According to Bill McKibben in Deep Economy, there was a period of time in which economic growth made everybody wealthier. That was a big part of the purpose of the growth. The standard of living went up for everyone as businesses expanded. McKibben argues that we hit a point where we should have stopped focusing on growing our economies because of limits in resources. Our economic gauges are recognize health only when they see increased economic activity. To have the same amount of activity as last quarter is unhealthy.
A less important gauge is the average wealth of the people of an economy. McKibben thinks that the Business As Usual model of growth is now geared to centralize the wealth rather than make everybody wealthier. In fact, “though our economy has been growing, most of us have relatively little to show for it. The median wage in the U.S. is the same as it was thirty years ago. The real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers has declined steadily: they earned $27,060 in real dollars in 1979, $25,646 in 2005.” Where did that growth go?? Well, the top one percent in the U.S. in this 30 year period perennially “captured more of the real national gain in income than the bottom 50 percent.”
What is the point of all of it? We are not wealthier and we certainly are not happier. The richest Americans are as happy as the Pennsylvania Amish. The G8 + 5 is not some bliss club. Costa Ricans are happier than the Japanese, says McKibben. The French are about as happy as Venezuelans. Homeless people in Calcutta get some of the lowest happiness scores in the world, but their score doubled when they moved into a slum. That new score was equal to a sampling of college students from 47 countries!
What is a society that does not seek economic growth as a central focus of progress? Is it happier than this current paradigm of human existence?
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