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Seed: What underpins your optimism that people might eventually embrace a no-growth economy?
We’re encouraged by a number of studies by economists and psychologists on happiness—almost all show that beyond a certain threshold, further increases in GDP really do not increase self-evaluated happiness. They do, of course, continue to increase environmental costs. That gives us some idea of what’s enough. Whatever that amount is, it’s a lot less than average per capita GDP in the United States. And this, of course, is a highly contentious point. People really don’t like to talk about limits to income. We’re now willing to talk about a minimum income, but we’re not quite willing to talk about a maximum yet. Yet if the total amount of economic growth is limited, then that should be on the agenda as well.

Seed: Rethinking Growth
1 year ago