Degrowth isn’t going to work you know
As we’re all aware the excuse for socialism and a planned economy has changed. A century back scientific socialism was said to be more efficient than that chaos of markets and capitalism. So, a planned future would be a richer future. We also, with the benefit of hindsight, know how that worked out. It didn’t, etc.
The new justification is that as the natural environment cannot stand further economic growth therefore we must have a planned and socialist economy so that we don’t have any growth. Planning and socialism can indeed deliver that as hindsight tells us. That it won’t aid the environment can be proven by a quick trip to where the Aral Sea isn’t.
But at least the justification has changed. We must have a planned and socialist economy not so we can be rich but so we can be poor.
And, of course, we’ll all love living in harmony with Gaia as we nibble, shivering in the dark, on our raw turnip.
This might not turn out to be wholly true:
Still, a far better measure for the country’s progress, as Starmer and his lame-duck Chancellor must regret ever uttering, is GDP per head because it is the best proxy that exists for living standards. With the Prime Minister insisting that improvements – or otherwise – in GDP per capita is one of six key targets that his leadership is judged upon, it’s surely only fair that we do.
Predictably from such an abject bunch, the data is truly awful. With GDP per person declining by 0.1pc in the final three months of last year, on the back of a 0.3pc drop in the third quarter, families now find themselves in a “living standards recession” as Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary labelled it.
Leave aside the insult there - something we, of course, would never do - and accept that fact. Growth, per head, is reversing. We have, in fact, degrowth. So, is degrowth making the populace happier?
Not that we can see, no. Therefore, having tested the proposition, we suggest that degrowth isn’t going to be a viable policy. Simply because the population - that’s us out here and in a democracy yes, our views do matter - are not made happier by having ever less.
Not that socialism and planning are ever going to work in an economic sense but perhaps they’ll be able, at some point, to come up with a justification that stands up to examination. Maybe, sometime.
Tim Worstall