards, the positive effect of the plague, so many points that I disagreed with. Call me unimaginative. Unfortunately, economists that agree with him are those that dictate how the international monetary fund distributes its money 💸
February 13, 2025
Read this for my economic policy class. It was a lot more interesting than I expected. Obviously you’re not going to agree with everything said, but every chapter has a lot of well argued ideas that are at least important to think about. The last chapter had some cool takeaways about direct democracy, among other things.
July 15, 2025
for me it was hard to read and to follow
March 4, 2025
had to look past the title cause it sounded like it was AI generated
ultimately, economic growth isn’t the product of any single factor
in short modern economic growth, which began 200 years ago, has dramatically improved living standards. However, this growth has come at a cost, including environmental damage, increased inequality, and the unsettling impact of disruptive technologies. While the negative consequences of unchecked growth are becoming clearer, it is uncertain how to change our approach to be less destructive without causing economic collapse.
notes:
- There really weren’t any lasting improvements in living standards until the dramatic turning point of the Industrial Revolution.
- If you were to draw the trajectory of these wages over time on a graph, it looks like a hockey stick – flat for centuries, followed by a sharp rise around the year 1800. Even earlier civilizations like Babylonia and Assyria showed no substantial improvements over preindustrial England.
- Malthusian trap: a grim cycle described by the British economist Thomas Malthus. As populations grow, he said, they invariably outstrip the food supply, which drags societies back into subsistence. For most of history, humanity couldn’t escape this trap, no matter how hard it worked – until the Industrial Revolution broke the cycle and transformed the trajectory of economic growth.
- In the mid-twentieth century came the Solow-Swan model, which shifted the focus to technological progress. It introduced the concept of a “steady state” where innovation, rather than material resources, fueled sustainable growth.
GDP notes:
- ww2 - how much of the economic pie could be devoted to war without leaving civilians starving?
- Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which includes a broader amount of government expenditures and is now used worldwide to track economic growth.
- GDP’s allure lay in its connection to things that matter: jobs, health, and education. Economic growth became a universal goal as it SEEMED to promise both prosperity and social progress.
- It became the centerpiece of economic policy worldwide.
costs:
- We face the threats of environmental collapse, social inequality, technological upheaval, and cultural erosion. None of these are isolated problems, either – they’re symptoms of the same relentless pursuit of growth.
- Take climate change. CO2 levels have skyrocketed since 1950, reaching unprecedented highs of over 400 parts per million – and causing temperatures to rise at twice the rate seen in previous decades. These shifts echo past climate disruptions that devastated societies – but now they’re amplified by “dirty” technologies fueling our prosperity. Since 2000, carbon emissions have risen nearly tenfold faster than any sustained increase in the past 800,000 years. In short, the environmental price of growth has become glaringly evident.
- It’s true that the current concept of GDP is deeply flawed. For instance, it captures market activity but doesn’t take unpaid labor, environmental degradation, or societal well-being into consideration.
ideas?
- One way to move forward is to apply GDP Minimalism. This involves scaling back GDP’s dominance and adopting a more nuanced “dashboard approach” to what the GDP actually measures. This would include metrics that reflect environmental health, inequality, and community well-being – essentially a richer, more balanced picture of progress.
- A big problem with degrowth is its lack of imagination in solving our problems. We can’t simply replace one extreme – growth at all costs – with another that outright rejects growth. Instead, we need to find a middle ground: balancing economic progress with ecological responsibility, innovation, and a focus on societal well-being.
- “Second Industrial Enlightenment,” as the author proposes, it would hinge on four strategies that support ideas: reforming intellectual property laws, investing in research and development, expanding economic participation, and utilizing technology.
- As it stands now, intellectual property laws are outdated and overly restrictive. They’ve expanded into unnecessary areas like gene patenting, and big companies often use them to stifle competition, blocking smaller firms from innovating and trapping ideas in legal gridlock.
- The labor market presents another opportunity to reshape tradeoffs. Through strategic use of taxes and subsidies, we can incentivize technologies that enhance, rather than replace, human workers. For instance, AI tools that augment productivity without displacing jobs could create a more equitable and resilient workforce. It’s about aligning technological progress with societal goals to support the job market.
ultimately, economic growth isn’t the product of any single factor
in short modern economic growth, which began 200 years ago, has dramatically improved living standards. However, this growth has come at a cost, including environmental damage, increased inequality, and the unsettling impact of disruptive technologies. While the negative consequences of unchecked growth are becoming clearer, it is uncertain how to change our approach to be less destructive without causing economic collapse.
notes:
- There really weren’t any lasting improvements in living standards until the dramatic turning point of the Industrial Revolution.
- If you were to draw the trajectory of these wages over time on a graph, it looks like a hockey stick – flat for centuries, followed by a sharp rise around the year 1800. Even earlier civilizations like Babylonia and Assyria showed no substantial improvements over preindustrial England.
- Malthusian trap: a grim cycle described by the British economist Thomas Malthus. As populations grow, he said, they invariably outstrip the food supply, which drags societies back into subsistence. For most of history, humanity couldn’t escape this trap, no matter how hard it worked – until the Industrial Revolution broke the cycle and transformed the trajectory of economic growth.
- In the mid-twentieth century came the Solow-Swan model, which shifted the focus to technological progress. It introduced the concept of a “steady state” where innovation, rather than material resources, fueled sustainable growth.
GDP notes:
- ww2 - how much of the economic pie could be devoted to war without leaving civilians starving?
- Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, which includes a broader amount of government expenditures and is now used worldwide to track economic growth.
- GDP’s allure lay in its connection to things that matter: jobs, health, and education. Economic growth became a universal goal as it SEEMED to promise both prosperity and social progress.
- It became the centerpiece of economic policy worldwide.
costs:
- We face the threats of environmental collapse, social inequality, technological upheaval, and cultural erosion. None of these are isolated problems, either – they’re symptoms of the same relentless pursuit of growth.
- Take climate change. CO2 levels have skyrocketed since 1950, reaching unprecedented highs of over 400 parts per million – and causing temperatures to rise at twice the rate seen in previous decades. These shifts echo past climate disruptions that devastated societies – but now they’re amplified by “dirty” technologies fueling our prosperity. Since 2000, carbon emissions have risen nearly tenfold faster than any sustained increase in the past 800,000 years. In short, the environmental price of growth has become glaringly evident.
- It’s true that the current concept of GDP is deeply flawed. For instance, it captures market activity but doesn’t take unpaid labor, environmental degradation, or societal well-being into consideration.
ideas?
- One way to move forward is to apply GDP Minimalism. This involves scaling back GDP’s dominance and adopting a more nuanced “dashboard approach” to what the GDP actually measures. This would include metrics that reflect environmental health, inequality, and community well-being – essentially a richer, more balanced picture of progress.
- A big problem with degrowth is its lack of imagination in solving our problems. We can’t simply replace one extreme – growth at all costs – with another that outright rejects growth. Instead, we need to find a middle ground: balancing economic progress with ecological responsibility, innovation, and a focus on societal well-being.
- “Second Industrial Enlightenment,” as the author proposes, it would hinge on four strategies that support ideas: reforming intellectual property laws, investing in research and development, expanding economic participation, and utilizing technology.
- As it stands now, intellectual property laws are outdated and overly restrictive. They’ve expanded into unnecessary areas like gene patenting, and big companies often use them to stifle competition, blocking smaller firms from innovating and trapping ideas in legal gridlock.
- The labor market presents another opportunity to reshape tradeoffs. Through strategic use of taxes and subsidies, we can incentivize technologies that enhance, rather than replace, human workers. For instance, AI tools that augment productivity without displacing jobs could create a more equitable and resilient workforce. It’s about aligning technological progress with societal goals to support the job market.
October 2, 2024
What causes growth? Final answer: technological progress.
Must growth cause inequality and environmental damage? Maybe not if we put limits on it like the EU.
Should we have negative growth or no growth? Absolutely not.
I think these are the 3 points I learn after listening to the whole book…
Must growth cause inequality and environmental damage? Maybe not if we put limits on it like the EU.
Should we have negative growth or no growth? Absolutely not.
I think these are the 3 points I learn after listening to the whole book…
October 23, 2024
I was attracted to the title of this book as I have been considering how unfettered growth and a focus on only growth seems to have ruined the environment. I have also been considering that people are not necessarily better off. Susskind gets right to it: growth was never meant to be the goal, GDP was devised to help track military and domestic economy spending, and Malthus was kind of right.
What did I learn? Finite materials can’t be avoided, but human ingenuity might be able to make them last longer than we think.
Also, Susskind believes politicians are so tightly incentivised by GDP growth that any other considerations will kill their careers. So he proposes a sort of citizen assembly to tackle thorny issues and override the government (not sure how that works with Congress but it is a decent idea.. he is absolutely right that current institutions do not deal well with tough tradeoffs and longer term thinking.
I left with a few more ideas and appreciated this whole effort to scratch my itch about Malthus and climate change. It was also a surprise benefit to learn that GDP was only ever measured starting in the 20th century. Things can change again.
What did I learn? Finite materials can’t be avoided, but human ingenuity might be able to make them last longer than we think.
Also, Susskind believes politicians are so tightly incentivised by GDP growth that any other considerations will kill their careers. So he proposes a sort of citizen assembly to tackle thorny issues and override the government (not sure how that works with Congress but it is a decent idea.. he is absolutely right that current institutions do not deal well with tough tradeoffs and longer term thinking.
I left with a few more ideas and appreciated this whole effort to scratch my itch about Malthus and climate change. It was also a surprise benefit to learn that GDP was only ever measured starting in the 20th century. Things can change again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 16, 2025
Cogent if repetitive presentation. Very critical of degrowth movement yet calls for a 'weak' degrowth position. Holds firmly to the belief that economic growth can be decoupled from material consumption, due to the 'infinite' character of abstract ideas. His argument is based on the premise that for 300K years, before the onset of modern growth, which he calls The Long Stagnation, human life was scarcely worth living.
February 24, 2025
I thought this was more about the problem than the solution. It was helpful in explaining the issues with GDP/Growth and some of the suggested alternatives but was light on what "we" (it's always we) should do instead. Growth, for all its faults, looks here to stay as the single aspiration of most/all governments until a consensus emerges over some alternative (which doesn't look likely any time soon).
