Trust me, I am no economist but why do we need to keep growing ?
Especially, when infrastructure can't keep up with the growth (due to lack of foresight by governments and/or unwillingness to spend past the next election).
I can under stand Harry Trigaboff pushing for growth as he can build more aparment blocks to house the increase in population and Gerry Harvey wants to sell more fridges BUT there must come a time when we have to stop.
"Populate or perish" ?????
Since the M5 in western Sydney was built in 1992, cars have more then doubled on this motorway. It's a carpark from 6am in morning peak and from 2pm in arvo peak.
Can somebody explain to me why the growth ?
Apparently it is needed to create more money=debt so the mice stay on the treadmill and the cats get fatter by eating the mice that fall off.
Nice reply Cisco, pretty close in reality.
But The simple economists answer would be something like....
The idea is growth, or increasing national wealth maybe be a better term, is sought by governments as it is believed to increase the quality of life within the country. This results in increasing wages and low unemployment of its residents. There are whole lot of other effects for business and governments but basically growth is to facilitate better quality of life within the country. As it provides funds for investment, infrastructure, better health services etc which all improve people quality of life
And let's not forget when people are happy politicians get voted back into power..
As for Harry, Gerry etc they are capitalists, what the are after in effect isn't growth in the same sense as a politicans, they ar looking to make $$$
On the m5 that was a massive f up by the government, they projected x cars would use it per day and in 20 years it would be say Y cars. ( I don't remeber the actual numbers)
However on the day it opened it was effectively Y cars on it and hence was never big enough to carry the amount of traffics hat was going to use it. So it is now Sydney's biggest parking lot
People keep breeding = natural growth. More consumers, more workers, more product etc.
I think what scotty is asking is why does the Govt try to force economic growth or even worse population growth when existing infrastructure can't keep up. That's wrong
I'm reading a book by Pat Buchanan called "Death of the West".
Part of the book's thesis is political parties of western countries, including Australia, have been hijacked by ethnic minority lobbyists who want to turn their ethnic minority in the western nation into a ethnic majority. He mainly talks about how the Mexicans/Latins are taking over America, especially the south and western America. He also discusses how Muslims from Africa and the Middle East are taking over Europe.
So if you are talking about population growth then we can look at our politicians and bureaucrats to answer the question why our population keeps growing. Population growth does fuel economic growth but its a lazy way to achieve growth.
Business people and financial types lament how Japan has stagnated for the last 20 years with no growth. Perhaps they are showing the way that a post growth society will go and there is life after growth. Japanese seem to say they are happy with their level of wealth and don't need to keep growing.
totally agree, we barely have the infrastructure to handle the amount of people that we have now, so i dont see why they want the population to grow so fast or so much each year, when the aren't putting money into anything which IMO they should do before the even think about all of this growth that they want
Jarryd
The following is an interesting read (see link below as well)
Is Population Growth a Ponzi Scheme?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2011-09-16 01:28
According to Ponzi demography, population growth - through natural increase and immigration - means more people leading to increased demands for goods and services, more material consumption, more borrowing, more on credit and of course more profits. Everything seems fantastic for a while - but like all Ponzi schemes, Ponzi demography is unsustainable. Joseph Chamie | Thursday, March 04, 2010
Article Link:
www.theglobalist.com/is-population-growth-a-ponzi-scheme/
well the solution is sure as hell not to import more people into Australia when we can't get the existing ones a hospital bed when needed, or onto a train to go to work, and they keep tacking transportables onto schools and the P&C have to pay for stuff etc etc etc etc
I think that is what is meant by infrastructure.
GDP.... I'm going to go with Agent Smith on this one.......human race is growing and devouring like parasites....
Rapa Nui anyone.
so......if you dont breed then there are none to kill 
if there are no surplus to kill, then you must kill the breeders 
throw the exsess a few scraps to keep them focuced on the dream
Then FTA and let your bank become the biggest...take it to your grave
OH.....Sorry, no one left to dig it !!
today 200+ people arrived on boats, plus the 10 fulongong now not going to NZ
natural birth rate exceeded by many. South Australia has 6 births a day overall
the state......It seems The Silent Invasion!
Anthropocentrism = as long as man sees himself as the most important organism on earth to be preserved at all costs we are Farked, bacteria have been way more successful than us.
75% of Americans believe that Jesus will return and fix everything so until then give me another upsized Mac meal a new Hummer and a 44 mag cause Jesus cant fix everything
Maybe because economic growth is measurable it's what everyone tries to maximise.. quality of life is too subjective (read: too hard) to measure..
Its much easier for politicians to focus on quantitative figures like economic growth and argue that they have had an effect than get stuck in a subjective argument about changes in the quality of life of the average citizen..
I think outside of textbooks though, economic growth is probably only loosely correlated with quality of life..
