Economic growth is commonly believed to underpin a healthy society, but what impact does the quest for growth have on us as individuals, on society and the world around us?
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Growth: a key to wellbeing?
The steady deterioration of services in the UK has preoccupied me these last times as I begin to write a new novel entitled, The Truth Mongers, set in a poorer part of the capital. As a result, I have come to wonder about factors leading to this decline. I refer to those services increasingly failing to meet the needs and expectations of the general public. Healthcare, social services, education, prisons, water, gas and electricity supply, roads and public transport are examples. There’s also the public infrastructure which makes life more liveable like parks, museums and libraries, not to mention services which encourage participation and favour local cohesion. All these are the subject of frequent articles and subjects on television and the radio. Clearly decreasing funding from central government – masquerading as austerity, but in reality based on an ideology that favours cutting state intervention to a minimum – is a major contributor to restrictions in services. But another key factor, it seems to me, is the belief in growth as a key to wellbeing.
Trumpeting growth
Ultimately, growth means producing more and, more importantly, making more money. We are repeatedly told that growth is a sign of a healthy economy, of a healthy society. All the major political parties in the UK subscribe to this belief. The success of companies and countries alike is measured in how much growth they manage to notch up. Growth figures, however small the increase, are splashed across newspaper headlines, announced in a fracas on newscasts and trumpeted by governments.
Who benefits from growth?
Many public policies profess to stimulate growth. The claim is that growth will provide income that can subsequently be employed either to invest in a company without having to borrow, or to finance public services without having to raise taxes. While this might sometimes be the case, an increasingly large amount of this income is siphoned off into the pockets of a very small percentage of the population. In the so-called public sector, privatisation and frequent recourse to private providers accentuates this drain on resources. Recent catastrophes in water provision and sewerage treatment illustrate how draining profits results in chronic underinvestment. It would be no exaggeration to say that growth benefits primarily the rich.
A question of resources
The other problem with growth is it assumes resources are unlimited. This is clearly not the case. Resources are rarely unlimited. There was a time when those fleecing local resources could move on to a new eldorado once the current source was depleted. Nowadays, rich deposits as a source of income are becoming ever rarer. As a result, the boundaries of what can be bought and sold are pushed back to include patenting living organisms. Ultimately, fantasies are invested in where other planets are plundered in an insatiable quest for ever greater riches. The same goes for so-called ‘human resources’. Once you’ve burnt your way through your staff, leaving them fit for nothing, there’s not an unending supply of replacements to call on. Unless, of course, you believe in the triumph of AI and intelligent robots.
Growth does not make for a healthy society
One of the first steps in remedying this situation must surely be to recognise that striving for growth is not a healthy goal for society nor for the world we live in. As for encouraging consumerism to fuel growth, it is more likely to lead to dissatisfaction than well-being. Why? Partly because the objects we are encouraged to desire only bring at most superficial satisfaction, however much we try to persuade ourselves otherwise. But also because one of the central drivers of consumerism is comparison and competition which heightens isolation and feelings of disempowerment. The resulting severing of the individual from others, when humans are naturally social beings, only further fuels mental health problems. This situation raises questions about the wisdom of repeatedly slashing resources for mental health. If growth, as suggested here, drastically increases inequality, then it can only lead to widespread misery and unrest. This would explain why those who profit most from the riches generated by growth push the state to invest in coercive measures to ensure that democratic processes and protest, not to mention political unrest, are curtailed as much as possible.