October 22, 2024
Some parts were less convincing but the overall conclusions of the book are important. Hopefully some people in power will read this.
March 9, 2025
Really enjoyed part one on the background of growth (a much more readable version of macro 101 from college).
Lost me a bit towards the end as it felt a bit repetitive and meandering. Still would recommend for a balanced view on sustainable growth that cuts through some of the more polarising takes (degrowth vs accelerationism)
Lost me a bit towards the end as it felt a bit repetitive and meandering. Still would recommend for a balanced view on sustainable growth that cuts through some of the more polarising takes (degrowth vs accelerationism)
March 4, 2025
The history of modern economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon, emerging only in the last two centuries—a mere blink in the vast timeline of human history. This period of sustained growth has drastically improved living standards worldwide, yet it has also brought significant challenges, including environmental degradation, growing inequality, and the destabilizing effects of rapid technological change. The critical question now is how to sustain growth without exacerbating these issues or triggering an economic collapse. This dilemma lies at the heart of Daniel Susskind’s "Growth: A History and a Reckoning," where he explores the delicate balance needed to maintain progress while mitigating its negative consequences.
For much of human history, economic stagnation was the norm. From the Stone Age to the eighteenth century, most people lived on the edge of survival, with little improvement in living standards. This era, known as the Long Stagnation, was characterized by a lack of sustained economic growth, with societies repeatedly trapped in the Malthusian cycle. Thomas Malthus theorized that any increase in resources or productivity would lead to population growth that eventually outstripped food supplies, dragging societies back into poverty. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that humanity broke free from this cycle, initiating a period of unprecedented economic expansion.
Early growth theories, like the Harrod-Domar model, suggested that investing in physical capital was key to sustaining growth. However, this model faced a critical flaw: the principle of diminishing returns. The Solow-Swan model, developed in the mid-twentieth century, introduced technological progress as the primary driver of sustainable growth. Economists like Robert Lucas and Paul Romer later emphasized the importance of human capital and ideas, arguing that unlike physical resources, ideas grow in value when shared. This shift highlighted the cumulative and expansive nature of knowledge, setting the stage for modern economic policies that prioritize innovation and education.
The concept of economic growth became a global obsession in the twentieth century, particularly during and after World War II. Faced with the challenge of balancing military needs with civilian well-being, economists such as John Maynard Keynes and Simon Kuznets developed the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a comprehensive measure of national economic performance. During the Cold War, GDP became not just an economic tool but also a political weapon, with the United States and the Soviet Union competing to demonstrate superior growth. This focus on GDP helped drive the Marshall Plan, which aided Europe’s recovery from the war and cemented GDP’s role as a universal metric for prosperity.
GDP's appeal lay in its ability to connect economic output with tangible improvements in quality of life, such as better jobs, healthcare, and education. It became the cornerstone of economic policy across diverse political systems, offering a simple, bipartisan benchmark for success. However, this singular focus on growth masked the hidden costs of the relentless push for economic expansion. Over time, policymakers and societies became complacent, ignoring the environmental, social, and cultural repercussions of unchecked growth.
Today, the costs of economic growth are manifest in multiple crises. Climate change, driven by carbon emissions that have increased nearly tenfold since 2000, threatens global stability. Economic inequality has deepened, with the richest segments of society reaping disproportionate benefits from growth while the middle and lower classes see stagnating wages and diminishing prospects. Technological advancements, while boosting productivity, have also displaced workers and created new forms of inequality. Globalization, once seen as a path to shared prosperity, has had uneven effects, lifting millions out of poverty in developing nations while contributing to wage stagnation and job losses in wealthier countries.
In response to these challenges, two main schools of thought have emerged: those who advocate redefining GDP and those who support the degrowth movement. The shortcomings of GDP are well documented. It measures market activity but fails to account for unpaid labor, environmental health, and social well-being. The proposed solution of GDP Minimalism suggests adopting a more holistic "dashboard" approach that includes metrics for inequality, ecological sustainability, and quality of life. This shift could also promote a more values-driven approach to economic policy, moving beyond mere efficiency to consider broader societal goals.
The degrowth movement, on the other hand, calls for reducing economic activity to lessen environmental impact and focus on non-material aspects of well-being. However, the movement struggles with internal contradictions. Some proponents believe that economic contraction is necessary and unavoidable, while others envision a more moderate path that minimizes waste without causing recession. The movement’s reluctance to embrace technological innovation and its overly materialistic view of growth limit its practical applicability.
Instead of rejecting growth outright, Susskind argues for a balanced approach that leverages the power of ideas and technology. Unlike physical resources, ideas are infinite and can drive sustainable growth without the same ecological or social costs. The author proposes a "Second Industrial Enlightenment," built on reforming intellectual property laws, boosting investment in research and development (R&D), promoting broader participation in the economy, and harnessing technology responsibly.
Intellectual property laws, for example, need reform to prevent large corporations from hoarding ideas and stifling innovation. Introducing a "use it or lose it" policy for patents could help ensure that intellectual property contributes to actual progress rather than being a tool for legal battles and monopolization. Investing in R&D is also critical, particularly in collaboration between the public and private sectors. Historically, government-backed initiatives and immigrant-driven entrepreneurship have been vital to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley.
Technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), present opportunities to shift growth from material to intellectual realms. Projects like IBM’s medical research initiatives and DeepMind’s AlphaFold have already demonstrated how AI can drive breakthroughs in fields like healthcare and biology. These technologies could help sustain growth without exhausting natural resources, offering a path to a more balanced and resilient economy.
To manage the tradeoffs inherent in growth, Susskind emphasizes the need for strategic incentives and regulations. Renewable energy is a prime example of how changing incentives can weaken tradeoffs, showing that environmental sustainability and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. Similarly, in the labor market, policies that encourage the development of technologies that augment rather than replace human workers could create more equitable economic opportunities. Effective regulations can guide innovation in ways that align with societal goals, as evidenced by the rapid adaptations seen during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ultimately, while tradeoffs are inevitable, they are not insurmountable. By adopting a more thoughtful approach to growth—one that prioritizes environmental health, social equity, and community well-being—we can redefine progress. Growth should not be an end in itself but a means to achieving a more just, sustainable, and prosperous world. Susskind’s book offers a compelling argument for moving beyond simplistic measures of success and embracing a broader vision of what it means to thrive in the modern era.
For much of human history, economic stagnation was the norm. From the Stone Age to the eighteenth century, most people lived on the edge of survival, with little improvement in living standards. This era, known as the Long Stagnation, was characterized by a lack of sustained economic growth, with societies repeatedly trapped in the Malthusian cycle. Thomas Malthus theorized that any increase in resources or productivity would lead to population growth that eventually outstripped food supplies, dragging societies back into poverty. It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that humanity broke free from this cycle, initiating a period of unprecedented economic expansion.
Early growth theories, like the Harrod-Domar model, suggested that investing in physical capital was key to sustaining growth. However, this model faced a critical flaw: the principle of diminishing returns. The Solow-Swan model, developed in the mid-twentieth century, introduced technological progress as the primary driver of sustainable growth. Economists like Robert Lucas and Paul Romer later emphasized the importance of human capital and ideas, arguing that unlike physical resources, ideas grow in value when shared. This shift highlighted the cumulative and expansive nature of knowledge, setting the stage for modern economic policies that prioritize innovation and education.
The concept of economic growth became a global obsession in the twentieth century, particularly during and after World War II. Faced with the challenge of balancing military needs with civilian well-being, economists such as John Maynard Keynes and Simon Kuznets developed the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a comprehensive measure of national economic performance. During the Cold War, GDP became not just an economic tool but also a political weapon, with the United States and the Soviet Union competing to demonstrate superior growth. This focus on GDP helped drive the Marshall Plan, which aided Europe’s recovery from the war and cemented GDP’s role as a universal metric for prosperity.
GDP's appeal lay in its ability to connect economic output with tangible improvements in quality of life, such as better jobs, healthcare, and education. It became the cornerstone of economic policy across diverse political systems, offering a simple, bipartisan benchmark for success. However, this singular focus on growth masked the hidden costs of the relentless push for economic expansion. Over time, policymakers and societies became complacent, ignoring the environmental, social, and cultural repercussions of unchecked growth.
Today, the costs of economic growth are manifest in multiple crises. Climate change, driven by carbon emissions that have increased nearly tenfold since 2000, threatens global stability. Economic inequality has deepened, with the richest segments of society reaping disproportionate benefits from growth while the middle and lower classes see stagnating wages and diminishing prospects. Technological advancements, while boosting productivity, have also displaced workers and created new forms of inequality. Globalization, once seen as a path to shared prosperity, has had uneven effects, lifting millions out of poverty in developing nations while contributing to wage stagnation and job losses in wealthier countries.
In response to these challenges, two main schools of thought have emerged: those who advocate redefining GDP and those who support the degrowth movement. The shortcomings of GDP are well documented. It measures market activity but fails to account for unpaid labor, environmental health, and social well-being. The proposed solution of GDP Minimalism suggests adopting a more holistic "dashboard" approach that includes metrics for inequality, ecological sustainability, and quality of life. This shift could also promote a more values-driven approach to economic policy, moving beyond mere efficiency to consider broader societal goals.
The degrowth movement, on the other hand, calls for reducing economic activity to lessen environmental impact and focus on non-material aspects of well-being. However, the movement struggles with internal contradictions. Some proponents believe that economic contraction is necessary and unavoidable, while others envision a more moderate path that minimizes waste without causing recession. The movement’s reluctance to embrace technological innovation and its overly materialistic view of growth limit its practical applicability.
Instead of rejecting growth outright, Susskind argues for a balanced approach that leverages the power of ideas and technology. Unlike physical resources, ideas are infinite and can drive sustainable growth without the same ecological or social costs. The author proposes a "Second Industrial Enlightenment," built on reforming intellectual property laws, boosting investment in research and development (R&D), promoting broader participation in the economy, and harnessing technology responsibly.
Intellectual property laws, for example, need reform to prevent large corporations from hoarding ideas and stifling innovation. Introducing a "use it or lose it" policy for patents could help ensure that intellectual property contributes to actual progress rather than being a tool for legal battles and monopolization. Investing in R&D is also critical, particularly in collaboration between the public and private sectors. Historically, government-backed initiatives and immigrant-driven entrepreneurship have been vital to innovation hubs like Silicon Valley.
Technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), present opportunities to shift growth from material to intellectual realms. Projects like IBM’s medical research initiatives and DeepMind’s AlphaFold have already demonstrated how AI can drive breakthroughs in fields like healthcare and biology. These technologies could help sustain growth without exhausting natural resources, offering a path to a more balanced and resilient economy.
To manage the tradeoffs inherent in growth, Susskind emphasizes the need for strategic incentives and regulations. Renewable energy is a prime example of how changing incentives can weaken tradeoffs, showing that environmental sustainability and economic growth are not mutually exclusive. Similarly, in the labor market, policies that encourage the development of technologies that augment rather than replace human workers could create more equitable economic opportunities. Effective regulations can guide innovation in ways that align with societal goals, as evidenced by the rapid adaptations seen during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ultimately, while tradeoffs are inevitable, they are not insurmountable. By adopting a more thoughtful approach to growth—one that prioritizes environmental health, social equity, and community well-being—we can redefine progress. Growth should not be an end in itself but a means to achieving a more just, sustainable, and prosperous world. Susskind’s book offers a compelling argument for moving beyond simplistic measures of success and embracing a broader vision of what it means to thrive in the modern era.
April 28, 2024
A clear thinker and writer, the author addresses the central challenge of this and future generations - how to balance the need for economic growth to provide the global community with the minimum standard of living and, on the other hand, the environmental, socio-economic and political costs of uncontrolled, imbalanced, and damaging expansion in economic activity. For almost all of the years of mankind’s time on earth (a long period of stagnation) , this balance was not the challenge. Instead, eeking out a victory over want was. Over the ensuing 200 years to our current era, growth has exploded, so much so that we must now, counsels the author, strive to balance growth with its costs. Your homework assignment is to read the book and critique the suggested way forward!! 😎
October 30, 2024
I enjoyed this book. I have read susskind’s work before and he does a pretty good job of providing a simple approach to incredibly complex issues but I think the book does suffer from its simplicity. This isn’t to say it should have been more in-depth as that is an arduous task for topics that he covers but I do think it prevents it from being a five star read. I would still highly recommend this book as growth is such an important topic we take for granted
June 10, 2025
Nothing groundbreaking but quite a nice discussion of the current attitudes towards growth across the current political landscape
October 20, 2025
The book is a history of economic growth and economists' understanding of it, a critique of the de-growth movement and the idea that there are limits to growth, and an argument that we should pursue further growth. It’s a fascinating insight into how economists think and in places a rather shocking one.
The book starts by saying that humans experienced almost no growth in GDP per capita for about 100,000 years until around 1800. This is based on studies of historical workers wages, life expectancies and adult heights. Then from 1800, somewhat mysteriously, growth took off. It’s suggested that this occurred due to a cultural shift in the eighteenth century, and particularly in the UK, that propelled people towards the pursuit of useful ideas.
For an engineer or scientist, the idea that there was no growth prior to 1800 seems bizarre. It encompasses the discovery of the wheel, the sail, metals, draft animals, ceramics, the plough, gunpowder, armaments of all sorts, and printing. As an example of the technological advances during the centuries immediately preceding 1800, consider how these two ships compare: Columbus's flagship the Santa Maria, launched in 1460, and Nelson’s ship HMS Victory, launched about 300 years later in 1765. The Santa Maria was a 150 tonne vessel that carried 40 men and two cannon. HMS Victory is, at 3,556 tonnes, over twenty times the tonnage of the Santa Maria; it carried 850 men and over a hundred cannon. Photos of both ships (a replica in the Santa Maria’s case) are on Wikipedia, and dramatically show the difference.
Focusing only on workers wages as a guide to GDP per capita at least in the cases of European countries in the centuries preceding 1800, may give a false impression. Then as now society was very unequal with the benefits of growth going largely to the wealthy, who, if the châteaus of France or the country houses of Britain are any guide, were doing rather well in the 18th century. Similarly workers wages will not encompass road and port infrastructure, or churches and cathedrals, or state property such as the ships and armaments of European navies that projected European power across the world. One can certainly argue that ordinary workers benefited only in a limited way from these things, but they are part of GDP, just as global armaments spending is today.
Note also that 2025's Nobel award economists make a similar argument that growth was stagnant before the industrial revolution - you can see a graph (Figure 3) of UK GDP per person in a description of their work here: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/popular-information. However, the graph does not show the stagnation claimed. A logarithmic scale has been used, which makes the graph appear flatter than it really is. In fact, the graph shows UK GDP per capita rising from about $1,100 in 1300 to $3,000 in 1700 – an almost threefold increase. That's really not so bad, considering that for the whole period no new source of energy appeared (windmills and watermills already existed in 1300, and the first successful steam engines began to appear only after 1700) and almost all work relied on human or animal muscle power. Bear in mind too that for the UK the period 1300 to 1700 encompasses a great deal of turbulent politics, the black death, the reformation, many wars (including the wars of the roses, the Armada, the civil war), the plague and the great fire of London. As we shall see below, growth accelerated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, primarily because a new source of abundant energy appeared.
The book then provides a history of how economists struggled to explain the ‘source’ of growth, and how finally in the second half of the 20th century they ‘discovered’, thanks to the work of Robert Solow, that the development of better technology (not more capital), was that ‘source’, and then later, in the 1980s, that the generation of new technology was through people having ‘ideas’.
At this point, one has to ask “What took them so long?”. Victorian railway engineers would have fallen about laughing if you had suggested to them that buying more and more spades for their labourers would speed up the work (i.e. adding extra capital, but with no technical advance). Equally they’d have readily told you that it was the new technology of coal-fired steam engines - in factories, mines, ships and railway locomotives, and each providing the power of scores of men or horses - that were driving rapid industrialization.
Yes, cultural factors do indeed play a part in technical progress. As Jared Diamond ably describes in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, medieval Europe was made up of competing Kingdoms and city States, creating a ready-market for improved armaments, ships, navigation instruments, and much more. Someone with an idea if rejected by one ruler could simply move on to the next. Good ideas have always had the potential to spread quickly in such an environment. For example, the horizontal axis wind turbine was invented somewhere in England or Holland around about 1100AD. Within 100 years there were five thousand in England alone, and windmills spread across Europe applied to several tasks including milling flour, processing olives, and pumping water. However their application was limited since they have to be located in windy places and the energy is intermittent (mechanical energy can only be transmitted a short distance by rotating shafts, so the energy had to be used where the windmill was located, until the development of electrical generators and motors allowed its long-distance transmission in the 20th century).
Windmills are particularly relevant here, because they are an energy technology. Humans have always been on the look out for someone or something to do the work for us. To that end, windmills joined the use of slaves, draught animals, the sailing boat and watermills (watermills were invented about the 3rd century BC).
What ‘Growth’ astonishingly seems to fail to spot, is that cumulative technical advance in Europe led to a step-change in energy availability that was the primary cause of the explosion of growth observed since 1800: the invention of the heat engine. ‘Heat engines’ are engines that turn heat into mechanical movement, such as steam engines which developed throughout the 18th century and dominated the 19th; they were later joined by internal combustion engines, gas turbines and others. Heat engines made it possible to burn the immense stores of energy in coal, oil and gas, and turn that heat into mechanical energy, allowing machine power to do the work of thousands of humans or horses.
Without the heat engine and that huge store of fossil fuels, technical progress would have continued but at a fraction of the rate, with many of us still tied to the land and other manual work. Curiously, although ‘Growth’ doesn’t explain this, it does however contain two graphs which perfectly make the point: Figure 3 Chapter 1 shows growth in global GDP, and Figure 2 Chapter 5 shows the growth in CO2 emissions (which relate directly to fossil-fuel use). The two graphs both show the same dramatic growth post 1800.
‘Growth’ reveals a disturbing disconnect between economics and those disciplines based on the physical Sciences such as biology and engineering. Apart from taking a couple of centuries to identify technology as the source of growth, there still seems to be a problem with understanding that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. Chapter 7 of ‘Growth’ is a critique of the so-called ‘de-growth’ movement and rejects the idea that continuous growth is not possible on a finite planet. As with the explanation of the growth explosion of the last two centuries, the argument seems detached from real manufacturing. It is suggested that since economists now understand that growth comes from technological progress and that technological progress in turn comes from intangible ideas, thus we can have continued growth because intangible ideas don't consume real resources. This misses the simple point that while an idea for a technology may be intangible the technology and the manufacturing of it is very much not. In the 19th century they didn't get growth by dreaming about railways: they built them. New technology enables the creation of new products and may also enable larger volumes to be produced of existing products. Both involve increased consumption of resources. Sometimes technological advance makes an existing product use less resources in its manufacture and or its use. For example cars can be made lighter using modern materials, and their engines have become more fuel efficient. However the fashion for larger four-wheel drive and more powerful cars has counteracted these advances, as has the growth in global car ownership, with the result that cars are using more resources, not fewer.
Businesses in a free market need to sell to those who have money. Poorer people living near a subsistence level will naturally want to spend most of their income on subsistence and other material consumer goods. We live in a very unequal world, so there are relatively few people wealthy enough to want to buy services that are mainly labour not material - whether that be a poetry reading or a maid to wait at table - and their demand for such employees is likely to be limited; there is only so much time in a day. However the rich can buy very expensive material artefacts that require the work of a great many people to design, build and operate, such as private jets and helicopters, or even spacecraft.
Thus the idea of some future society where consumers spend most of their earnings on ideas and turn their noses up at the endless stream of physical products that businesses will undoubtedly try to sell them, is a fantasy. Something like that could only be brought about by rules and mechanisms that limited how much was spent on material goods.
‘Growth’ does talk however about the downsides of economic growth. The penultimate chapter, The Moral Question, makes several good points about the rising inequality in accumulated wealth, the negative effects of globalisation on US manufacturing jobs and the communities that hosted them, and the discount rate which allows future costs to be largely ignored. There are also positive suggestions for mini-publics such as citizens assemblies, and a call for informed public participation in decisions about the future of the economy, with which I very much concur.
