CIRCULAR ARGUMENT

 IS ECONOMIC GROWTH THE WRONG GOAL?

FREAKONOMICS Radio Podcast #429 

is about a subject dear to my heart: the insanity of the endless pursuit of GDP.

Can constant growth possibly be a good thing? It just doesn't make sense. 

I do understand it. It's cheaper to make new stuff than to refurbish the old. But that is kind of misleading, too. We set it up that way. But there are many ways we could have set it up that would have led is to a whole 'nuther reality. Several years ago I did a Commentary on Marketplace about becoming a vegetarian. The gist of it was, that if we had a fair system of land and water pricing and distribution, a McDonald's burger would cost over $30. I realize that in a fancy restaurant, notably the restaurant on the ground floor of the new Whitney Museum, a burger does cost about that. I was writing, however, closer to 1999 when the price was seventy-nine cents. My point was I was not ideologically a vegetarian, but if the true cost of each burger, divested of special dispensations for cattle grazing on public lands, drinking public water, other subsidies, surplus grain used for feed and so on, the price alone would drive me into the arms of Veganism.

Each item mentioned above, plus tax breaks and so on is worth serious study on its own for ancillary damage. For example, the bad health consequences for us eating meat that is fed grain rather than grass. But that is for another day.