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https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train>
"It is hard to know how to talk about modern economies without talking about
growth: productivity, entrepreneurial ‘risk-taking’ and the profit-driven cycle
of expansion and accumulation. Economic growth is understood to be a natural or
automatic process, its absence taken as evidence that we must somehow have got
in its way. The purpose of economic policymaking is, accordingly, presented as
a matter of loosening the ‘fetters’ on growth, as if the economy were a
wealth-generating beast, always raring to go, if only we’d let it.
Given all this, it may come as a surprise to learn that the analysis of
‘economic growth’ in its contemporary sense is a relatively recent development.
Some will say that Adam Smith was the first theorist of economic growth (a term
he didn’t use), but even as late as 1946, Evsey Domar, one of the founders of
modern growth theory, could remark that the rate of growth was ‘a concept which
has been little used in economic theory’. That didn’t remain true for much
longer, as economists and policymakers wrestled with the legacy of the
Depression, fears of postwar stagnation, and the geopolitics of decolonisation
and the Cold War. The challenges of growth and industrialisation – the
obstacles to achieving them, but also the dislocation and inequality they often
entailed – weren’t just a matter of investment, technology and productivity.
They were also, in the words of Simon Kuznets, about ‘the future prospect of
underdeveloped countries within the orbit of the free world’."
Via Doc Edward Morbius.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