The writing is clear, and the book will be useful to anyone who wants a history of economists’ theories about growth. However it falls down on the unquestioning acceptance of those theories with their disconnect from the physical world and insistence that perpetual growth is possible on a finite planet. In the words of the United Nations General Secretary: "The world must wake up. We are on the edge of an abyss — and moving in the wrong direction". He refers to a "cascade of crises" – disastrous climate change, glaring inequalities, and more. Many economists however, apparently see no alternative except increasing yet further the already excessive demands we place on our fragile planet, caused primarily by growth.
Review Author
This review is based on the analysis in my own book An Economy of Want, which re-writes macroeconomics taking the physical world and environmental limits into account. Chapters 2 and 10 deal with the source of economic growth.
Sample chapters are available, and the whole eBook is regularly free on Amazon: see the book website for dates (Pacific Daylight Time).
The book starts by saying that humans experienced almost no growth in GDP per capita for about 100,000 years until around 1800. This is based on studies of historical workers wages, life expectancies and adult heights. Then from 1800, somewhat mysteriously, growth took off. It’s suggested that this occurred due to a cultural shift in the eighteenth century, and particularly in the UK, that propelled people towards the pursuit of useful ideas.
For an engineer or scientist, the idea that there was no growth prior to 1800 seems bizarre. It encompasses the discovery of the wheel, the sail, metals, draft animals, ceramics, the plough, gunpowder, armaments of all sorts, and printing. As an example of the technological advances during the centuries immediately preceding 1800, consider how these two ships compare: Columbus's flagship the Santa Maria, launched in 1460, and Nelson’s ship HMS Victory, launched about 300 years later in 1765. The Santa Maria was a 150 tonne vessel that carried 40 men and two cannon. HMS Victory is, at 3,556 tonnes, over twenty times the tonnage of the Santa Maria; it carried 850 men and over a hundred cannon. Photos of both ships (a replica in the Santa Maria’s case) are on Wikipedia, and dramatically show the difference.
Focusing only on workers wages as a guide to GDP per capita at least in the cases of European countries in the centuries preceding 1800, may give a false impression. Then as now society was very unequal with the benefits of growth going largely to the wealthy, who, if the châteaus of France or the country houses of Britain are any guide, were doing rather well in the 18th century. Similarly workers wages will not encompass road and port infrastructure, or churches and cathedrals, or state property such as the ships and armaments of European navies that projected European power across the world. One can certainly argue that ordinary workers benefited only in a limited way from these things, but they are part of GDP, just as global armaments spending is today.
Note also that 2025's Nobel award economists make a similar argument that growth was stagnant before the industrial revolution - you can see a graph (Figure 3) of UK GDP per person in a description of their work here: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/popular-information. However, the graph does not show the stagnation claimed. A logarithmic scale has been used, which makes the graph appear flatter than it really is. In fact, the graph shows UK GDP per capita rising from about $1,100 in 1300 to $3,000 in 1700 – an almost threefold increase. That's really not so bad, considering that for the whole period no new source of energy appeared (windmills and watermills already existed in 1300, and the first successful steam engines began to appear only after 1700) and almost all work relied on human or animal muscle power. Bear in mind too that for the UK the period 1300 to 1700 encompasses a great deal of turbulent politics, the black death, the reformation, many wars (including the wars of the roses, the Armada, the civil war), the plague and the great fire of London. As we shall see below, growth accelerated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, primarily because a new source of abundant energy appeared.
The book then provides a history of how economists struggled to explain the ‘source’ of growth, and how finally in the second half of the 20th century they ‘discovered’, thanks to the work of Robert Solow, that the development of better technology (not more capital), was that ‘source’, and then later, in the 1980s, that the generation of new technology was through people having ‘ideas’.
At this point, one has to ask “What took them so long?”. Victorian railway engineers would have fallen about laughing if you had suggested to them that buying more and more spades for their labourers would speed up the work (i.e. adding extra capital, but with no technical advance). Equally they’d have readily told you that it was the new technology of coal-fired steam engines - in factories, mines, ships and railway locomotives, and each providing the power of scores of men or horses - that were driving rapid industrialization.
Yes, cultural factors do indeed play a part in technical progress. As Jared Diamond ably describes in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, medieval Europe was made up of competing Kingdoms and city States, creating a ready-market for improved armaments, ships, navigation instruments, and much more. Someone with an idea if rejected by one ruler could simply move on to the next. Good ideas have always had the potential to spread quickly in such an environment. For example, the horizontal axis wind turbine was invented somewhere in England or Holland around about 1100AD. Within 100 years there were five thousand in England alone, and windmills spread across Europe applied to several tasks including milling flour, processing olives, and pumping water. However their application was limited since they have to be located in windy places and the energy is intermittent (mechanical energy can only be transmitted a short distance by rotating shafts, so the energy had to be used where the windmill was located, until the development of electrical generators and motors allowed its long-distance transmission in the 20th century).
Windmills are particularly relevant here, because they are an energy technology. Humans have always been on the look out for someone or something to do the work for us. To that end, windmills joined the use of slaves, draught animals, the sailing boat and watermills (watermills were invented about the 3rd century BC).
What ‘Growth’ astonishingly seems to fail to spot, is that cumulative technical advance in Europe led to a step-change in energy availability that was the primary cause of the explosion of growth observed since 1800: the invention of the heat engine. ‘Heat engines’ are engines that turn heat into mechanical movement, such as steam engines which developed throughout the 18th century and dominated the 19th; they were later joined by internal combustion engines, gas turbines and others. Heat engines made it possible to burn the immense stores of energy in coal, oil and gas, and turn that heat into mechanical energy, allowing machine power to do the work of thousands of humans or horses.
Without the heat engine and that huge store of fossil fuels, technical progress would have continued but at a fraction of the rate, with many of us still tied to the land and other manual work. Curiously, although ‘Growth’ doesn’t explain this, it does however contain two graphs which perfectly make the point: Figure 3 Chapter 1 shows growth in global GDP, and Figure 2 Chapter 5 shows the growth in CO2 emissions (which relate directly to fossil-fuel use). The two graphs both show the same dramatic growth post 1800.
‘Growth’ reveals a disturbing disconnect between economics and those disciplines based on the physical Sciences such as biology and engineering. Apart from taking a couple of centuries to identify technology as the source of growth, there still seems to be a problem with understanding that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. Chapter 7 of ‘Growth’ is a critique of the so-called ‘de-growth’ movement and rejects the idea that continuous growth is not possible on a finite planet. As with the explanation of the growth explosion of the last two centuries, the argument seems detached from real manufacturing. It is suggested that since economists now understand that growth comes from technological progress and that technological progress in turn comes from intangible ideas, thus we can have continued growth because intangible ideas don't consume real resources. This misses the simple point that while an idea for a technology may be intangible the technology and the manufacturing of it is very much not. In the 19th century they didn't get growth by dreaming about railways: they built them. New technology enables the creation of new products and may also enable larger volumes to be produced of existing products. Both involve increased consumption of resources. Sometimes technological advance makes an existing product use less resources in its manufacture and or its use. For example cars can be made lighter using modern materials, and their engines have become more fuel efficient. However the fashion for larger four-wheel drive and more powerful cars has counteracted these advances, as has the growth in global car ownership, with the result that cars are using more resources, not fewer.
Businesses in a free market need to sell to those who have money. Poorer people living near a subsistence level will naturally want to spend most of their income on subsistence and other material consumer goods. We live in a very unequal world, so there are relatively few people wealthy enough to want to buy services that are mainly labour not material - whether that be a poetry reading or a maid to wait at table - and their demand for such employees is likely to be limited; there is only so much time in a day. However the rich can buy very expensive material artefacts that require the work of a great many people to design, build and operate, such as private jets and helicopters, or even spacecraft.
Thus the idea of some future society where consumers spend most of their earnings on ideas and turn their noses up at the endless stream of physical products that businesses will undoubtedly try to sell them, is a fantasy. Something like that could only be brought about by rules and mechanisms that limited how much was spent on material goods.
‘Growth’ does talk however about the downsides of economic growth. The penultimate chapter, The Moral Question, makes several good points about the rising inequality in accumulated wealth, the negative effects of globalisation on US manufacturing jobs and the communities that hosted them, and the discount rate which allows future costs to be largely ignored. There are also positive suggestions for mini-publics such as citizens assemblies, and a call for informed public participation in decisions about the future of the economy, with which I very much concur.
The writing is clear, and the book will be useful to anyone who wants a history of economists’ theories about growth. However it falls down on the unquestioning acceptance of those theories with their disconnect from the physical world and insistence that perpetual growth is possible on a finite planet. In the words of the United Nations General Secretary: "The world must wake up. We are on the edge of an abyss — and moving in the wrong direction". He refers to a "cascade of crises" – disastrous climate change, glaring inequalities, and more. Many economists however, apparently see no alternative except increasing yet further the already excessive demands we place on our fragile planet, caused primarily by growth.
Review Author
This review is based on the analysis in my own book An Economy of Want, which re-writes macroeconomics taking the physical world and environmental limits into account. Chapters 2 and 10 deal with the source of economic growth.
Sample chapters are available, and the whole eBook is regularly free on Amazon: see the book website for dates (Pacific Daylight Time).
May 18, 2025
I'm very uneasy in reviewing this book. In part because I'm aware of the issues it raises, on the other, I'm nowhere near informed enough to evaluate whether the premises/solutions are correct. Honestly, that's the part that irks me most about the book, in that while it does present solutions, I don't get a sense of how those solutions can really be implemented.
Anyway, I'm going to sum up my thoughts and the book's premises as best as possible, so on that note:
-For the last 300,000 years, growth was non-existent, humans lived in what the author calls "the Great Stagnation" (more or less true, there's a reasonable case to be made that hunter-gatherers lived better than agriculturalists, but that ship has long sailed)
-A significant improvement in living standards occurs in the 19th century (again, more or less true)
-Growth as a concept emerges in the 20th century, stemming from the world wars - growth is effectively an antidote to tackling inequality, the idea that if the proverbial pie is getting ever bigger, inequality doesn't matter, because everyone is still getting "more," even if some get bigger pieces of pie. (Again, to my knowledge, this is more or less true - the author goes into far more detail than I could hope to summize, but I can't fault the logic.)
-Growth has driven climate breakdown among other things. This has been particularly noticeable since the 90s. Also, growth has stagnated across the world's economies (again, true).
