Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop them All
Brian Czech
Language: English
Pages: 220
ISBN: B003AU4DH8
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Americans have been conditioned to appreciate, cheer, and serve economic growth. Brian Czech argues that, while economic growth was a good thing for much of American history, somewhere along the way it turned bad, depleting resources, polluting the environment, and threatening posterity. Yet growth remains a top priority of the public and polity. In this revolutionary manifesto, Czech knocks economic growth off the pedestal of American ideology. Seeking nothing less than a fundamental change in public opinion, Czech makes a bold plea for castigating society’s biggest spenders and sets the stage for the "steady state revolution."
Czech offers a sophisticated yet accessible critique of the principles of economic growth theory and the fallacious extension of these principles into the "pop economics" of Julian Simon and others. He points with hope to the new discipline of ecological economics, which prescribes the steady state economy as a sustainable alternative to economic growth.
Czech explores the psychological underpinnings of our consumer culture by synthesizing theories of Charles Darwin, Thorstein Veblen, and Abraham Maslow. Speaking to ordinary American citizens, he urges us to recognize conspicuous consumers for who they are—bad citizens who are liquidating our grandkids’ future. Combining insights from economics, psychology, and ecology with a large dose of common sense, Czech drafts a blueprint for a more satisfying and sustainable society. His ideas reach deeply into our everyday lives as he asks us to re-examine our perspectives on everything from our shopping habits to romance.
From his perspective as a wildlife ecologist, Czech draws revealing parallels between the economy of nature and the human economy. His style is lively, easy to read, humorous, and bound to be controversial. Czech will provoke all of us to ask when we will stop the runaway train of economic growth. His book answers the question, "How do we do it?"
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Recommendations. But it was too late. “Well Brian, it’s been nice having you here,” the department chairman said on the walk back to department headquarters. Now I cannot scientifically prove that my critique of economic growth lost me the job, but if you doubt it highly, maybe they still have some swampland (or a supposed substitute thereof ) for sale in Florida. About a month later, I got a call from another, much smaller university in the same region. They were considering whether or What.
Intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments Prologue: A Wilderness Trail to an Economic Tale ix 1 part one ˜ the runaway train 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Economic Growth as a National Goal What Did Jack Kemp Really Say? What Will They Think of Next, and Why? Simon Said Copernicus, Are You Out There? 17 27 44 62 78 part two ˜ stopping the train 6. The Steady State Revolution: Precepts and Terminology 7. Relations with the Liquidating Class 8. Relations with the Steady State Class 9. Relations.
Its corporate backers, is simply unaware of the magnitude of risks imposed by economic growth upon the grandkids. But the truth can be denied for only so long. The signs of economic growth gone awry are abundant: congestion, endangered species, and water shortages, for starters. All it will take is for more people to interpret such signs as the effect of economic growth, and not of other scapegoat phenomena. Ecological economics will be there to do the interpreting, and common sense will do the.
8. 122 / Stopping the Train Finally, we need a term for those residing in the intermediate 19 percent of personal consumption expenditures. These folks vary tremendously in their liquidating habits, with a dubious effect on economic bloating. The term “amorphic class,” encompassing as it were the “amorphs,” will serve to capture the many and malleable consumption patterns displayed therein. Such patterns will be explored in chapter 9. Relations with the Liquidating Class 7 If economic.
Grandkids. This page intentionally left blank PART ONE The Runaway Train The great truisms of economics have no clear discoverers; they are evident for all to see. John Kenneth Galbraith, Economics in Perspective, 1987 When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four, 1889 This page intentionally left blank Economic Growth as a National Goal 1 “We should double the rate of growth, and we should.