climate change,economic development,economic growth,gdp growth,limits to growth,overshoot,politics,sustainability
Rarely do I find writing about our economic system that warrants not just Wall of Fame status, but also a parade. I cannot heap enough praise on today’s honoree:
economic growth,economy,gdp,gdp growth,limits to growth,overshoot,politics,population growth,sustainability
Warren Buffett makes the Wall of Shame today for – apparently – failing to understand limits to growth. One would hope such a smart and successful businessperson would be aware that the wealth “creation” of the last 80 years has come at a very heavy price on our ecosystems and natural resources, and cannot possibly continue.
economic growth,economy,politics,sustainability
I want to give Bryce Covert some applause for pointing out what I’ve long believed but never see mentioned: Presidents do not have much power over the economy. In Ask Not What the President Can Do for the Economy, published in the New York Times this month, Covert points out why promises of candidates to grow the economy are pretty much nonsense.
“THIS year’s presidential candidates, like all candidates before them, have talked endlessly about what they’ll do to boost the economy if they make it to the White House.”
You know the drill, as James Carville famously said during Bill Clinton’s campaign for reelection, “it’s the economy, stupid.” It turns out we are a bit stupid to believe the President (or ANY elected official, in my view) really has much power to influence how “robust” our economy is.
economic growth,economy,limits to growth,overshoot,politics
Compliments are in order for New York Times financial columnist (and CNBC host) Andrew Ross Sorkin for an in-depth and thoughtful economic piece in the Times’ Sunday Magazine:
President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy
Note, however, that this is on the Wall of Shame, rather than Fame. That’s because of a fatal flaw in the assumptions underlying what is otherwise a great piece of reporting. It’s clear throughout that both Sorkin and President Obama are stuck in the 20th century. Those were heady times, when the world was our oyster. It seemed we could grow forever; we’d not yet stretched our economic rubber band so far past limits to growth that it would clearly break, or snap back with such ferocity as to be extraordinarily painful.