So how then to resolve the issues? I don't know, and if I did, I'd probably win a Nobel prize. While the world is undoubtedly richer, the gap between rich and poor is tremendous, and while globalization has brought immense benefits (e.g. comparative advantage), there's also downsides to local communities, Brexit being a case in point. The author takes a look at two possible solutions.
One is trying to amalgamate GDP on a single metric that simultaniously covers all other factors. I'll be honest, I didn't entirely follow this argument, but I'll try and summize it - that we can plot everything, from wealth, to natural wealth, to happiness, etc., on a single metric doesn't work. There's certainly been alternatives to GDP that have been proposed (e.g. the Human Development Index, or HDI), but those measure different things. Certainly there's few people in the world that would say that GDP is the be all and end all of wellbeing, but the inconvenient fact for degrowthers (more on that in a bit) is that GDP strongly corrolates with wellbeing.
Degrowth is the other possible solution. In this, the author concedes that degrowth has a kernal of truth - there are other dimensions in life beyond economic wellbeing, that growth for the sake of growth is a terrible idea - but apart from that, its ideas are impractical. I don't want to spend too much time here, because others have critiqued degrowth better than I ever could, but the problems with degrowth are basically:
1: It's political suicide
2: It rests on the assumption that a contraction in the economy can somehow not result in a depression in living standards
Even if you discount point 2, as the degrowth movement is wont to do, I can't imagine any scenario where degrowth is actually implemented. It's the same problem I have with anarchists - however sympathetic their ideas might be, I can't see any actual scenario where they're implemented, and if so, what stops non-anarchist powers from taking advantage of it? Or, to put it another way, if, say, Europe implemented degrowth today, what stops Russia from conquering Ukraine tomorrow?
So what, then, is the solution? Well, in that, the book doesn't offer too much. Certainly I agree with some of the perscriptions (more R&D in some sectors, a loosening of patent laws, deliberative democracy alongside representative democracy, and FFS, it's absurd that fossil fuel industries receive $1 trillion in subsidies per year), but while I can't fault the ideas, I don't know if any of them are going to cut it. And of the ideas I'm pretty sure about (e.g. solar, decoupling), none of them are facts I weren't already aware of.
So, yeah. Again, I'm not an economist or an ecologist (yes, I did get a degree in env. management for what it's worth, and I'll be honest, not that much in that context), I can only give the book three stars. Nothing's really wrong with it, but there's nothing in here that truly jumped out of me in an "aha!" or "wow!," just stuff that I was already familiar with, or material that I can only take the author's word on.
None of this is to downplay the situation we're in - what happens in the 21st century will dictate what happens for centuries, if not thousands of years to come - but while this is a decent book, the TL, DR version is that it's much better at critiquing issues than coming up with solutions. Not that that's its fault, but, well, yeah.
Anyway, I'm going to sum up my thoughts and the book's premises as best as possible, so on that note:
-For the last 300,000 years, growth was non-existent, humans lived in what the author calls "the Great Stagnation" (more or less true, there's a reasonable case to be made that hunter-gatherers lived better than agriculturalists, but that ship has long sailed)
-A significant improvement in living standards occurs in the 19th century (again, more or less true)
-Growth as a concept emerges in the 20th century, stemming from the world wars - growth is effectively an antidote to tackling inequality, the idea that if the proverbial pie is getting ever bigger, inequality doesn't matter, because everyone is still getting "more," even if some get bigger pieces of pie. (Again, to my knowledge, this is more or less true - the author goes into far more detail than I could hope to summize, but I can't fault the logic.)
-Growth has driven climate breakdown among other things. This has been particularly noticeable since the 90s. Also, growth has stagnated across the world's economies (again, true).
So how then to resolve the issues? I don't know, and if I did, I'd probably win a Nobel prize. While the world is undoubtedly richer, the gap between rich and poor is tremendous, and while globalization has brought immense benefits (e.g. comparative advantage), there's also downsides to local communities, Brexit being a case in point. The author takes a look at two possible solutions.
One is trying to amalgamate GDP on a single metric that simultaniously covers all other factors. I'll be honest, I didn't entirely follow this argument, but I'll try and summize it - that we can plot everything, from wealth, to natural wealth, to happiness, etc., on a single metric doesn't work. There's certainly been alternatives to GDP that have been proposed (e.g. the Human Development Index, or HDI), but those measure different things. Certainly there's few people in the world that would say that GDP is the be all and end all of wellbeing, but the inconvenient fact for degrowthers (more on that in a bit) is that GDP strongly corrolates with wellbeing.
Degrowth is the other possible solution. In this, the author concedes that degrowth has a kernal of truth - there are other dimensions in life beyond economic wellbeing, that growth for the sake of growth is a terrible idea - but apart from that, its ideas are impractical. I don't want to spend too much time here, because others have critiqued degrowth better than I ever could, but the problems with degrowth are basically:
1: It's political suicide
2: It rests on the assumption that a contraction in the economy can somehow not result in a depression in living standards
Even if you discount point 2, as the degrowth movement is wont to do, I can't imagine any scenario where degrowth is actually implemented. It's the same problem I have with anarchists - however sympathetic their ideas might be, I can't see any actual scenario where they're implemented, and if so, what stops non-anarchist powers from taking advantage of it? Or, to put it another way, if, say, Europe implemented degrowth today, what stops Russia from conquering Ukraine tomorrow?
So what, then, is the solution? Well, in that, the book doesn't offer too much. Certainly I agree with some of the perscriptions (more R&D in some sectors, a loosening of patent laws, deliberative democracy alongside representative democracy, and FFS, it's absurd that fossil fuel industries receive $1 trillion in subsidies per year), but while I can't fault the ideas, I don't know if any of them are going to cut it. And of the ideas I'm pretty sure about (e.g. solar, decoupling), none of them are facts I weren't already aware of.
So, yeah. Again, I'm not an economist or an ecologist (yes, I did get a degree in env. management for what it's worth, and I'll be honest, not that much in that context), I can only give the book three stars. Nothing's really wrong with it, but there's nothing in here that truly jumped out of me in an "aha!" or "wow!," just stuff that I was already familiar with, or material that I can only take the author's word on.
None of this is to downplay the situation we're in - what happens in the 21st century will dictate what happens for centuries, if not thousands of years to come - but while this is a decent book, the TL, DR version is that it's much better at critiquing issues than coming up with solutions. Not that that's its fault, but, well, yeah.
July 9, 2024
Susskind makes a lot of arguments in this book, some much more persuasively than others. The basic premise of the first half of the book is something like; growth has been the goal of most of the world for the last ~100 years, this has lead to lots of great things (stuff) and bad things (environmental harm, inequality, some technology).
Susskind's account of the history of growth is very good, especially the constructive way he compares and contrasts the different levels upon which growth is explored. He also does a good job of explaining the benefits correlated with (and meaningfully related to) growth.
The first thing I really object to is the framing that most countries orient themselves towards growth. Susskind makes this point strongly and in many places. Aside from the fact that countries do indeed tend to grow, he notes things like Nixon's speech at the US reaching a GDP of one trillion, and statements by political officials about how much they think growth matters.
The problem with this account is that countries also leave a whole lot of growth on the table. Compared to what they would have if they were actually optimising growth, countries have far too little political inclusivity, far too little free trade, far too much corruption, far too little immigration, silly incentives in tax systems and benefit systems, far too much bureaucracy, and so on. A lot of countries don't even take reasonably politically uncontrovercial steps, like having an independenct central bank. Susskind doesn't mention these problems, so if he means something more subtle the reader wouldn't know.
A more central problem with Susskind's actual argument however is that he overstates the problems with growth.
The environment matters, and many environmental considerations are getting worse due to activity that also produces growth. Let's take carbon emissions as an example. Economic doctrine, perhaps the loudest pro-growth force, would recomend that you tax carbon. Pollution, including carbon, is an 'externality' and the textbook response is to tax it at a rate comensurate with the harm it does. No countries do tax carbon at close to this level.
So is growth to blame? Well there may be politicians who care a lot about short term growth and not about long term growth, who woulnd't want to tax carbon because it would have a negative impact on short term growth.
It doesn't seem plausible that this is the main force. More likely they don't happen because most people don't like paying more for energy. In any case the both the left and right seem to find grounds for ideological opposition; the left because a tax can read as authorisation to 'pay to pollute' and the right because they don't like taxes in general. There are also inter-nation game theory considerations, in that if one country imposes a tax on itself it will harm itself, but unless a critical mass of other countries join in there won't even be a meaninful impact.
Susskind doesn't spell out why he thinks growth is the culprit (as opposed to myopia, greed, politics, game theory). The correlation between growth and environmental damage is enough for him to lay all the blame on growth. He doesn't even make a distinction between short terms and long term (surely if there is an environmental catastrophe due to climate change growth goes down).
This sloppy treatment extends to concerns about inequality. In different places, Susskind implies that the American rust belt unemployed matter morally more than the Chinese factory worker who does their job cheaper (why?), ignores that growth makes global inequality go down, and ignores that the reason some people globally don't share in growth is that they live in countries that don't let them.
The chapter on automation and software is straight up intellectually offensive. The usual 'social media is rotting our brains and ruining politics' stuff, though with the absurd additional claim that using social media is somehow less consensual than being governed by the state. Yes a free website that shadily uses my data is more problematic for consent than a coercive force that literally tells me who I can and can't have sex with /s. It doesn't explain why the information landscape of today with its algorithmic recommendations is philosophically different from the commercially modivated editorial choices of newspapers.
The next half of the book is about Susskind's proposed solutions. I'm not inclined to keep reading given how problematic I find his diagnosis.
Susskind's account of the history of growth is very good, especially the constructive way he compares and contrasts the different levels upon which growth is explored. He also does a good job of explaining the benefits correlated with (and meaningfully related to) growth.
The first thing I really object to is the framing that most countries orient themselves towards growth. Susskind makes this point strongly and in many places. Aside from the fact that countries do indeed tend to grow, he notes things like Nixon's speech at the US reaching a GDP of one trillion, and statements by political officials about how much they think growth matters.
The problem with this account is that countries also leave a whole lot of growth on the table. Compared to what they would have if they were actually optimising growth, countries have far too little political inclusivity, far too little free trade, far too much corruption, far too little immigration, silly incentives in tax systems and benefit systems, far too much bureaucracy, and so on. A lot of countries don't even take reasonably politically uncontrovercial steps, like having an independenct central bank. Susskind doesn't mention these problems, so if he means something more subtle the reader wouldn't know.
