Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

Rostow’s economic plane flight is the unmissable metaphor in this story, complete with its pre-flight procedural checks and its altitude signifying the economy’s growth rate. But it differs from every other plane flight in one crucial respect: the plane never actually lands, but cruises instead at a constant growth rate into the sunset of consumerism. Rostow hinted at his uncertainty of what might lie over that horizon, briefly acknowledging ‘the question beyond, where history offers us only fragments: what to do when the increase in real income itself loses its charm?’4 But he did not follow his own questioning through, and for understandable reasons: it was 1960 – the year of John F. Kennedy’s election bid on a promise of 5% growth – and for Rostow, a soon-to-be presidential adviser, it was wise to focus on keeping that plane in the sky, not on pondering when and how it would ever land.