Economic Growth? Forget It - Richard Murphy

4th December 2024

Politicians in developed countries are still obsessed with growth without realising that growth is history because as our incomes have grown, we consume fewer material items and more services, and the chance of productivity growth in services is limited, even with AI.

The question is, when will politics begin to reflect this new reality?

It might pay for the futures in some countries in the world who have yet to reach our stage of supposed economic development because they consume fewer material goods than we do and, therefore, have the capacity to both make and consume more material items. But in countries like the UK, the USA, and the whole of Europe, the capacity to consume more goods is reaching its limit.

And that's not because of climate change, although obviously that has an impact. It's because we've had enough. And by enough, I mean we consume sufficient, and we don't want to consume more. And this data is very clear from the patterns of consumption that we can see within the economy.

As people's incomes grow, the proportion of their spending on the consumption of material goods falls.

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