A more central problem with Susskind's actual argument however is that he overstates the problems with growth.
The environment matters, and many environmental considerations are getting worse due to activity that also produces growth. Let's take carbon emissions as an example. Economic doctrine, perhaps the loudest pro-growth force, would recomend that you tax carbon. Pollution, including carbon, is an 'externality' and the textbook response is to tax it at a rate comensurate with the harm it does. No countries do tax carbon at close to this level.
So is growth to blame? Well there may be politicians who care a lot about short term growth and not about long term growth, who woulnd't want to tax carbon because it would have a negative impact on short term growth.
It doesn't seem plausible that this is the main force. More likely they don't happen because most people don't like paying more for energy. In any case the both the left and right seem to find grounds for ideological opposition; the left because a tax can read as authorisation to 'pay to pollute' and the right because they don't like taxes in general. There are also inter-nation game theory considerations, in that if one country imposes a tax on itself it will harm itself, but unless a critical mass of other countries join in there won't even be a meaninful impact.
Susskind doesn't spell out why he thinks growth is the culprit (as opposed to myopia, greed, politics, game theory). The correlation between growth and environmental damage is enough for him to lay all the blame on growth. He doesn't even make a distinction between short terms and long term (surely if there is an environmental catastrophe due to climate change growth goes down).
This sloppy treatment extends to concerns about inequality. In different places, Susskind implies that the American rust belt unemployed matter morally more than the Chinese factory worker who does their job cheaper (why?), ignores that growth makes global inequality go down, and ignores that the reason some people globally don't share in growth is that they live in countries that don't let them.
The chapter on automation and software is straight up intellectually offensive. The usual 'social media is rotting our brains and ruining politics' stuff, though with the absurd additional claim that using social media is somehow less consensual than being governed by the state. Yes a free website that shadily uses my data is more problematic for consent than a coercive force that literally tells me who I can and can't have sex with /s. It doesn't explain why the information landscape of today with its algorithmic recommendations is philosophically different from the commercially modivated editorial choices of newspapers.
The next half of the book is about Susskind's proposed solutions. I'm not inclined to keep reading given how problematic I find his diagnosis.
April 11, 2025
4.2/5
“Topics on Growth” was my favorite and the most impactful class that I took at university, so of course I had a lot of eager anticipation to read this book (augmented by its inclusion on Obama’s reading list). In summary, the author was satisfyingly methodical in the structure and reasoning of this book. I would give this book a 5/5 rating for Parts 1-2 and 4 alone.
The Solow-Swan growth model is one of the most intuitive and influential tools of Economics (and kudos to the author for giving credit to Swan as well). Susskind meticulously navigates through the evolution of growth to the model and the ever-imposing technology factor (that mysterious and monotonic “A” for fans of the equation). His disentangling of A is vague and non-mathematical - we as readers grasp it a bit more through his revelation that humankind experienced a virtual no-growth economy for much of human history, which is surprisingly surprising in a lot of ways (and forces us to re-think the widely accepted absurdity of Malthusianism). It seems like he elides over why productivity exploded during the Industrial Revolution, claiming in an early chapter that growth took off because (I am paraphrasing here) “technology was coupled with society’s change in mindset to use technology to be more productive.” That attribution was a bit disappointing, until the author dropped his theory on WHY the Industrial Revolution happened WHEN ALSO hinged on WHERE it happened.
Susskind’s theoretical mic drop, occurring in Chapter 9, is that growth has another dimension beyond its % value - growth also has a nature or quality to it. He provides an example of how relatively high wages and low energy costs resulted in the Industrial Revolution in England, and the same factor influences are having impacts on the nature of growth in Japan and China in modern times. I conceptually interpreted this in terms of vectors - Growth is 3-dimentional, with Cartesian directions on growth, and the velocity of growth representing our current growth understanding.
However, instead of mapping out the dimensions of growth to this understanding, Susskind quickly shifts to the tradeoffs of growth and other “goods” (ie environmental protection, income and wealth distribution, etc). So instead of extrapolating onto the Solow-Swan growth model, he instead puts growth on a Productivity Frontier, turning growth into a demand function to illustrate that we as society need to turn to politics to collectively determine what outcome is Pareto efficient. This is where I was disappointed in the final takeaways of this book.
Maybe my interpretation of Susskind’s own build on the growth model is incorrect, but I would have preferred that he build on the Cartesian coordinates of the 3D version of growth. One suggestion I have is to consider inputs (Labor, Capital, Land (maybe not an original part of the Solow-Swan model, but an input in other Econ theories), and technology (multipliers on both human capital and physical capital)) as impacting direction - ie with a farther distance resulting in a utility function derived from all 4 inputs. By creating a preliminary framework that allows for choices on inputs to steer both the direction and the velocity of growth, Susskind would not have diverged from the timeline of growth, and he could potentially set up an interesting framework for calculating the tradeoffs between growth and other societal “goods” (ie. How does land use contribute to growth while impacting the direction of the nature of growth?) I can already foresee the challenges in defining the directions/axes as an author determining what the options and tradeoffs may be, but maybe a system like this allows for flexibility for the directions to be replaced (and for an another axis to be introduced, ie x, y, and z directions, and velocity/time).
In summary, Susskind does an incredible job of clarifying our understanding of growth, tying the evolution of the theory to the case study of economic history. Then he rips us from that timeline in his recommendation for the future, despite teasing an interesting addition to Growth’s next phase.
As a final note, I do appreciate Susskind’s obsession with technical definitions, which allows him to dunk on the de-growth fanbase
“Topics on Growth” was my favorite and the most impactful class that I took at university, so of course I had a lot of eager anticipation to read this book (augmented by its inclusion on Obama’s reading list). In summary, the author was satisfyingly methodical in the structure and reasoning of this book. I would give this book a 5/5 rating for Parts 1-2 and 4 alone.
The Solow-Swan growth model is one of the most intuitive and influential tools of Economics (and kudos to the author for giving credit to Swan as well). Susskind meticulously navigates through the evolution of growth to the model and the ever-imposing technology factor (that mysterious and monotonic “A” for fans of the equation). His disentangling of A is vague and non-mathematical - we as readers grasp it a bit more through his revelation that humankind experienced a virtual no-growth economy for much of human history, which is surprisingly surprising in a lot of ways (and forces us to re-think the widely accepted absurdity of Malthusianism). It seems like he elides over why productivity exploded during the Industrial Revolution, claiming in an early chapter that growth took off because (I am paraphrasing here) “technology was coupled with society’s change in mindset to use technology to be more productive.” That attribution was a bit disappointing, until the author dropped his theory on WHY the Industrial Revolution happened WHEN ALSO hinged on WHERE it happened.
Susskind’s theoretical mic drop, occurring in Chapter 9, is that growth has another dimension beyond its % value - growth also has a nature or quality to it. He provides an example of how relatively high wages and low energy costs resulted in the Industrial Revolution in England, and the same factor influences are having impacts on the nature of growth in Japan and China in modern times. I conceptually interpreted this in terms of vectors - Growth is 3-dimentional, with Cartesian directions on growth, and the velocity of growth representing our current growth understanding.
However, instead of mapping out the dimensions of growth to this understanding, Susskind quickly shifts to the tradeoffs of growth and other “goods” (ie environmental protection, income and wealth distribution, etc). So instead of extrapolating onto the Solow-Swan growth model, he instead puts growth on a Productivity Frontier, turning growth into a demand function to illustrate that we as society need to turn to politics to collectively determine what outcome is Pareto efficient. This is where I was disappointed in the final takeaways of this book.
Maybe my interpretation of Susskind’s own build on the growth model is incorrect, but I would have preferred that he build on the Cartesian coordinates of the 3D version of growth. One suggestion I have is to consider inputs (Labor, Capital, Land (maybe not an original part of the Solow-Swan model, but an input in other Econ theories), and technology (multipliers on both human capital and physical capital)) as impacting direction - ie with a farther distance resulting in a utility function derived from all 4 inputs. By creating a preliminary framework that allows for choices on inputs to steer both the direction and the velocity of growth, Susskind would not have diverged from the timeline of growth, and he could potentially set up an interesting framework for calculating the tradeoffs between growth and other societal “goods” (ie. How does land use contribute to growth while impacting the direction of the nature of growth?) I can already foresee the challenges in defining the directions/axes as an author determining what the options and tradeoffs may be, but maybe a system like this allows for flexibility for the directions to be replaced (and for an another axis to be introduced, ie x, y, and z directions, and velocity/time).
In summary, Susskind does an incredible job of clarifying our understanding of growth, tying the evolution of the theory to the case study of economic history. Then he rips us from that timeline in his recommendation for the future, despite teasing an interesting addition to Growth’s next phase.
As a final note, I do appreciate Susskind’s obsession with technical definitions, which allows him to dunk on the de-growth fanbase
September 4, 2025
This book did not leave a great impression on me. Daniel Susskind does a good job at explaining the history of GDP as a metric and how economic growth has changed our lives. It makes the (first half of) the book a worthwhile read for anyone interested in that critical economic history. He also does a good job of discarding the stupidly harmful theory of degrowth.
At the same time, he appears to place too much emphasis on the process of growth itself being a sort of dangerous tumor for human society. Of course, that would be the case if policymakers actually tried to achieve growth at all costs, which *very obviously* is not the case, and *has never* been the case. Which policymaker would aim for a 1 pp higher increase in GDP at the expense of 5 pp higher inflation? Erdogan, perhaps, but that's not the point. In a functioning democracy, institutions are set up in such a way to prevent the pursuit of anything at all costs, including growth. That's not to mention the fact that proposals which some politicians believe will "unleash" economic growth ("let's get rid of regulation and be more like America" said the EU politician) often ignore crucial other components of growth such as agglomeration.
