https://woollydays.wordpress.com/2019/06/by Derek Barry on Woolly Days.

Prosperity without Growth, Part 2.

Jackson borrowed from Amartya Sen’s three concepts of prosperity: opulence (the quantity of material satisfaction), utility (the quality of material satisfaction) and capability for flourishing (how well we can flourish in any context).

He also questions whether economic growth is a necessary condition for lasting prosperity.

He notes the importance of income (opulence) which is played out through relative effects.

We compare our income to those around us to establish our social standing.

Being at or near the top helps individual health and prosperity but does not add well-being to the nation.

He quotes the book The Spirit Level which shows inequality has damaging impacts across the nation as a whole, though he acknowledges social logic locks people into positional competition.

He also acknowledges de-growth is unstable and can lead to rising unemployment, falling competitiveness and a spiral of recession.

Writing ten years ago, Jackson spruiked the Green New Deal, an idea that foundered for a while but is now getting a second run with some Democratic candidates in the 2020 US presidential election.

If that the public sector is spending money to invigorate the economy it should be on technologies to address 21st century resource and environmental challenges.

This could be in labour-intensive industries investing in energy efficient buildings, the electricity grid, renewable energy and public transportation.

The idea foundered after the GFC with governments preferring other stimulus measures aimed at high-street spending with few low-carbon outcomes.

Jackson suggested green bonds linked to low-carbon investments to pay for the stimulus rather than increasing national debt.

This would need to be supported by governments investing in energy assets and what he called “ecological tax reform”.

Stabilisation of the economy could be achieved by working less hours and sharing jobs or introducing universal basic income.

As well as lowering growth and reducing it would reduce unemployment and poverty without compromising economic stability or climate change targets.

But to end the cleavage between the economy and the environment, the social logic of consumerism also needs to be addressed.

This will not be easy given how material goods are woven into the fabric of our lives.

There are never enough material things to make us satisfied and the need to avoid social shame, the “keeping up with the Joneses” drives demand forward ceaselessly.

Jackson says two structural changes are needed to shift values and behaviours.

The first is to dismantle perverse incentives to constantly improve social status and the second is to establish new structures to allow people to flourish in less materialistic ways.

The latter will need more policy attention to what flourishing means and must address social alienation and anomie.

That involves reducing social inequality – which is on the rise in most western societies.

Jackson doesn’t pretend that introducing an ecologically-literate macroeconomics and changing the logic of consumerism are easy challenges.

Together they are possibly the biggest ever faced by human society.

Writing after the GFC he was right to say the current model has failed us, but memories are short and 10 years on, it’s business as usual at the bourses and banks.

Jackson says the transition to a sustainable economy must begin by establishing the resource and environmental limits.

That means identifying greenhouse gas emission caps and reduction targets and taxing carbon.

He sees the need to shift the burden of taxation from economic goods like incomes to ecological “bads” such as pollution.

There needs to be funding mechanisms so that poorer countries can still grow which still investing in renewables, low-carbon infrastructure and the protection of carbon sinks such as forests.

Jackson also says financial markets need to be reined in by outlawing short-selling, reducing executive remuneration packages, protecting against consumer debt and incentives for savings.

How all these things happen in a runaway executive salary market with almost negative interest rates and with Trump and other populists rampant, Jackson probably could not foresee.

But he offers a useful economic perspective on the problems of capitalism.

He understands the dangers of novelty and how it drives consumption while undermining our sense of common endeavour.

A better and fairer social logic lies within our grasp, he says.

“Neither ecological limits nor human nature constrain the possibilities…only our capacity to believe in and work for change”.