Degrowth Manifesto

Point by point against the viral and deceptive Guardian op-ed

There are an astonishing number of falsehoods in the recent Degrowth manifesto that was published on June 10 in the Guardian (co-authored by Thomas Piketty). Titled, “We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way,” the long essay was only possible without fact-checking. I’m going to list the worst lines verbatim, with some quick responses:

1. Opening sentence: “We live in an age of manufactured scarcity.” Total nonsense from word one. The whole premise of the first sentence implies that powerful forces have restricted the supply of goods in this age. That it was intentional. That there was some cabal. The opposite is true, on all counts. Free markets have no head. Besides, global population more than quadrupled during the past century from 2 billion people in 1926 to over 8 billion people in 2026. The current residents of the Earth eat better, live better, and have more stuff. The birthrate has slowed in recent decades - in every nation on Earth - because babies are far more likely to survive - in every nation on Earth!

   

2. “Millions of people cannot afford enough food, proper housing or basic healthcare…” The first factoid confuses prices with supply, and has a problem with major improvements in human longevity, diet, and collapsing childhood mortality everywhere (even in Afghanistan since 2001).

   

   Oops. That’s the maternal mortality rate image. And yes, the infant mortality decline after the U.S. invasion in 2001 looks even better! (Do the authors think Afghan women are delighted that the “exploitative” American troops have left and taken the rule of law, education for women, and Western medicine with them?)

   

3. “…while a tiny minority accumulates unprecedented wealth and power.” Hyperbole alert. What about the Pharoahs of ancient Egypt, Roman Senators, or the Kings of Europe from 1000-1800 AD? Research suggests the Gini coefficients of ancient empires was worse than in today’s democracies. Or, if you prefer sensory evidence of unprecedented power inequality, visit Pyongyang or Beijing or Moscow.

4. “Droughts, megafires, floods and heatwaves remind us that our economies are pushing the planet beyond its limits.” Misleading at best. Climate change simply has not been the catastrophe that Al Gore and others predicted. I wrote about the water crisis in California that has been caused by catastrophically dumb federal water policy for half a century, but CATO covers it better. The LA megafire is a story of incompetent city and state government, not the planet.

   

5. “Poverty and inequality are not accidents; they are predictable outcomes of policy choices.” See: state of nature. Povery is natural. It’s economic growth that is rare and miraculous in human history. Furthermore, growth is the policy choice of billions of people. Just look at the migration foot-voting.

   

6. “The promise that economic growth would ‘lift all boats’ has not been kept.” No facts support this, it’s just vapid lingo. Even so, I have to nitpick on the word “promise.” Nobody is promised growth. The social contract in societies that embrace economic freedom is a promise of freedom, not prosperity. You have the freedom to work hard and keep the fruit of your labor. You have opportunity in the the promise of property rights, contract enforcement, and lower taxes. It’s the pursuit of happiness, not happiness, America promises individual citizens. That’s a promise kept.