Susskind's solution to what he sees as the problem is to "also recognise and confront the tradeoffs involved". This is not at all a novel idea. Alfred Marshall coined the term externalities all the way back in the 19th century. Pretty much every bachelor in economics will teach students the difference between marginal private and marginal social costs. Although real-life markets don't allow themselves to be mapped as neatly as in a propaedeutic economics textbook, this knowledge has long been a part of economic governance. One could discuss the degree to which it is currently implemented, but Susskind stays short of this, only calling for tradeoffs to be taken account of. How? By what quantitative metrics, and according to which social welfare function? It would have made a much more interesting conclusion to his book if he discussed these critical questions. Instead, it reads more as a self-gratifying plea to liberal-progressive politicians. There's no real solutions here, to a problem which, in my opinion, does not really exist. It's no wonder it was on Obama's list of favourite books last year.
At the same time, he appears to place too much emphasis on the process of growth itself being a sort of dangerous tumor for human society. Of course, that would be the case if policymakers actually tried to achieve growth at all costs, which *very obviously* is not the case, and *has never* been the case. Which policymaker would aim for a 1 pp higher increase in GDP at the expense of 5 pp higher inflation? Erdogan, perhaps, but that's not the point. In a functioning democracy, institutions are set up in such a way to prevent the pursuit of anything at all costs, including growth. That's not to mention the fact that proposals which some politicians believe will "unleash" economic growth ("let's get rid of regulation and be more like America" said the EU politician) often ignore crucial other components of growth such as agglomeration.
Susskind's solution to what he sees as the problem is to "also recognise and confront the tradeoffs involved". This is not at all a novel idea. Alfred Marshall coined the term externalities all the way back in the 19th century. Pretty much every bachelor in economics will teach students the difference between marginal private and marginal social costs. Although real-life markets don't allow themselves to be mapped as neatly as in a propaedeutic economics textbook, this knowledge has long been a part of economic governance. One could discuss the degree to which it is currently implemented, but Susskind stays short of this, only calling for tradeoffs to be taken account of. How? By what quantitative metrics, and according to which social welfare function? It would have made a much more interesting conclusion to his book if he discussed these critical questions. Instead, it reads more as a self-gratifying plea to liberal-progressive politicians. There's no real solutions here, to a problem which, in my opinion, does not really exist. It's no wonder it was on Obama's list of favourite books last year.
June 17, 2024
To anyone interested in the growth dilemma, this is essential reading.
During my bachelors of economics, we never critically discussed economic growth - but we did learn about the truly incredible benefits. Three years ago, I left a glowing review of Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel, today's leading 'degrowther', and I was impressed his case against economic growth. But I soon became agnostic.
Susskind tells the truly fascinating history of 'the great escape' from 'the long stagnation', and growth as an idea in twentieth century economics and politics. He then explores the great costs of economic growth, and the great benefits. He argues against growth fundamentalism of many economists, and reminds us that we need to make trade-offs with values that have been side-lined by technocratic pursuit of growth (ironic, given that economics is fundamentally about trade-offs). This seems correct.
I share Susskind's view that the degrowthers seem to be wrong about green decoupling. They're political daydreamers, technological pessimists, and lack imagination about how fantastic the future could be with more economic growth - trying to lock us in to current levels of wellbeing. Although Susskind is just as critical of GDP alignment (where socially valuable things count as growth, while socially disvaluable things count as economic loss), I am more sympathetic to this project. I think that Susskind's dashboard and the alignment crowd are both addressing the growth dilemma in sensible ways.
I hope that economists will pay more attention to the growth dilemma. I think it's one of the most important issues of our time. I would like to see the GDP alignment and the dashboard approach more fleshed out than they are here. Unfortunately, Susskind just sort of gestures at democratic politics to figure out the trade-offs. What if you're trying to figure out which trade-offs make the most sense? You'll find the answer in a different book.
During my bachelors of economics, we never critically discussed economic growth - but we did learn about the truly incredible benefits. Three years ago, I left a glowing review of Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel, today's leading 'degrowther', and I was impressed his case against economic growth. But I soon became agnostic.
Susskind tells the truly fascinating history of 'the great escape' from 'the long stagnation', and growth as an idea in twentieth century economics and politics. He then explores the great costs of economic growth, and the great benefits. He argues against growth fundamentalism of many economists, and reminds us that we need to make trade-offs with values that have been side-lined by technocratic pursuit of growth (ironic, given that economics is fundamentally about trade-offs). This seems correct.
I share Susskind's view that the degrowthers seem to be wrong about green decoupling. They're political daydreamers, technological pessimists, and lack imagination about how fantastic the future could be with more economic growth - trying to lock us in to current levels of wellbeing. Although Susskind is just as critical of GDP alignment (where socially valuable things count as growth, while socially disvaluable things count as economic loss), I am more sympathetic to this project. I think that Susskind's dashboard and the alignment crowd are both addressing the growth dilemma in sensible ways.
I hope that economists will pay more attention to the growth dilemma. I think it's one of the most important issues of our time. I would like to see the GDP alignment and the dashboard approach more fleshed out than they are here. Unfortunately, Susskind just sort of gestures at democratic politics to figure out the trade-offs. What if you're trying to figure out which trade-offs make the most sense? You'll find the answer in a different book.
July 20, 2024
This book gave an interesting new perspective on a very topical subject.
Growth is apparently the top priority for the new Labour government, here in the UK.
For example, The Kings' Speech last week said that:
“Securing economic growth will be a fundamental mission”
The book argues that until around 1800, there was a “Long Stagnation” when there was no growth so that whenever living standards grew, population increased and then conditions for the average person fell again and they were continually living hand to mouth.
Growth since then has been responsible for great improvements in health/life expectancy, education and taking people out of poverty.
I had expected this book to be along similar lines to Jason Hickel’s book “Less is More – How Degrowth will Save the World” which I read a few years ago but it is different in that it argues that growth is still necessary and instead we need to consider a trade-off between growth and the inequality and social consequences that can come from concentrating on growth alone. The effect on the climate is specifically mentioned.
The degrowth movement argues that the world has finite resources and cannot keep growing for ever and ever. The author counters this by saying that ideas and research and development are the solution as technological progress can increase growth beyond finite limits.
It also speaks about the trade-off between short term growth and doing what is best for the future and our children and descendants.
Framing the climate emergency as only solvable by degrowth seems unrealistic when growth is such a high priority for all of our mainstream political parties and this gives a possible solution.
Daniel Susskind is speaking about the book at the Edinburgh International Book Festival next month and I am very much looking forward to going along to that and hearing further discussion about what must be one of the important subjects that we have to consider in today's world.
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-fest...
Growth is apparently the top priority for the new Labour government, here in the UK.
For example, The Kings' Speech last week said that:
“Securing economic growth will be a fundamental mission”
The book argues that until around 1800, there was a “Long Stagnation” when there was no growth so that whenever living standards grew, population increased and then conditions for the average person fell again and they were continually living hand to mouth.
Growth since then has been responsible for great improvements in health/life expectancy, education and taking people out of poverty.
I had expected this book to be along similar lines to Jason Hickel’s book “Less is More – How Degrowth will Save the World” which I read a few years ago but it is different in that it argues that growth is still necessary and instead we need to consider a trade-off between growth and the inequality and social consequences that can come from concentrating on growth alone. The effect on the climate is specifically mentioned.
The degrowth movement argues that the world has finite resources and cannot keep growing for ever and ever. The author counters this by saying that ideas and research and development are the solution as technological progress can increase growth beyond finite limits.
It also speaks about the trade-off between short term growth and doing what is best for the future and our children and descendants.
Framing the climate emergency as only solvable by degrowth seems unrealistic when growth is such a high priority for all of our mainstream political parties and this gives a possible solution.
Daniel Susskind is speaking about the book at the Edinburgh International Book Festival next month and I am very much looking forward to going along to that and hearing further discussion about what must be one of the important subjects that we have to consider in today's world.
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-fest...
November 4, 2024
This is an informative book on growth, accessible to the non-economist. I'm glad I read it. A couple critical points:
1. The central thesis—that growth has had the superlative effect of lifting billions out of poverty, but has also come at various costs (e.g. damages to the environment, increases in inequality, inventions of dangerous technology); and that this century we will face difficult trade-offs between further growth and distinct goals (e.g. safeguarding the environment and promoting justice)—is pretty obvious.
2. It seemed to me that there were two striking lacunae in the book's analysis.
2a. In discussing why the Industrial Revolution happened when and where it did, the book cites as one of the causal/enabling conditions that labor was expensive but energy cheap in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. This, the book claims, provided the necessary incentive for innovation: it turned out to be profitable to the R&D in Great Britain then. But this overlooks the institutional point emphasized by Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) and Koyama and Rubin (2022) that a profit-based incentive to innovate can only be sustained in a political and economic institutional environment that (perhaps inter alia) safeguards individual property rights and ensures (would-be) innovators against excessive expropriation by the state.
2b. The book stresses that sustained growth is the only force we observe in the historical record that has been sufficient to lift billions out of poverty. Yet it is not growth alone that did this. Growth per se says nothing about distribution: a polity could witness incredible sustained growth whose bounty is concentrated in a tiny fraction of the population. The right thing to say is that growth has lifted billions out of poverty *in conjunction with* political struggles to make states responsive to the legitimate needs and interests of their citizens (see again Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) and also Wenar (2015)).
1. The central thesis—that growth has had the superlative effect of lifting billions out of poverty, but has also come at various costs (e.g. damages to the environment, increases in inequality, inventions of dangerous technology); and that this century we will face difficult trade-offs between further growth and distinct goals (e.g. safeguarding the environment and promoting justice)—is pretty obvious.
2. It seemed to me that there were two striking lacunae in the book's analysis.
2a. In discussing why the Industrial Revolution happened when and where it did, the book cites as one of the causal/enabling conditions that labor was expensive but energy cheap in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. This, the book claims, provided the necessary incentive for innovation: it turned out to be profitable to the R&D in Great Britain then. But this overlooks the institutional point emphasized by Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) and Koyama and Rubin (2022) that a profit-based incentive to innovate can only be sustained in a political and economic institutional environment that (perhaps inter alia) safeguards individual property rights and ensures (would-be) innovators against excessive expropriation by the state.
2b. The book stresses that sustained growth is the only force we observe in the historical record that has been sufficient to lift billions out of poverty. Yet it is not growth alone that did this. Growth per se says nothing about distribution: a polity could witness incredible sustained growth whose bounty is concentrated in a tiny fraction of the population. The right thing to say is that growth has lifted billions out of poverty *in conjunction with* political struggles to make states responsive to the legitimate needs and interests of their citizens (see again Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) and also Wenar (2015)).
December 8, 2024
Daniel Susskind’s Growth: A Reckoning is a thought-provoking examination of one of the central challenges of our time: how to reconcile the pursuit of economic growth with its often detrimental consequences on inequality, the environment, and societal cohesion. Susskind argues that growth involves navigating multiple trade-offs rather than a singular choice. He challenges the linear metaphor of growth as an "accelerating train," instead offering the image of a "boat" whose direction and speed societies can influence. This shift underscores the agency in crafting a more equitable and sustainable vision of growth. Central to Susskind’s thesis is the idea that human creativity—ideation—makes infinite growth possible, especially as growth becomes decoupled from dirty resources through technological innovation and policy interventions like carbon taxes, which shift markets toward cleaner practices.
The book is also a sharp critique of the free market’s limitations, pointing out that it prioritises consumer desires over societal well-being. Susskind’s suggestion to "tax robots" addresses the inequity in taxing human labor while leaving technological replacements untaxed, which incentivises automation at the expense of workers. He calls for a middle path between unchecked growth and strong degrowth, advocating for what he terms "weak degrowth" to temper growth’s excesses without stagnation. Grounded in the principles of long-termism and effective altruism, Susskind’s vision is deeply future-focused, urging societies to prioritise enduring goals over immediate gains. Neither a polemic against growth nor an uncritical endorsement, Growth: A Reckoning offers a balanced and insightful roadmap for navigating the economic, ethical, and environmental complexities of the 21st century.
The book is also a sharp critique of the free market’s limitations, pointing out that it prioritises consumer desires over societal well-being. Susskind’s suggestion to "tax robots" addresses the inequity in taxing human labor while leaving technological replacements untaxed, which incentivises automation at the expense of workers. He calls for a middle path between unchecked growth and strong degrowth, advocating for what he terms "weak degrowth" to temper growth’s excesses without stagnation. Grounded in the principles of long-termism and effective altruism, Susskind’s vision is deeply future-focused, urging societies to prioritise enduring goals over immediate gains. Neither a polemic against growth nor an uncritical endorsement, Growth: A Reckoning offers a balanced and insightful roadmap for navigating the economic, ethical, and environmental complexities of the 21st century.
July 5, 2024
This is an excellent book about economic growth, its tradeoffs, and the vast benefits and recent costs that growth is bringing to society. Given that economic barbarians such as the "degrowth movement" led by Jason Hickel et al. believe that the solution to these tradeoffs is to stop growth (aka creating a recession and making everyone worse off), this book is a much-welcomed antidote of common sense to such barbarism.
This is probably one of the best books of the year (2024) in the section of "Informed Layman" book field. The book is well-written and simple yet not superficial, and it goes to the essence of the debate without jargon and without trying to impress the reader. Yet despite its simplicity and apparent superficiality, the message and ideas of the book are deep: the market system and the capitalistic economy are the only mechanisms we have to generate prosperity, wide progress, and well-being. Alas, that progress comes with tradeoffs and costs: environmental degradation, inequalities, and technological disruptions. This book's essence is understanding and navigating these tradeoffs and how we can 'stir' markets and capitalism towards a better and cleaner path to "mitigate" these tradeoffs through a 'greener' form of growth. I disagree with many (but not all) of the public policy recommendations of the last few chapters, and I disagree with Susskind's personal take on the growth/environmental tradeoffs. Still, overall, this is a sound, well-argued, serious, and nuanced book. Highly recommended!
This is probably one of the best books of the year (2024) in the section of "Informed Layman" book field. The book is well-written and simple yet not superficial, and it goes to the essence of the debate without jargon and without trying to impress the reader. Yet despite its simplicity and apparent superficiality, the message and ideas of the book are deep: the market system and the capitalistic economy are the only mechanisms we have to generate prosperity, wide progress, and well-being. Alas, that progress comes with tradeoffs and costs: environmental degradation, inequalities, and technological disruptions. This book's essence is understanding and navigating these tradeoffs and how we can 'stir' markets and capitalism towards a better and cleaner path to "mitigate" these tradeoffs through a 'greener' form of growth. I disagree with many (but not all) of the public policy recommendations of the last few chapters, and I disagree with Susskind's personal take on the growth/environmental tradeoffs. Still, overall, this is a sound, well-argued, serious, and nuanced book. Highly recommended!
May 1, 2024
Finished listening to it today. An excellent overview of the history of thought on growth, useful also for economists by training. Particularly liked the discussion on “degrowth”, and the attempt to define degrowth as something more palatable than what usually comes up in the discourse. Also nice were the parallels with growth and AI alignment problems. Key takeaways:
- As noted, “degrowth” is wrongheaded. Almost by definition, technological advancements allow rearranging existing inputs better, thereby allowing for economic growth without increase by inputs. And recent history shows that growth without increasing resource inputs is possible, i.e. emissions and growth are already decoupled in advanced economies. Interesting to know that Kate Raworth, of the “Doughnut Economics” fame, has also distanced herself from “degrowth”.
- How much we as a society value long-term outcomes should not be decided by philosophers but through a democratic process. However, I do think that the book overlooks some of the discussions on the topic, for instance, that focusing on existential risks is still important even with high uncertainty, because of non-ergodicity (you cannot recover from extinction).
- There were also other things I could quibble with in the book but given the breath I think these things were excusable enough to rate the book as “amazing.”
- As noted, “degrowth” is wrongheaded. Almost by definition, technological advancements allow rearranging existing inputs better, thereby allowing for economic growth without increase by inputs. And recent history shows that growth without increasing resource inputs is possible, i.e. emissions and growth are already decoupled in advanced economies. Interesting to know that Kate Raworth, of the “Doughnut Economics” fame, has also distanced herself from “degrowth”.
- How much we as a society value long-term outcomes should not be decided by philosophers but through a democratic process. However, I do think that the book overlooks some of the discussions on the topic, for instance, that focusing on existential risks is still important even with high uncertainty, because of non-ergodicity (you cannot recover from extinction).
- There were also other things I could quibble with in the book but given the breath I think these things were excusable enough to rate the book as “amazing.”
December 2, 2025
This was a really engaging book and I enjoyed it. But I didn’t finish the book feeling like there was a perfect path forward for economic growth.
The author is right to convey that prioritizing growth above all else has consequences: environmental damage, inequality, loss of jobs (AI + globalization), and new technology that creates a polarizing political climate. We should value avoiding these things just as we value the positive effects that growth has brought us (advanced medicine, transportation, etc). Where I became frustrated (and the author does admit this) is that these trade offs are valued different for everyone. So, achieving growth that we as humans value collectively becomes a moral issue, to be achieved through increased political engagement. And you’re doing that in a US political system where guys like Mitch McConnell are catering to special interests instead of old Johnny down the road whose job got sent overseas and is one hospital bill from being homeless. So I don’t know.
But the book was still great overall. I loved the emphasis on ideas (since they are non-rival) being able to carry us past the curse of diminishing marginal returns. Again, fostering ideas comes from policy that creates the right incentives to do so. Which requires a moral consensus among the people to make that happen. Just tough to see a way out. Would still recommend.
The author is right to convey that prioritizing growth above all else has consequences: environmental damage, inequality, loss of jobs (AI + globalization), and new technology that creates a polarizing political climate. We should value avoiding these things just as we value the positive effects that growth has brought us (advanced medicine, transportation, etc). Where I became frustrated (and the author does admit this) is that these trade offs are valued different for everyone. So, achieving growth that we as humans value collectively becomes a moral issue, to be achieved through increased political engagement. And you’re doing that in a US political system where guys like Mitch McConnell are catering to special interests instead of old Johnny down the road whose job got sent overseas and is one hospital bill from being homeless. So I don’t know.
But the book was still great overall. I loved the emphasis on ideas (since they are non-rival) being able to carry us past the curse of diminishing marginal returns. Again, fostering ideas comes from policy that creates the right incentives to do so. Which requires a moral consensus among the people to make that happen. Just tough to see a way out. Would still recommend.
December 24, 2025
Creșterea îți restabilește lumea citEști Business „Growth- A reckoning”, Daniel Susskind, Penguin, 2025
„Dacă te concentrezi numai asupra lumii concrete și concepi viața economiei doar în termenii rivalității între resurse fizice, o să te tot chinui să înțelegi sursele creșterii”. p.40 Daniel Susskind, „Growth- A reckoning”, Penguin, 2025
Cum te descurci cu dilema creșterii? Tensiunea dintre creșterea economică cu tot ce implică ea, prosperitate, sănătate, cunoaștere și costurile acestei creșteri, impactul asupra mediului, inegalitate, tulburări sociale. Daniel Susskind este specialistul acestui subiect. În „Growth- A reckoning”, economistul de la Universitatea Oxford îți explică sursele acestei situații. Altfel recente, pentru că despre creștere economică vorbim doar de două secole. Dar remarcă și oportunitățile pe care le implică natura creșterii economice. Egalitatea, mediul și democrația devin termeni importanți în dialogul legat de această temă.
„În momentul de față normele și discursurile sociale par să întărească, nu să slăbească compromisul între creștere și o piață a muncii sănătoasă”. p.245 Daniel Susskind, „Growth- A reckoning”, Penguin, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmKoL...
„Dacă te concentrezi numai asupra lumii concrete și concepi viața economiei doar în termenii rivalității între resurse fizice, o să te tot chinui să înțelegi sursele creșterii”. p.40 Daniel Susskind, „Growth- A reckoning”, Penguin, 2025
Cum te descurci cu dilema creșterii? Tensiunea dintre creșterea economică cu tot ce implică ea, prosperitate, sănătate, cunoaștere și costurile acestei creșteri, impactul asupra mediului, inegalitate, tulburări sociale. Daniel Susskind este specialistul acestui subiect. În „Growth- A reckoning”, economistul de la Universitatea Oxford îți explică sursele acestei situații. Altfel recente, pentru că despre creștere economică vorbim doar de două secole. Dar remarcă și oportunitățile pe care le implică natura creșterii economice. Egalitatea, mediul și democrația devin termeni importanți în dialogul legat de această temă.
„În momentul de față normele și discursurile sociale par să întărească, nu să slăbească compromisul între creștere și o piață a muncii sănătoasă”. p.245 Daniel Susskind, „Growth- A reckoning”, Penguin, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmKoL...
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